Aboriginal assimilation Sir, In his recent article “The folly of Australia’s public intellectuals” (News Weekly, February 28, 2015), Dr Hal G.P. Colebatch comments on the absence in these intellectuals’ deliberations of figures indicating the numbers of Aboriginals who, before the advent of the Aboriginal Rights Movement in the 1960s, “successfully completed a Western education and secured employment”. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)…

While the Commonwealth government’s infrastructure development program proceeds at a snail’s pace, the Prime Minister Mr Tony Abbott has announced that Australia is likely to support China’s planned US$100 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Tony Abbott Mr Abbott’s move followed announcements by the UK, France, Germany and Italy that they will support the new bank. This has paved the way for Australia…

  A GREAT AND GLORIOUS ADVENTURE: A Military History of the Hundred Years War by Gordon Corrigan (London: Atlantic Books) Paperback: 320 pages ISBN: 9781848879270 Price: AUD$29.95   Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel   For those used to reading accounts of the two world wars, it is hard to imagine that Britain and France, which fought alongside each other in the 20th century,…

  DO YOU CALL THIS A LIFE? Blurred Boundaries in the Netherlands’ Right-to-Die Laws by Gerbert van Loenen (Ontario, Canada: Ross Lattner) Paperback: 208 pages ISBN: 9781897007280 Price: AUD$35.00   Reviewed by Paul Russell   “What do you want to do when you leave school?” A casual conversation starter I think I’ve probably had with each of my children at some point —…