New Books in Australian and New Zealand Studies

Professor Wayne Hudson knows a lot - a whole lot - about religion and society. In Australian Jurists and Christianity (The Federation Press, 2021) Wayne, as co-editor, assembles a collection of biographical essays providing new perspectives on the relationship between law and religion in Australia. It claims that the relationship between law and religion was more significant in Australia than has been suggested. Specifically, it suggests that Christianity was a significant influence on Australian jurists, both as public figures and as makers of Australian law.The work includes case studies of 24 leading Australian jurists: Lachlan Macquarie, James Stephen, Richard Bourke, John Hubert Plunkett, George Higinbotham, Samuel Griffith, Inglis Clark, Henry Bournes Higgins, Alfred Deakin, Edith Cowan, Lord Atkin, Robert Menzies, WJV Windeyer, Roma Mitchell, Gough Whitlam, Ron Wilson, Christopher Weeramantry, Gerard Brennan, William Deane, Robin Sharwood, Eddie Mabo, Murray Gleeson, Michael Kirby and John Hatzistergos.This volume forms part of the international series Great Christian Jurists produced under the auspices of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University and includes a foreword by Australia’s renowned legal historian, Bruce Kercher.Professor Wayne Hudson - Research Professor at Charles Sturt University, Canberra and Adjunct Professor at the University of Tasmania, and a visiting fellow at the Australian National University.  Working across the fields of philosophy, history, politics and religion, he has published twenty-four books and eighty-four refereed articles and book chapters, and has won twenty-five research grants. He has lectured at Oxford University, the Collège international de philosophie in Paris, McGill University in Canada, and at Beijing Foreign Studies University and the Institute of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Bede Haines is a solicitor, specialising in litigation and a partner at Holding Redlich, an Australian commercial law firm. He lives in Sydney, Australia. Known to read books, ride bikes and eat cereal (often). bede.haines@holdingredlich.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

'To be missing, you must be missed'. Erin Stewart's 2021 book examines missing for just about every point of view. In Australia 38,000 people are reported missing each year and in the US it's over 600,000. In the UK someone is reported missing every 90 seconds. Many of these cases are never resolved.Blending long-form journalism with true crime and philosophy, The Missing Among Us: Stories of Missing Persons and Those Left Behind (NewSouth, 2020) takes us from the Australian bush to the battlefields of Northern France and the perilous space of a refugee camp to explore the stories of the missing. Erin Stewart speaks to parents of missing children, former cult members, detectives and investigators, advocates working on the crisis of missing refugees, a child of the Stolen Generations and many more to trace the mysterious world of missing persons.Examining famous cases like that of Madeleine McCann to those who are lesser known yet equally loved and mourned, this unique book forces us to see the complex story behind each missing person and those they leave behind.Erin Stewart PhD in non-fiction writing, working as a freelance writer based in Canberra. Erin approaches writing with radical curiosity, always looking for fascinating stories incorporating strong analysis and reflection. Erin focus on stories and people that/who present the unexpected and make us see the world a little differently. Topics include the intersections of culture, tech, medicine, politics, and personal experiences.Bede Haines is a solicitor, specialising in litigation and a partner at Holding Redlich, an Australian commercial law firm. He lives in Sydney, Australia. Known to read books, ride bikes and eat cereal (often). bede.haines@holdingredlich.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

Australia has always been multilingual. Yet English language sources have dominated political and popular discourses over the last few centuries, overshadowing the significant contribution made by other languages and cultures in shaping Australian history and identity.Professor Adrian Vickers spoke to Dr Natali Pearson about his work as part of an ambitious new Australian Research Council Discovery Project that seeks to investigate and document how speakers of (mainly non-Indigenous) languages apart from English have recorded and represented Australia. As Professor Vickers explains, these languages include Indonesian, in which he specialises, as well as many other Asian and European languages. In examining Australia’s history from non-English perspectives, the project challenges dominant narratives of what being Australian means and asks how language both shapes and reflects notions of belonging in an Australian context.In this podcast, Professor Adrian Vickers delves into Australia’s migrant and settler history to highlight the importance of language diversity, narrating countless tales of cross-cultural exchanges and how they have informed the Australian past.About Professor Adrian Vickers:Adrian researches and publishes on the cultural history of Southeast Asia. He has held a series of Australian Research Council grants (Discovery and Linkage), the most recent looking at modern and contemporary Indonesian art, Cold War history, and labour and industry in Southeast Asia. As part of a linkage grant on the history of Balinese painting, he created a virtual museum, continuing previous pioneering work in eResearch and teaching. His books include the highly popular Bali: A Paradise Created (2012), The Pearl Frontier: Indonesian Labor and Indigenous Encounters in Australia's Northern Trading Network (2015, with Associate Professor Julia Martínez, funded by an ARC Discovery Project Grant), A History of Modern Indonesia (2013) and Balinese Art: Paintings and Drawings of Bali, 1800-2010 (2012). Adrian is frequently asked to comment on Indonesia and Australian-Indonesian relations for national and international media.You can follow Adrian on Twitter: @AdrianVickers5.For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

