PhD / When the problem of young people using illegal drugs for recreation emerged in New South Wales in the 1960s drug education was promoted by governments and experts as a humane alternative to policing. It developed during the 1970s and 1980s as the main hope for preventing drug problems amongst young people in the future. By the 1990s drug policy experts, like their temperance forbears, had become disillusioned with drug education, turning to legislative action for the prevention of alcohol and other drug problems. However, politicians and the community still believed that education was the best solution. Education Departments, reluctant to expose schools to public controversy, met minimal requirements. This thesis examines the ideas about drugs, education and youth that influenced the construction and implementation of policies about drug education in New South Wales between 1965 and 1999. It also explores the processes that resulted in the defining of drug problems and beliefs about solutions, identifying their contribution to policy and the way in which this policy was implemented. The thesis argues that the development of drug education over the last fifty years has been marked by three main cycles of moral panic about youth drug use. It finds that each panic was triggered by the discovery of the use of a new illegal substance by a youth subculture. Panics continued, however, because of the tension between two competing notions of young people’s drug use. In the traditional dominant view ‘drug’ meant illegal drugs, young people’s recreational drug use was considered to be qualitatively different to that of adults, and illegal drugs were the most serious and concerning problem. In the newer alternative ‘public health’ view which began developing in the 1960s, illicit drug use was constructed as part of normal experimentation, alcohol, tobacco and prescribed medicines were all drugs, and those who developed problems with their use were sick, not bad. These public health principles were formulated in policy documents on many occasions. The cycles of drug panic were often an expression of anxiety about the new approach and they had the effect of reasserting the dominant view. The thesis also finds that the most significant difference between the two discourses lies in the way that alcohol is defined, either as a relatively harmless beverage or as a drug that is a major cause of harm. Public health experts have concluded that alcohol poses a much greater threat to the health and safety of young people than illegal drugs. However, parents, many politicians and members of the general community have believed for the last fifty years that alcohol is relatively safe. Successive governments have been influenced by the economic power of the alcohol industry to support the latter view. Thus the role of alcohol and its importance to the economy in Australian society is a significant hindrance in reconciling opposing views of the drug problem and developing effective drug education. The thesis concludes that well justified drug education programs have not been implemented fully because the rational approaches to drug education developed by experts have not been supported by the dominant discourse about the drug problem. Politicians have used drug education as a populist strategy to placate fear but the actual programs that have been developed attempt to inform young people and the community about the harms and benefits of all drugs. When young people take up the use of a new mood altering drug, the rational approach developed by public health experts provokes intense anxiety in the community and the idea that legal substances such as alcohol, tobacco and prescribed drugs can cause serious harm to young people is rejected in favour of an approach that emphasizes the danger of illegal drug use.

PhD / When the problem of young people using illegal drugs for recreation emerged in New South Wales in the 1960s drug education was promoted by governments and experts as a humane alternative to policing. It developed during the 1970s and 1980s as the main hope for preventing drug problems amongst young people in the future. By the 1990s drug policy experts, like their temperance forbears, had become disillusioned with drug education, turning to legislative action for the prevention of alcohol and other drug problems. However, politicians and the community still believed that education was the best solution. Education Departments, reluctant to expose schools to public controversy, met minimal requirements. This thesis examines the ideas about drugs, education and youth that influenced the construction and implementation of policies about drug education in New South Wales between 1965 and 1999. It also explores the processes that resulted in the defining of drug problems and beliefs about solutions, identifying their contribution to policy and the way in which this policy was implemented. The thesis argues that the development of drug education over the last fifty years has been marked by three main cycles of moral panic about youth drug use. It finds that each panic was triggered by the discovery of the use of a new illegal substance by a youth subculture. Panics continued, however, because of the tension between two competing notions of young people’s drug use. In the traditional dominant view ‘drug’ meant illegal drugs, young people’s recreational drug use was considered to be qualitatively different to that of adults, and illegal drugs were the most serious and concerning problem. In the newer alternative ‘public health’ view which began developing in the 1960s, illicit drug use was constructed as part of normal experimentation, alcohol, tobacco and prescribed medicines were all drugs, and those who developed problems with their use were sick, not bad. These public health principles were formulated in policy documents on many occasions. The cycles of drug panic were often an expression of anxiety about the new approach and they had the effect of reasserting the dominant view. The thesis also finds that the most significant difference between the two discourses lies in the way that alcohol is defined, either as a relatively harmless beverage or as a drug that is a major cause of harm. Public health experts have concluded that alcohol poses a much greater threat to the health and safety of young people than illegal drugs. However, parents, many politicians and members of the general community have believed for the last fifty years that alcohol is relatively safe. Successive governments have been influenced by the economic power of the alcohol industry to support the latter view. Thus the role of alcohol and its importance to the economy in Australian society is a significant hindrance in reconciling opposing views of the drug problem and developing effective drug education. The thesis concludes that well justified drug education programs have not been implemented fully because the rational approaches to drug education developed by experts have not been supported by the dominant discourse about the drug problem. Politicians have used drug education as a populist strategy to placate fear but the actual programs that have been developed attempt to inform young people and the community about the harms and benefits of all drugs. When young people take up the use of a new mood altering drug, the rational approach developed by public health experts provokes intense anxiety in the community and the idea that legal substances such as alcohol, tobacco and prescribed drugs can cause serious harm to young people is rejected in favour of an approach that emphasizes the danger of illegal drug use.

