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

Vaping in Australia • A conversation with Associate Professor Michelle Jongenelis

Regions Rising: The New Frontier • Banjo Paterson’s vivid, image-laden words in his famous poem, Clancy of the Overflow, described two vastly different worlds: the ‘dusty, dirty city’ and the bush, full of ‘sunlit plains’ and ‘everlasting stars’. There is no doubt which location the author preferred. For many at the time, and for the years proceeding, regional Australia was seen as a land of enormous potential, full of endless opportunities, unfathomable wealth, and rich in larger-than-life characters.

Good Policy is Not a Zero-Sum Game: Minister Mark Butler • Deputy Leader of the House, Mark Butler MP is no stranger to complex and politically-difficult policymaking. In his 17-year political career he’s managed hot-button portfolios from Climate Change and Water, to Social Inclusion and Homelessness.

Senator Anne Ruston • AQ sat down with Senator Anne Ruston, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care, before the budget to talk about the intersection of policy, health, and science. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Not Quite Out of the Cold: Resurgence, Retreat, and Resurfacing of Psychedelic Research • The very mention of the word ‘psychedelics’ garners an enormously emotive response. But how did that come about? As American pharmacologist, David Nichols rightly notes, psychedelics “may be the oldest class of psychopharmacological agents known to man.”1 Psychedelics and hallucinogens have accompanied spiritual, cultural, healing, and other practices around the world for millennia. Now the potential therapeutic properties are slowly overcoming Western social stigma – but the path from research to acceptance is far from simple.

Shortage or Surplus: Is it Worth Going to University? • The Final Report of the Australian Universities Accord was published, with considerable publicity, in February 2024. The headline recommendation is that higher education enrolments in Australia should more than double to 1.8 million in 2050 if we are to avoid shortages in labour market demands for skills. This means that the highly educated would amount to some 55 percent of total employment in 2052, compared to 36 percent in 2022.

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