What if the sovereignty of the First Nations was recognised by European international law in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? What if the audacious British annexation of a whole continent was not seen as acceptable at the time and the colonial office in Britain understood that 'peaceful settlement' was a fiction? If the 1901 parliament did not have control of the whole continent, particularly the North, by what right could the new nation claim it?The historical record shows that the argument of the Uluru Statement from the Heart is stronger than many people imagine and the centuries-long legal position about British claims to the land far less imposing than it appears.In Truth Telling: History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement (NewSouth, 2021), influential historian Henry Reynolds pulls the rug from legal and historical assumptions, with his usual sharp eye and rigour, in a book that's about the present as much as the past. His work shows exactly why our national war memorial must acknowledge the frontier wars, why we must change the date of our national day, and why treaties are important. Most of all, it makes urgently clear that the Uluru Statement is no rhetorical flourish but carries the weight of history and law and gives us a map for the future.Henry Reynolds is Honorary Research Professor, Aboriginal Studies Global Cultures & Languages, University of TasmaniaBede Haines is a solicitor, specialising in litigation and a partner at Holding Redlich, an Australian commercial law firm. He lives in Sydney, Australia. Known to read books, ride bikes and eat cereal (often). bede.haines@holdingredlich.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

Religions, indeed those of the same religion, getting along? Maybe. Dr Virginia Miller edits and contributes to an essay collection on how this thorny issue can be approached - and we've even recorded on Easter Saturday - the bridging day between despair and hope for Christians. The book: Leaning into the Spirit - Ecumenical Perspectives on Discernment and Decision-making in the Church (Palgrave Macmillan 2019).This book contains fresh insights into ecumenism and, notwithstanding claims of an “ecumenical winter,” affirms the view that we are actually moving into a “new ecumenical spring.” It offers new theological insights in the areas of Christology, Pneumatology and Trinitarian theology, and discusses developments in ecumenism in the USA, UK, Australia, India, and Africa, as well as in ecumenical institutions such as the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Anglican Roman Catholic Commission (ARCIC)Dr Virginia Miller is a research fellow at the Centre for Public and Contextual Theology at Charles Sturt University, Canberra, Australia.Bede Haines is a solicitor, specialising in litigation and a partner at Holding Redlich, an Australian commercial law firm. He lives in Sydney, Australia. Known to read books, ride bikes and eat cereal (often). bede.haines@holdingredlich.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

Commonwealth, curry and cricket: now that explains India and Australia! Not really, and not according to today's guest. Kama Maclean discusses her book British India, White Australia: Overseas Indians, Intercolonial Relations and the Empire, 1901-1947 (NewSouth, 2020). In contemporary bilateral relations, great emphasis has been placed on India and Australia’s historical connection with the Commonwealth. The stress laid on a shared past is deeply misleading, however, for each colony was tied to Britain in the early twentieth century under very different conditions. Both, it is true, strained against the imperial embrace, but the respective forms of colonisation, collaboration with, and resistance against the empire diverge widely. At the beginning of the twentieth century, each colony pulled in a different direction. As a settler society geographically isolated from Britain, newly self-governing and freshly assertive, in 1901 Australia adopted the White Australia policy, effectively preventing the further migration of nonwhite settlers. This, much to Britain’s frustration, included those from British India, undermining an attempt to project a sense of unity within the empire. Prior to 1901, however, a substantial population of Indians had come to Australia and were granted limited rights of residency. British India, White Australia charts the lives of some of these settlers, charting a social history of their struggles against Australian legislation, which prevented them from voting and working in many industries.Kama Maclean - Professor of South Asian History and department head at the University of Heidelberg's South Asia Institutes. Kama is a historian of South Asia, specialising in the experience of colonialism in north India, with an interest in political communication in colonial India. She was trained in the School of Politics at La Trobe University in the 1990s and completed a PhD on the history and politics of the Kumbh Mela in 2003.Bede Haines is a solicitor, specialising in litigation and a partner at Holding Redlich, an Australian commercial law firm. He lives in Sydney, Australia. Known to read books, ride bikes and eat cereal (often). bede.haines@holdingredlich.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

Stuart Rees's Cruelty or Humanity: Challenges, Opportunities and Responsibilities (Policy Press, a Bristol University Press imprint, 2020) exposes politicians' fascination with cruelty in their deliberations about policies. Through empirical analysis, human stories and poetic commentary, he identifies non-destructive exercise of power, courageous public action and compelling humanitarian alternatives as the key to achieving a future in which dignity and equality flourish.Documenting case studies from around the world, the book exposes politicians’ cruel motives and the resulting outcomes. Using first-hand observations and insights from international poets, the work argues for courageous action to support non-violence in every aspect of public and private life for the survival of people, animals and the planet.Stuart Rees is Professor Emeritus at the University of Sydney and a human rights activist in several countries. He is regarded as one of Australia’s most consistent campaigners for justice.Bede Haines is a solicitor, specialising in litigation and a partner at Holding Redlich, an Australian commercial law firm. He lives in Sydney, Australia. Known to read books, ride bikes and eat cereal (often). bede.haines@holdingredlich.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

