Selected Videos

A viral history of the world

Pandemics change the course of history in strange and unpredictable ways.  An international panel of eminent historians joins Per Capita's Emma Dawson to look back at pandemics from the Black Death to Spanish flu to AIDS to draw lessons that might help guide us through the current crisis.

  • Featuring: Melbourne University's Prof Janet McCalman, Per Axelsson from University of Umea in northern Sweden and Linda Bryder from Auckland University.
Do we need Socialism to address the Climate Emergency with Professor Janet McCalman

Despite all the talk, the world is still rushing towards a climate catastrophe. Attempts to coax, regulate and incentivise the private sector to deliver a green economy have so far met with limited success. Can this approach ever work? Or do the state and the community now need to step in and impose their authority with bold and sweeping public programmes?

In the USA the cry has been raised for a Green New Deal and in the UK for a Green Industrial Revolution. Both are seen as part and parcel of an explicitly socialist platform. Does Australia need a similarly radical approach? How would that translate to Australia’s traditions and current state? Would it be a socialist programme? In this event we ask our speakers to address our questions about socialism through the lens of the climate emergency.

Professor Janet McCalman is developing, with Professor John Langmore, a proposal to the ALP for a Green Accord. John was MHR for Fraser in the Hawke-Keating government and the architect of the original Accord. Janet is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor at Melbourne University and a leading figure in Australian Fabians. She is the author of three award-winning books: Struggletown, Journeyings and Sex and Suffering.