The Great Barrier Reef is dying. Extreme weather is becoming all too familiar. Yet when it comes to action on climate change, division and paralysis rule the land. In this vivid, urgent essay, Anna Krien explores the psychology and politics of a warming world. She visits the frontlines of Australia’s climate wars – the Reef, the Galilee and Bowen basins, South Australia. She investigates the Adani mine, with its toxic politics and controversial economics. Talking to power workers and scientists, lobbyists and activists, she considers where climate change is taking us, and where effective action is to be found. “This was Turnbull’s moment, and the Liberal Party’s too. Not just the Snowy 2.0, but the whole thing – an ailing and dysfunctional grid, a complex issue, something for the ‘adults’ to take responsibility for. But instead of leadership, Australians got politics as usual. Cheap shots, culture-war baiting, bad and good ideas lobbed like hot potatoes and lost in the trash talk of low-grade politics. After the ten-day policy spree, Turnbull resumed his poker face, continuing with his grim role of negotiating with the vipers in his nest.” Anna Krien, The Long Goodbye

This book uses mixed methods to extend the concept of “wellbeing stocks” to refer to dynamic ways of working with others. It addresses metaphors and praxis for weaving together strands of experience. The aim of the wellbeing stocks concept is to enable people to re-evaluate economics and to become more aware of the way in which we neglect social and environmental aspects of life. The pursuit of profit at the expense of people and the environment is a central problem for democracy and governance. The vulnerability of cities is a symptom of the lack of balance between individual and collective needs. This book explores the potential for cities, specifically in the regions of Indonesia, Africa, and Australia, to become more productive as sites for food and water security through more creative use of technology. It highlights the need for partners that see food and security feasible at the household level if supports are provided at the community, national and international level. The book examines how these regions are affected by demographics, climate change and people movements, but also explores ways to establish an effective cultural ecosystem management.

This book embraces the idea that in today’s complex world, multiple, emerging perspectives are critical to the design fields, the environment, and society. It also brings authors into conversation to focus on the built environment from the perspective of critical practice. The authors take as a starting point Jane Rendell’s ground-breaking work, which defines critical spatial practice as “self-reflective modes of thought that seek to change the world.” In opposition to conventional conceptions of architectural education and work, this book reflects how socially engaged architects, landscape architects, designers, urbanists, and artists take up critical spatial practice. Bridging ideas from multiple countries and approaches to design scholarship, each chapter seeks to find places of convergence for the multiple strands that form around themes of practice, equality, methods, theory, ethics, pedagogy, and representation. Rendell’s foreword and postscript provide context for these themes and suggest a way forward in today’s challenging, changing times.

This is the second volume of research into the philosophy of Bernard Stiegler and its interconnections with the philosophy of education. Building on the first edited collection, Stiegler’s philosophy is introduced to scholars in the field of the philosophy of education in the hope that researchers dig deep into his philosophy and apply it to their own educational context in order to produce new forms of knowledge, that is “negentropic” forms of knowledge which may counter the endemic crises we see in educational institutions in towns, cities and villages across the planet. This second volume throws down the gauntlet to others to find new ways to contest toxic forms of digital life inside and outside education and to challenge entrenched and conservative ways of teaching and learning in the 21st century. The writers in this volume from Australasia, Europe, and across South, Southeast and East Asia do a remarkable job of translating Bernard Stiegler’s sometimes complicated language into ways which are interpretable, applicable and communicable to those who witness, day in day out, in their schools, universities and institutions the struggle to capture the hearts and minds of young people. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory.

How did the big banks get away with so much for so long? Why are so many aged-care residents malnourished? And when did arms manufacturers start sponsoring the Australian War Memorial? In this passionate essay, Richard Denniss explores what neoliberalism has done to Australian society. For decades, we have been led to believe that the private sector does everything better, that governments can’t afford to provide the high-quality services they once did, but that security and prosperity for all are just around the corner. In fact, Australians are now less equal, millions of workers have no sick leave or paid holidays, and housing is unaffordable for many. Deregulation, privatisation and trickle-down economics have, we are told, delivered us twenty-seven years of growth ... but to what end? In Dead Right, Denniss looks at ways to renew our democracy and discusses everything from the fragmenting Coalition to an idea of the national interest that goes beyond economics. ‘Neoliberalism, the catch-all term for all things small government, has been the ideal cloak behind which to conceal enormous shifts in Australia’s wealth and culture ... Over the past thirty years, the language, ideas and policies of neoliberalism have transformed our economy and, more importantly, our culture’ —Richard Denniss, Dead Right

This volume considers the interconnectedness of all creatures in relation to our planetary boundaries. Through our constant consumption of resources, we have had a distinctly negative impact on the world around us—affecting everything from the weather, food availability, sea levels and the social fabric of our society. This book explores how we arrived at such an unstable world and offers ecological, theological and economically sustainable solutions to a global crisis.

