AQ: Australian Quarterly

For over 90 years AQ: Australian Quarterly has been packing its pages with the debates that have shaped Australia and the world, tackling the big topics in science, politics and society. Grounded in evidence, yet written in a style accessible to everyone, AQ is unique in Australia’s publishing landscape, pushing back against the trends of subjective truth and media spin. If it matters to Australia then it matters to AQ.

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AQ: Australian Quarterly

Whose Public Interest? The Rights of Future Generations • For hundreds of thousands of years, the impact of humans on the planet was negligible. Then, in the space of only a handful of generations, we have irrevocably altered our world and its systems. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution – triple planetary crises that rightly focus our attention on the long-term environmental consequences of our decisions. Yet what of the generations to come - what should they expect to inherit from us?

Choice as the New, Contested Frontier: Personal Data and Targeted Advertising • Australia’s privacy protections have long been due for an overhaul. Drafted before the internet was even public, our 1988 Privacy Act was not built to handle the complex and complicated data flows that now define our digital ecosystem. Practices that have become toxic staples in the digital world, like the pernicious collection of metadata, aren’t even mentioned in the Privacy Act, let alone properly governed. It surprised no one when in December last year, our Attorney General, Mark Dreyfus called our privacy protections “out of date and not fit-for-purpose in our digital age.” Reform is clearly needed, and is coming.

Quarantine the Punchbowl, don’t tip it down the Sink: How Compulsory Savings could help fight Inflation • After years of slumber, inflation has returned with a vengeance. As Russian tanks rumbled across the Donbas in February 2022 and previously comatose economies barrelled out of lockdown, inflation stirred, then roared back to life, shocking politicians and central bankers out of complacency. Yet the blunt tools subsequently deployed by the Reserve Bank largely punished the wrong people and ultimately result in a less resilient and equitable society. It’s time to rethink the way we fight inflation.

Diversity & Inclusion: A Key to Better Health • Every 12 minutes someone in Australia dies from cardiovascular disease (CVD).1 As the leading cause of death, around 9% ($12.7 billion) of the total allocated expenditure in the Australian health system is attributed to CVD.2 Although greater investment into CVD research has contributed to a decline in the CVD death rate, there is substantial disparity in CVD knowledge, care, and health outcomes in certain demographic groups that have been under-represented in research, including women, and culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities. Consequently, our screening and diagnostic tools are not attuned to these groups, resulting in inequity in access to potentially life-saving healthcare.

Celebrating the AIPS at 90 years • The world was a very different place in 1932. One war was over and another would shortly be on the horizon. The Great Depression was scouring Western economies. Australia was still a relatively new country in search of its identity and place in the world.

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