This is the text of a short presentation I gave at a gathering at Monash University on 14 September 2016. The occasion was the 10th Anniversary of COSI (the Centre for Organisational & Social Informatics – a flash name for a dynamic group of research academics who work in partnership with community groups on issues around records, […]
Svetlana Alexeviech didn’t make it to the Royal Commission
A brilliant essay given by Maria Tumarkin at the University of Melbourne on Wednesday 7 September 2016. A short version was published in The Conversation on Friday 9 September – reprinted here with permission. Among other things, Maria asked: “Have we outsourced the witnessing of child sexual abuse in Australia to the Royal Commission?” Some say yes. Others, […]
Ballarat’s Difficult History: Outcast Children
This is an updated version of a paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Australian Historical Association in Ballarat July 2016 Scene 1: 1956 I’m 18 and studying at the Ballarat Teachers’ College in Dana Street. It’s our weekly assembly. We all stand up to sing from our blue song-books: ‘Ballaarat’. A city built on […]
Child Sexual Abuse in Out-of-Home Care
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has recently released 55 submissions in response to their ‘Consultation Paper: Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Out-of-Home Care’ You can download and read the submissions here. This is my submission dated 11 March 2016. I became aware of the above Consultation Paper only […]
Our Side of the Story
As a guest blogger, I posted this on the Find & Connect website today. Other Care Leavers share with me their shock at some of what we find in our records. The language hits us between the eyes. Our counterparts in the nineteenth century were tagged by a battalion of adjectives: criminal or neglected, destitute, […]
Mismanaging Expectations: The dominance of sexual abuse at the royal commission
This is the final draft of my paper for the Biennial European Social Science History Conference of the International Institute of Social History to be held in Valencia, Spain 30 March to 2 April 2016. Read more about the Conference here. Given that there are several papers being presented on related issues, I will revise […]
Pell Faithful Rush to the Barricades Too Late
Jingle bells, Cardinal Pell. An orchestrated campaign has been mounted in belated defence of Cardinal George Pell who told the Child Abuse Royal Commission at the last minute that he was too ill to fly to Australia to give vital evidence (here). There was wide-spread skepticism since it was widely known that he had flown […]
Care Leavers Absent from Higher Education
This a revised item first posted in June 2015. It draws attention to an important article found in the Australian Journal of Education, May 14, 2015: A forgotten cohort? Including people from out-of-home care in Australian higher education policy, by Andrew Harvey, Lisa Andrewartha and Patricia McNamara. The Abstract reads: People from out-of-home care backgrounds are largely absent from Australian […]
Travel Makes You Tired But…
Not many posts in the past month. Just back from overseas. This is a light-hearted account of the trials of becoming tired and not always rational. Long distance travelling can make you tired and cranky. You need those brief moments of absurdity to keep you sane. §§§ On the plane, for instance, you fiddle and twiddle […]
Learning from Abbott’s Downfall
Tony Abbott never got it. The day he was toppled as Prime Minister, Tony Abbott looked confused and crushed. And in shock. His leadership had been suddenly snatched from him—and he did not understand why. He could not see that creating a macho government of socially-conservative white men and governing in the interests of a […]