Millions of years in the making, sustaining human voyagers and societies for millennia, a couple of centuries of that by Europeans - the Great Barrier Reef - in maybe five or six decades the largest living structure visible from space will have become the largest dead one. Vicarious Dreaming documents a series of personal voyages between Cooktown and the Torres Strait that are interwoven with accounts of exploration, exploitation and escape. The travels and tales coalesce around the works of Ion Idriess and the lives of solitary men at the edge of the world, drawn to the wild by folly and obsession, and to an island in the Howick Group that Idriess knew well and which was the site of his first book - Madman's Island. And as with the slow-motion ecological catastrophe that is the Reef's agonal decline there are players - and bystanders; stories of people and places, of life and death, of arrivals and departures, and of journeys that involve even the most remote, uninhabited spaces - the necklace of islands scattered along more than two thousand kilometres of Queensland's Coral Sea coast. At once a journey into the far north of Australia and into the furthest depths of the human mind. A tale of Cape York's past and a new chapter in the exploration of its present. A dream narrative - maybe; a case study - perhaps; literary art, yes, absolutely, in its purest and most ambitious form. - Nicholas Rothwell

What is true political leadership, and how do we get it? What qualities should we wish for in our leaders? And why is it killing season for prime ministers? In this wise and timely essay, Laura Tingle argues that democratic leaders build a consensus for change, rather than bludgeon the system or turn politics into a popularity contest. They mobilise and guide, more than impose a vision. Tingle offers acute portraits – profiles in courage and cunning – of leaders ranging from Merkel and Howard to Macron and Obama. She discusses the rise of the strongman, including Donald Trump, for whom there is no map, only sentiment and power. And she analyses what has gone wrong with politics in Australia, arguing that successful leaders know what they want to do, and create the space and time to do it. After the Liberal Party’s recent episode of political madness, where does this leave the nation’s new prime minister, Scott Morrison? “The Liberal Party has been ripped apart and our polity is the worse off for having one of its major political parties rendered largely ungovernable ... Malcolm Turnbull’s fate came down to a series of judgements made not just by him, but by his colleagues, who spent much of his prime ministership failing to follow the leader and also failing in their own collective responsibility for leadership.” —Laura Tingle, Follow the Leader

America is fading, and China will soon be the dominant power in our region. What does this mean for Australia’s future? In this controversial and urgent essay, Hugh White shows that the contest between America and China is classic power politics of the harshest kind. He argues that we are heading for an unprecedented future, one without an English-speaking great and powerful friend to keep us secure and protect our interests. White sketches what the new Asia will look like, and how China could use its power. He also examines what has happened to the United States globally, under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump – a series of setbacks which Trump’s bluster on North Korea cannot disguise. White notes that we have got into the habit of seeing the world through Washington’s eyes, and argues that unless this changes, we will fail to navigate the biggest shift in Australia’s international circumstances since European settlement. The signs of failure are already clear, as we risk sliding straight from complacency to panic. ‘For almost a decade now, the world’s two most powerful countries have been competing. America has been trying to remain East Asia’s primary power, and China has been trying to replace it. How the contest will proceed – whether peacefully or violently, quickly or slowly – is still uncertain, but the most likely outcome is now becoming clear. America will lose, and China will win.’ —Hugh White, Without America ‘This important essay clarifies China’s brinkmanship in Asia and confronts the hard facts of what it means for Australia’ —Fiona Capp, The Sydney Morning Herald ‘In ... Without America: Australia in the New Asia, Hugh White has given us possibly his best piece of writing, and on a subject of the first importance.’ —Weekend Australian ‘Just when the foreign-policy orthodoxy seemed to be catching up with him, White [has] upend[ed] it again.’ —The Interpreter

Are Australian schools safe? And if they’re not, what happens when kids are caught in a bleak collision between ill-equipped teachers and a confected scandal? In 2016, the Safe Schools program became the focus of an ideological firestorm. In Moral Panic 101, Benjamin Law explores how and why this happened. He weaves a subtle, gripping account of schools today, sexuality, teenagers, new ideas of gender fluidity, media scandal and mental health. In this timely essay, Law also looks at the new face of homophobia in Australia, and the long battle for equality and acceptance. Investigating bullying of the vulnerable young, he brings to light hidden worlds, in an essay notable for its humane clarity. “To read every article the Australian has published on Safe Schools is to induce nausea. This isn’t even a comment on the content, just the sheer volume ... And yet, across this entire period, the Australian – self-appointed guardian of the safety of children – spoke to not a single school-aged LGBTIQ youth. Not even one. Later, queer teenagers who followed the Safe Schools saga told me the dynamic felt familiar. At school, it’s known as bullying. In journalism, it’s called a beat-up.” —Benjamin Law, Moral Panic 101 ‘This is a timely and important work’ —Steven Carroll, Sydney Morning Herald