Cover -- Author biographies -- Title page -- Dedications -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- 1. Defence reforms and opportunities: 1946-64 -- 2. The RSL and Australian Indigenous veterans -- 3. Indigenous service and Vietnam -- 4. Skilling Indigenous women: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the women's services -- 5. Racism, Indigenous people, and the Australian armed forces -- 6. A changing defence force and Reconciliation -- Epilogue: Commemorating Indigenous service -- Acknowledgements -- List of abbreviations -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Picture section -- Index
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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been protecting country since time immemorial. One way they have continued these traditions in recent times is through service in the Australian military, both overseas and within Australia. In Defence of Country presents a selection of life stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ex-servicemen and women who served in the Australian Army, Navy and Air Force after World War Two. In their own words, participants discuss a range of issues including why they joined up; racial discrimination; the Stolen Generations; leadership; discipline; family; war and peace; education and skills development; community advocacy; and their hopes for the future of Indigenous Australia. Individually and collectively, the life stories in this book highlight the many contributions that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander servicemen and women have made, and continue to make, in defence of country.
In September 1993, the Australian media was abuzz over a Naval Board of Inquiry which investigated allegations of sexual abuse on the HMAS Swan. Following the Board of Inquiry and media coverage, the Minister for Defence Science and Personnel referred the matter to a new, broader Senate Inquiry into Sexual Harassment in the Australian Defence Force. This inquiry received 122 submissions and handed down its final report in August 1994. The HMAS Swan inquiries were neither the first nor the last major reports investigating abuse in the Australian armed forces. Indeed, media reports and new inquiries every few years suggest a cycle of serial epiphanies – to borrow a phrase from Aboriginal researcher Maggie Walter – about cultures of abuse within the ADF. Yet, what set the HMAS Swan scandal apart from earlier ones was: 1. The interest and interventions taken by the political class, and 2. That it centred on sexual abuse and the status of women in the Australian Defence Force (ADF). This article revisits the HMAS Swan inquiries thirty years later, exploring their findings, legacies and shortcomings. It explores why what could have been a turning point in the treatment of women in the ADF instead became just another inquiry.
I was meant to spend the first half of 2020 on research study leave at the University of Cologne. My partner and I rushed back to Australia in mid-March, disrupting our plans and forcing me into a new working paradigm. Yet, the disruption wound up sending me into one of the most productive periods of my career. In this article, I reflect on how my privileges - both earned and unearned - have contributed to a boom in my academic work at the same time that it has wreaked havoc on the entire sector. I also reflect on how Covid-19 has not caused problems in higher education per se, but rather has exposed and exacerbated inequalities across the sector.
AbstractIn 1970s Australia, magazines and newspapers regularly featured stories about transgender women. The articles were often exploitative and depicted transgender people as freaks, with headlines designed to shock and mock. Digging deeper, there is another side to transgender people in the Australian media. Notwithstanding the exploitative nature of the coverage, the media was still a site of transgender visibility in an era where there otherwise was none. Oral histories with transgender Australians often mention the importance of a particular television show, article or magazine because they saw others 'like them', and they realised that they were not alone. Some transgender people even kept those articles for years because of the connections they felt to an otherwise uncertain identity. There were also features in the press that were empathetic to transgender Australians, whether that be on the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), in magazines such as Cleo or in broadsheet newspapers. This article analyses the complex role that media played representing and relating to transgender Australians in the 1970s. Drawing on a mix of newspaper, magazine and television sources, as well as oral histories, the article opens new lines of inquiry about histories of transgender visibility, public discourse and understanding the self.
In 2013, one of the final acts of the Gillard government was to amend Australia's Sex Discrimination Act to add sexuality, gender identity and intersex variations as protected categories. This was not the first time the Commonwealth had considered anti‐discrimination legislation protecting LGBTI people. The most prominent example was the Democrats‐sponsored Sexuality Discrimination Bill, introduced to Parliament in November 1995, which included provisions to protect transgender people as well as gays, lesbians and bisexuals. The Senate referred the bill to an inquiry by the Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee, which received 436 submissions. Approximately 100 of these submissions specifically addressed transgender discrimination, some advocating for the rights of transgender Australians, and others focusing their attacks against the bill based on the transgender provisions. This article draws on the concept of transgender citizenship to examine the transgender‐related aspects of the inquiry and the debates in parliament, to understand the ways that the public and politicians framed transgender rights in the mid‐1990s. These debates are telling in how transgender issues and anxieties over gender fluidity have consistently become an easy target in wider debates about equality for sexual and gender minorities.
During the Second World War, approximately 4,000 Aboriginal and 850 Torres Strait Islander people served in the Australian military. They enlisted notwithstanding a formal colour bar and withstanding over a century of dispossession, discrimination and exclusion. In northern Australia, which doubled as a frontline in 1942-43, remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people also made contributions to the war effort in both formal and informal capacities. This article looks at the many dimensions of Indigenous contributions to the war effort, explaining the dominant narratives of Indigenous war participation while also exploring the diversity of Indigenous perspectives and experiences.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been protecting country since time immemorial. One way they have continued these traditions in recent times is through service in the Australian military, both overseas and within Australia. In Defence of Country presents a selection of life stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ex-servicemen and women who served in the Australian Army, Navy and Air Force after World War Two. In their own words, participants discuss a range of issues including why they joined up; racial discrimination; the Stolen Generations; leadership; discipline; family; war and peace; education and skills development; community advocacy; and their hopes for the future of Indigenous Australia. Individually and collectively, the life stories in this book highlight the many contributions that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander servicemen and women have made, and continue to make, in defence of country.
On 24 November 1992, Australia overturned its longstanding ban on gay and lesbian service in the Australian Defence Force. The ban was on the political agenda throughout 1992, though it was never a government priority or subject to mass protest. The debates over gay and lesbian military service have subsequently received scant attention from historians. The arguments against gay and lesbian service centred on troop morale, security concerns, fears of predatory homosexuals and the spread of HIV/AIDS. The arguments to permit gay and lesbian service hinged to an extent on principles of non‐discrimination, but even more so on international law. This article examines the debates in 1992 leading up to the repeal of the ban, focusing in particular on the Labor Party divisions and the ways international law influenced the decision‐making process.
In 1971, an Aboriginal man named Mervyn Eades was convicted for failing to register for national service. The magistrate determined that while Eades was indeed Aboriginal under Western Australian law, under the National Service Act he was not. Scrutiny of Eades' case exposes the interconnected issues of Aboriginality, racial discrimination, assimilation, federalism and conscription in the period between the 1967 Referendum and the 1972 election. Eades' conviction represented a unique junction of these seemingly disparate political issues which gradually converged. Analysis of Eades' case and the wider issue of Aboriginal people and national service highlights ongoing legislative discrimination in the immediate post‐Referendum period, the problematic status of concurrent Aboriginal affairs powers and the McMahon Liberal government's determination — ultimately unsuccessfully — to avoid conflation of conscription and race politics.
Intro -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1. Hidden gay and bisexual men, 1944-73 -- 2. The women's services, 1950-85 -- 3. The heightened ban years, 1974-92 -- 4. Challenging the ban -- 5. An era of openness? 1993-2005 -- 6. Transgender and intersex service -- 7. A new ADF? -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index
