Lyndon Megarrity

On 13 August 1940 a Hudson Bomber travelling from Melbourne crashed near Canberra, killing all ten people on board. Three of the deceased were federal ministers: Geoffrey Street (army minister), Sir Henry S. Gullett (vice-president of the Executive Council), and James Fairbairn (minister for air and civil aviation). Also on board that day was Cyril Brudenell Bingham White, a senior Army officer (chief of the general staff).

Arthur Augustus Calwell is hardly the most celebrated or mythologised politician in the history of the Australian Labor Party. His achievements as the first minister for immigration have been overshadowed by his very public advocacy of the White Australia policy ...

John Joseph Cahill (1891–1959) rose from humble beginnings as a railway worker to become the premier of New South Wales during the 1950s. Although more interested in listening to band music on the wireless than in anything approaching High Culture, he was nonetheless instrumental in championing the cause of the Sydney Opera House. Ordinary working people, he believed, were entitled to more than just the essentials of life. Peter Golding’s intriguing biography will introduce many people to the life and career of this rough, politically hardened but fundamentally decent Labor politician.

In 1858, a year before Queensland separated from the colony of New South Wales, Theophilus Pugh wrote in the first history of Queensland: ‘Difficult indeed will be the task of the historian who hereafter attempts to chronicle the events connected with the early days of this now important settlement.’ Authors of the subsequent nineteen histories of Queensland, including Ross Fitzgerald, Lyndon Megarrity and David Symons, would have been well advised to heed Pugh’s prescient warning.

Behind the Exclusive Brethren is the story of a religious group that goes to extraordinary lengths to remain ‘apart from the world’ but whose very ‘unworldliness’ is maintained by very worldly means. Journalist Michael Bachelard’s readable and balanced account of the Exclusive Brethren in Australia is informed by a broad understanding of the church in its international context.

Advance Australia … Where? is such an eye-catching pun on Australia’s national anthem that it is no wonder that it has been used, with slight variations, as the title of at least eight books and pamphlets since World War II. Such publications have tended to express an individual author’s vision for the nation. In contrast, the latest Advance Australia … Where?, written by Hugh Mackay, mainly discusses current trends in public opinion, although it includes a few cautious predictions about the future and a number of suggestions for social reform.

One of the major cliches of recent years is the retiring politician’s parting statement, ‘I’m leaving politics to spend more time with my family’. Indeed, the tensions between work and family commitments have become a regular topic in the media. Newspaper articles sometimes cite the views of prominent social scientists, whose academic publications affirm the popular view that society as a whole benefits from fostering a working environment that acknowledges the importance of family and community. With Weighing up Australian Values, Brian Howe, a former deputy prime minister (1991–96), becomes the latest in a long line of Australian authors to promote public policies that encourage work-life balance.