HIST2227 Chap.11 Kevin07 to Today
Kevin07 to Today
History in present politics
The final topic studies how recent politics uses history.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart of 2017 grounds First Nations sovereignty in more than 60,000 years and asks for a Voice and a Makarrata Commission.
Four long views
Readings trace disability income support since 1908, how child sexual abuse became a public issue, and the humanitarian language used to justify refugee policy, which Jordana Silverstein links to settler colonialism.
How the final week connects the course
The Uluru Statement returns to the treaty question of Week 2, Mays traces a welfare system back to 1908, and Silverstein links refugee policy to colonial control of Aboriginal children.
Each reading shows a present-day issue with deep roots, which is the kind of connection between topics the Final Paper criteria reward.
Using the readings in the Final Paper
The rights-based movement option can draw on Mays for disability rights, the Robodebt option on the history of welfare and risk, and the strongman option on how political language uses history.
Each reading supplies dated evidence that keeps a large argument grounded.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The Uluru Statement and deep time
- 02
A Voice and a Makarrata Commission
- 03
Disability income support since 1908
- 04
Abuse becomes a public issue
- 05
Stop the boats and humanitarian talk
- 06
Rudd's use of history
Worked example · free
Comparing the time spans in the Uluru Statement
- 1200 divided by 60,000 = 0.0033, about one third of one per cent.
- 1The comparison supports its claim that sovereignty was never ceded or extinguished: a link held for sixty millennia cannot vanish in so short a span.
Key terms
- First Nations Voice
- A representative body enshrined in the Constitution, the first request of the Uluru Statement.
- Truth-Telling
- Public acknowledgement of colonial history, part of the Makarrata process the Statement proposes.
- Disablism
- Attitudes, policies and barriers that oppress people with disability, in Mays' account.
- Humanitarian Discourse
- Caring language about vulnerable people used to justify government control, as Silverstein analyses.
- Royal Commission
- A formal public inquiry, such as the one into institutional child sexual abuse announced in 2012.
- Mandatory Detention
- The compulsory holding of asylum seekers who arrive without visas, introduced in the 1990s.
Kevin07 to Today FAQ
What does the Uluru Statement ask for?
It calls for a constitutionally enshrined First Nations Voice and a Makarrata Commission to oversee agreements with governments and truth-telling about history. It grounds these requests in sovereignty it says has never been ceded or extinguished.
What does Mays mean by a disabling income support system?
She argues that disability pensions have narrowed the citizenship of people with disability since the 1908 Act, through tests that tied support to capacity for work: permanent incapacity in 1908, an 85 per cent test in 1947, and work-hour limits after 1991.
How does Silverstein connect refugee policy to settler colonialism?
She argues that the slogan of stopping boats so children do not drown builds on colonial ideas of governmental control over First Nations children. She notes that the Children Overboard affair and the Northern Territory Intervention used the same grammars of colonial control.
How did child sexual abuse become a public issue?
Swain argues that feminist activism in the 1970s and 1980s removed child sexual abuse from the realm of individual pathology and made it a public and political question. That shift gave survivors a language, and it led to the Royal Commission Julia Gillard announced on 12 November 2012.
What was the Children Overboard affair?
Silverstein describes how, in October 2001, the Howard government, through the Prime Minister and his defence minister, claimed asylum-seeker parents had thrown children overboard, a claim later exposed as a deliberate lie. She treats it as part of a discourse casting asylum-seeker parents as irresponsible.
What policy changes does Mays trace after 1991?
Labor's 1991 legislation created the Disability Support Pension for people able to work up to 30 hours a week. From 2006, anyone assessed as able to work 15 hours a week was moved to the lower Newstart Allowance, which Mays reads as a further tightening.
Assessment move
Map each of the four readings to its key term and one dated fact, then practise the claim, evidence and gap structure on Silverstein's argument. Add one sentence for each reading on what it adds to the course’s longer story. Since the Final Paper falls due in this week, use the readings as examples in your essay rather than as extra material to learn from scratch.
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