The middle decades of the 19th century witnessed the expansion of slavery and white settlement and dispossession of Indigenous lands west of the Mississippi River, the abolition of slavery in the British Empire followed by the importation of indentured laborers from India and China into the West Indies, the consolidation of British rule in India followed by the so-called Indian Mutiny, and the expansion of settler colonialism in Australia. These processes were all tied together by commerce, empire, and the spread of racial ideologies, yet their histories have largely been written separately. Until now.Zach Sell’s new book Trouble of the World: Slavery and Empire in the Age of Capital (University of North Carolina Press, 2021) highlights the connections between the “second slavery” in the Deep South of the United States, efforts to socially engineer mono-crop agriculture in India by a British colonial state that lip service to laissez-faire and free labor even as it tried to import plantation management techniques from the US south, how the attempt to create plantation-style agriculture in Queensland, Australia bumped up against the logic of white settler colonialism and attempts to expand plantation agriculture in Belize in the age of so-called “free” labor using indentured labor from Asia. This is a story of racial formation on a global scale, and of the limits of capital’s ability to remake social relations and environments in its own image, despite the capacity for organized brutality that it had at its disposal. This book is particularly important at a time when many American, British and French commentators have tried to downplay the violence of expansion and colonialism and to portray white supremacy as some sort of American peculiarity and relic of the past.Zach is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Drexel University and was previously Ruth J. Simmons Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Slavery and Justice at Brown University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

After Australia (Affirm Press with the Sweatshop Literacy Movement 2021). No, Australia has not ended - it's a book edited by Michael Mohammed Ahmad.Climate catastrophe, police brutality, white genocide, totalitarian rule and the erasure of black history provide the backdrop for stories of love, courage and hope. An anthology, twelve of Australia’s most daring Indigenous writers and writers of colour provide a glimpse of Australia as we head toward the year 2050.Unique voices and a great editor - whose input is apparent, but he's humbly kept in the background to let the writers shine, and we all benefit. Featuring Ambelin Kwaymullina, Claire G. Coleman, Omar Sakr, Future D. Fidel, Karen Wyld, Khalid Warsame, Kaya Ortiz, Roanna Gonsalves, Sarah Ross, Zoya Patel, Michelle Law and Hannah Donnelly. Edited by Michael Mohammed Ahmad. Original concept by Lena Nahlous.Michael Mohammed Ahmad is the founding director of Sweatshop Literacy Movement and editor of the critically acclaimed anthology, After Australia (Affirm Press, 2021). Mohammed's debut novel, The Tribe (Giramondo, 2014), won the 2015 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelists of the Year Award. His second novel, The Lebs (Hachette Australia, 2018) won the 2019 NSW Premier's Multicultural Literary Award and was shortlisted for the 2019 Miles Franklin Literary Award. Mohammed received his Doctorate of Creative Arts from Western Sydney University in 2017Bede Haines is a solicitor, specialising in litigation and a partner at Holding Redlich, an Australian commercial law firm. He lives in Sydney, Australia. Known to read books, ride bikes and eat cereal (often). bede.haines@holdingredlich.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

For the next five weeks, SSEAC Stories will be hosting a mini-series of podcasts on research partnerships in Southeast Asia. In the context of COVID-19, it has become clear that working in partnership is a critical part of being able to do research in Southeast Asia. Through interviews with University of Sydney academics working across all disciplines and at all stages in their careers, this mini-series will highlight strategies that our members have used to build and sustain partnerships with collaborators in Southeast Asia.In our first episode, Dr Thushara Dibley speaks with Associate Professor Jenny-Ann Toribio about a ten-year long research collaboration that she’s developed with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in Timor-Leste to combat animal diseases.Jenny-Ann is Associate Professor in Epidemiology at the University of Sydney. Jenny-Ann has conducted extensive applied research focused on biosecurity, emergency animal diseases and zoonoses in Australia, Indonesia, Philippines and Timor-Leste. Recent research of note in Australia includes evaluation of avian influenza risk for commercial chicken farms in New South Wales and risk awareness and risk mitigation practices among horse owners in relation to Hendra virus. Further afield, she has led collaborative research in eastern Indonesia on the evaluation of the risk for highly pathogenic avian influenza and classical swine fever with poultry and pig movement respectively; in Timor Leste on smallholder pig production and health; and in Fiji on evaluation of zoonotic tuberculosis risk for dairy farmers.For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies