AQ: Australian Quarterly

For over 85 years AQ: Australian Quarterly has been packing its pages with the country’s most distinguished and passionate thinkers, tackling the big issues in science, politics and society. With longer-style articles written by those at the forefront of the debates, AQ is unique in bridging the gap between journal and magazine, combining the compelling writing of a glossy with the intellectual rigour of a journal. If it matters to Australia then it matters to AQ.

How to subscribe • Subscribe and pay online at www.aips.net.au/aq-magazine/subscribe

A WORD

AQ: Australian Quarterly

NOTES FOR CONTRIBUTORS

Social Grooming: Algorithms mis/shaping political discourse for young voters • In 2021, the Morrison Government went head-to-head with Big Tech over the proposed New Media Bargaining Code. The episode was as illuminating as it was horrifying, as social media corporations sought to use their influence to bully the Government – with the Australian people caught in the middle.

Australia’s U-turn: The past and future of Australia’s COVID-19 response • Hospitals have been straining and health care workers are still at breaking point, as we recover from a winter wave of Covid transmission. Through the first two years of the pandemic Australia’s response was lauded overseas, particularly when death rates soared in dozens of countries that had been unable, or unwilling, to pursue a “Covid-zero” approach. Now the contrast is stark as we, and a sequence of countries that had previously eliminated local transmission, come to terms with our future of ‘living with the virus’. Yet questions remain: Was our success good luck or good management? Was it the best approach? Was it all worth it? Where to next?

Budget Repair? Better to repair your thinking instead • It’s not a good look when your first statement as Treasurer contains a glaring factual error. In his Ministerial Statement on the Economy on July 28th, Treasurer Jim Chalmers stated that “the debt burden left to us” is “the highest level as a share of the economy since the aftermath of the Second World War”. Oh no it isn’t!

From Little Things, Big Things Grow: Fungi, Security, and the Future of Food • Global conflicts, devastating fires, destructive flooding, COVID-affected supply-chains, lettuce shortages… the fragility of our food security has been brought into sharp relief recently. When faced with bare supermarket shelves, your first thought is probably not of soil-dwelling fungi. Yet our soil ecosystems are one of the facets in this system that is fundamental to supporting the future of food and our access to it.

FROM THE ARCHIVE The Control of Broadcasting • "The Australian system of broadcasting is the best in the world," declared Mr. E. T. Fisk, the Chairman of Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia), Limited, the other day. This diffident attitude is the rule among those who discuss the relative merits of national broadcasting systems. They invariably come to the conclusion that their own is clearly the best, and all different systems have very serious defects.

REFERENCES

From Little Things, Big Things Grow: Fungi, Security, and the Future of Food

Budget Repair? Better to repair your thinking instead

Social Grooming: Algorithms mis/shaping political discourse for young voters

Australia’s U-turn: The past and future of Australia’s COVID-19 response