News briefs

Issue 

Slave labour in ACT schools

CANBERRA — The ACT government has tendered to the federal government for funds to "employ" 140 unemployed people under the work for the dole scheme in ACT primary schools next year. The Australian Education Union and ACT Parents and Citizens were not consulted. Both organisations have expressed concern about unpaid and untrained people doing the work of properly paid and trained workers. There are also other security and safety issues for both workers and students.

Conference to link past and present

SYDNEY — Land rights, national identities, the environment and sexuality are among topics to be covered at the biennial conference of the Australian Historical Association, to be held at Sydney University on July 6-10.

The conference, expected to attract around 400 delegates, will feature a session on historians and native title. One specialist stream will examine political culture, including Australian citizenship, the Cold War and the "image of the politician". Another will consider the social history of medicine, and discussions on risk and epidemics, psychiatry and sexuality.

The conference will scrutinise the discipline of history itself. Keynote speakers include Professor Theodore Zeldin, from Oxford University, who will present a lecture titled "What have historians in common with therapists, politicians, and business people?". On July 6, Zeldin will launch a new book, Deadly Dreams, by Sydney University Chinese history specialist Dr John Wong, on the origins of the second Anglo-Chinese war, known as the Arrow War.

Other keynote speakers include Mrinalini Sinha, Yale feminist historian Nancy Cott and Macquarie University historian Jill Roe. For more information, phone Jill Levenberg on 9351 2860.

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