David Throsby

The cover design for this book features a painting by Indigenous artist Johnny Bulun Bulun. It is an appropriate choice, given that it was this artist who in 1988 spearheaded the first major action in an Australian court against the unauthorised reproduction of Aboriginal works for commercial purposes, and in so doing set a precedent in establishing the existence of copyright in Aboriginal art. Th ... (read more)

A survey conducted in the UK in 2017 asked people whether they trusted the opinions of a variety of experts, such as doctors, scientists, and nutritionists. Economists came second last in a big field, beaten to the bottom only by politicians. How can it be that practitioners of an academic discipline that traces its intellectual history back at least 250 years have sunk so low in popular esteem? I ... (read more)

When members of the rock band Men at Work recorded their legendary hit ‘Down Under’ in the early 1980s, they wanted to inject a stronger sense of Australianness into the song, so they included a flute riff of a few bars echoing the classic Australian children’s chorus ‘Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree’, just as one might, in a different geographical context, quote from ‘Rule Britann ... (read more)