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This article explores the Cold War history of the Australia-U.S. alliance, and then uses this knowledge to contextualise more recent developments in the bilateral relationship. At several crucial moments in the first half of the Cold War, Australia disagreed with the U.S. about the wisdom of its policy toward China, and worked to moderate Washington's aggressive impulses. However, from the 1960s onwards, Australian leaders began to internalise a schema of alliance loyalty: they believed that only loyalty to the U.S. would ensure reciprocal loyalty from Washington. Although events have challenged the validity of this hypothesis, it became a powerful and pervasive influence which led, over time, to Canberra thinking less carefully about the costs and benefits of prospective alliance action. This intellectual lethargy explains why Canberra has found it difficult to adapt to a period of more intense strategic competition between China and the U.S today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biomineralised remains of trilobites provide important insight into the evolutionary history of a diverse, extinct group of arthropods. Their exoskeletons are also ideal for recording malformations, including evidence of post-injury repair. Re-examination of historic collections and the study of new specimens is important for enhancing knowledge on trilobite malformations across this diverse clade. To expand the records of these abnormalities and present explanations for their formation, we document eight malformed trilobite specimens, as well as one carcass, housed within the Commonwealth Palaeontological Collection at Geoscience Australia in Canberra. We present examples of Asthenopsis, Burminresia, Centropleura, Coronocephalus, Dolicholeptus, Galahetes, Papyriaspis, and Xystridura from Cambrian, Ordovician, and Silurian deposits of Australia. Most of the malformed specimens show W-, U-, or L-shaped indentations that reflect injuries from either failed predation or complications during moulting, and a mangled carcass is ascribed to either successful predation or post-mortem scavenging. We also uncover examples of teratologies, such as bifurcated pygidial ribs and pygidial asymmetry, in addition to evidence of abnormal recovery (i.e., fusion of thoracic segments) from a traumatic incident. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canberra Airport, until recently, was an aviation backwater. The state of the airport masked its importance to Australia's aviation infrastructure network as the gateway to the nation's capital and the only unrestricted major airport along the most populous stretch of the country's eastern seaboard. Canberra Airport is now being transformed through an AUS$1bn investment programme, with its centrepiece, a new AUS$420m terminal, scheduled for completion in early 2013. This major investment programme, however, was all but abandoned in the face of regulatory failure that stymied investment in airport infrastructure in Australia. The subsequent introduction of lighter-handed economic regulation has seen airport infrastructure investment in Canberra, and Australia, flourish to meet the demands of users. This paper highlights the regulatory hurdles faced by Canberra Airport and how they were ultimately overcome on the way to delivering Australia's newest international airport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For almost two decades, Canberra hedged its economic and security bets between China – its most significant economic partner – and the United States – its core security ally – rather successfully, with Australian policymakers announcing that the country would not have to choose between the two great powers and that there are ways to maintain a tight alliance with the US while enhancing friendship and cooperation with China. However, Australia-China relations started to deteriorate in the mid-2010s, with Canberra effectively giving up on hedging by signing in 2021 the AUKUS (Australia-UK-US) security pact and undertaking other steps that have been widely received as unequivocally joining the US's effort to contain China. This article explores Australia's foreign policy transformation by conceptualising it as a transition from hedging to balancing against China. It develops a theoretical argument about why an essential middle power might decide to give up on hedging and start balancing. It argues that the end of hedging in Australia's China policy is a result of disappearing structural uncertainty and systemic permissiveness on which hedging, as a pattern of smaller power behaviour, is premised. As such, the article contributes to the knowledge about hedging by highlighting the limitations of smaller power hedging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Australian and Italian policies on irregular maritime migration are widely debated, they have seldom been examined together, a gap in the literature that this article addresses with a comprehensive comparative analysis. Informed by theories on irregular migrants' reception, it traces the two countries' policies between 2000 and early 2022, and examines their many convergences and few discrepancies through a framework comprising (i) domestic pressures, (ii) international pressures, and (iii) the choice between the moral imperative and national interest. It finds that contrasting socio-political characteristics domestically explain why Canberra and Rome have at times adopted opposite policies, whereas comparable international pressures clarify the implementation of similar ones. It also sheds light on the contradiction in Australia's middle power identity and 'good international citizenship', and on Italy's torn posture betwixt great power politics and humanitarian efforts. In 2020–2022, their policy continuity amidst the COVID-19 pandemic is worthy of notice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In its 50 years, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs (and later Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) has become a great department of state. Foreign is an important conglomerate, doing diplomacy, trade, aid, and spying. In the Canberra system, though, Foreign has an 'anaemia' problem caused by chronic underfunding. Measured as a proportion of the Commonwealth budget, spending on diplomacy is halving in only three decades. Anaemia is the effect; the causes are a formidable set of forces pressing against the department over those 50 years: the evolution and empowerment of Australia's presidential prime minister; the birth of ministerial minders; public service managerialism; Canberra's national security system—and mindset—in the twenty-first century; globalisation and the digital era: every government department has its own bit of foreign policy; political choices: Australia's two parties of government— Liberal and Labor—often buy something other than good foreign policy. Plus, important bits of the Liberal Party see DFAT as ideologically tainted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marking the Aboriginal Tent Embassy's