In the last three decades of the nineteenth century British capital played a major part in Australian economic development. The flow of capital to the Australian colonies comprised government borrowing on the one hand, and private borrowing by companies on the other. The present study concerns the flow of capital to the private sector of the Australian economy, most which reached the colonies through the medium of finance companies from the mid 'seventies to 1891. The crux of the study are the new estimates of the annual flow of British capital to the private sector of the Australian economy, excluding mining activity (for which estimates are available), in the 'seventies, 'eighties and 'nineties. Capital reached the colonies through a group of powerful finance companies which employed British capital in the Australian pastoral industry. These companies raised most of their funds in Britain in two ways: first, by issuing short-term debenture bonds, and second, by raising deposits. Debentures were issued by pastoral mortgage and investment companies, and deposits were collected by Australian banks. As the available estimates of this flow of capital are wholly inadequate, the present study contributes a new annual series of Australian company borrowing which was calculated directly from balance-sheets and other data, and not by taking a residual of the balance of payments. In addition, a calculation was made, from 1881 to 1891, on an annual basis, of the total burden of indebtedness of the Australian colonies accruing from government borrowing and this form of company borrowing.

The Master of Fine Art document examines the inception of Matter Painting as it occurred in Europe and it's following in Australia. This document recalls the history and process of this late assimilation through examining the development of abstraction in Australia and the local receptiveness of influence from abroad. Within a climate of increased immigration and international awareness, Matter Painting was encountered by an initiated few. This history firstly begins with practitioners that were not in locale but rather overseas who were in close proximity to the centre of such avant-garde. It is not until the artist and critic Elwyn Lynn returns from his seminal overseas travels in 1959 and his first showing of "Matter" painting's in 1960 that Matter Painting in Australia gathered momentum. Discussed within this document is the history of this movement, the impact that it had on local practitioners and the relevance that it has played within my practice.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2001. / Title from title screen (viewed Apr. 24, 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Dept. of History, Faculty of Arts. Degree awarded 2001; thesis submitted 2000. Includes bibliography and of tables of cases. Also available in print form.

Despite the considerable significance of publicly funded education in the making of Australian society, state school histories are few in number. In comparison, most corporate and private schools have cemented their sense of community and tradition through full-length publications. This history attempts to redress this imbalance. It is an important social history because this school, Mac.Robertson Girls' High School can trace its origins back to 1905, to the very beginnings of state secondary education when the Melbourne Continuation School (MCS), later Melbourne High School (MHS) and Melbourne Girls' high School (MGHS) was established. Since it is now recognised that there are substantial state, regional and other differences between schools and their local communities, studies of individual schools are needed to underpin more general overviews of particular issues. This history, then, has wider significance: it traces strands of the development of girls' education in Victoria, thus examining the significance and dynamics of single-sex schooling, the education of girls more generally, and, importantly, girls' own experiences (and memories of experiences) of secondary schooling, as well as the meaning they made of those experiences. 'Girls, Education and Empowerment: A History of The Mac.Robertson Girls' High School 1905-2005', departs from traditional models of school history writing that tend to focus on the decision-makers and bureaucrats in education as well as documenting the most 'successful' former students who have made their mark in the world. Drawing on numerous narrative sources and documentary evidence, this history is organised thematically to contextualise and examine what is was like, and meant, to be a girl at this school (Melbourne Continuation School 1905-12; Melbourne High School 1912-27; Melbourne Girls' High School 1927-34, and Mac.Robertson Girls' High School from 1934) during a century of immense social, economic, political and educational change.