fiftieth anniversary in 2022, this article adopts a historical perspective to examine the challenges encountered by Australian heritage regimes when attempting to recognize this site as a heritage place. First established in Canberra in 1972 on Ngunnawal land, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy reveals the material-discursive limits of Australia's Burra Charter-derived values-based heritage regime in recognizing and respecting Indigenous rights, sovereignty, and protest. Recent attempts have been made to include the site on the Commonwealth Heritage List (2005), the National Heritage List (2008) and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Heritage List (2015). That these nominations have not yet been successful suggests that heritage regimes of governance and management express settler-colonial ideology. Consequently, heritage becomes imbued with narratives of national identity and power and becomes a mechanism in maintaining settler-colonial dominance. This article proposes centralizing Indigenous agency as an alternative way towards formulating post-colonial heritage regimes and values-based conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Isotope geology began in the Department of Geophysics, the Australian National University, Canberra, in the late 1950s. A K-Ar dating laboratory was set up in 1960, with development of Rb-Sr dating facilities taking place soon after. These laid the foundations for extensive programs of isotopic dating with emphasis on providing quantitative age information related to the geological evolution of the Australian continent. Demonstration of progressive younging of granite emplacement to the northeast in the Tasman Fold Belt of eastern Australia was a notable initial achievement. Early successes on broader questions included the demonstration of the ability to measure K-Ar ages on young volcanic rocks, leading on to a significant role in the establishment of the geomagnetic polarity time-scale. In the early 1970s, dating of returned lunar samples by the Rb-Sr method was another most notable success. The development of the SHRIMP ion microprobe, commencing in the mid-1970s, resulted in U-Pb dating of zircon (and other minerals) becoming possible on very small areas of single crystals, revolutionising the approach to dating, with wide application not only to rocks in Australia, but indeed worldwide. Isotope geochemical study of the Earth's mantle and crust was also an important activity, especially in the 1980s. Subsequently, emphasis has been redirected toward studies of the Quaternary, including U-series isotopic dating as well as high-resolution isotopic and element ratio measurements, especially on corals, to track climate change. Many other developments in isotopic dating and isotope geochemistry have taken place over the last 45 years with installation and, in some cases, development of appropriate instrumentation, facilitating the updating of capabilities and expanding the range of techniques, continuing to the present time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A second stygobitic carnivorous water beetle is reported from eastern Australia. Unlike the recently discovered Carabhydrus stephanieae (Watts et al.) from the same general region, the new species is from the inland draining Peel River, part of the Murray-Darling basin. Its morphology and mitochondrial DNA sequences, place it in the Hydroporine genus Paroster Sharp. Phylogenetic analysis shows that the new species is more closely related to the Western Australian species of Paroster than to the geographical less distant Paroster species of the Northern Territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Standard Precipitation Index (SPI) is employed to track drought and assess the impact of rainfall on shallow groundwater levels in three selected irrigation areas of the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia. The continuous SPI method can provide better means of quantifying rainfall variability and correlating it with changes of shallow watertable levels since it is based on continuous statistical functions comparing rainfall variability over the entire rainfall record. Drought analysis in the Australian irrigation areas using SPI indicates that the recent 2000–2006 drought is not the worst drought that has occurred in the recorded history, however if the current low rainfall pattern continues, it would be one of the most prolonged drought. The shallow groundwater fluctuations in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area show a very strong correlation with winter rainfall variation. The shallow piezometric levels in the Coleambally Irrigation Area show a weaker degree of correlation with the SPI due to local and regional groundwater dynamics and changes in rice water use. The groundwater levels in the Murray Irrigation Area show least correlation with the SPI, which may be attributed to improved irrigation management practices and complex nature of the groundwater recharge and discharge processes in this area. The overall results however show that the SPI correlates well with fluctuations in shallow ground water table in irrigation areas, and can also capture major drought patterns in Australia. The correlation of SPI with groundwater levels can be adopted for environmental reporting and used as a method of relating climatic impacts on watertables. Differences in piezometric response between years with similar winter and yearly SPI values can be attributed to improvement in irrigators’ management practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a global environment in which global, national and local nodes relate freely within common networks, all research universities must pursue strategies for building global capacity and facilitating cross-border staff and student movement and research collaboration. The study compares readings of the global environment, global and international activities and relationships, and global capacity and strategy, in two leading national universities, one in a middle level developing country (Indonesia) and the other in a middle level developed country (Australia). The main tool of investigation was interviews with parallel groups of institutional leaders and leaders of academic units and research centres, in conjunction with study of the national and local contexts. It was apparent that in both cases, while global elements are increasingly important in university strategy, mission and identity, resource capacity remains highly dependant on national government and students. This belies the romantic myth of the ‘stand-alone’ corporate university in the global marketplace. The two cases also differ in some respects. While both universities are peak national institutions, and each respects the other, the Australian university is more strongly placed in the global environment and practical dealings between them are asymmetrical. The study helps to illuminate the dynamics of global stratification and hierarchy between developed and developing nations and institutions in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]