David Lee
David Lee is Associate Professor in the University of New South Wales, Canberra, National Archives of Australia Cabinet Historian, author of The Second Rush: Mining and the Transformation of Australia and co-editor of a book of official documents on Australia and the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1972.
Recent articles by David Lee
28 March 2025
Gove and the native title revolution
The High Court’s judgment in March 2025 in favour of the Gumatj people has reaffirmed the centrality of the Indigenous peoples of Gove in the Northern Territory in the native title revolution that was conceived in a case against mining company, Nabalco Ltd, in the 1960s and continued with the High Court’s Mabo and Wik judgements in the 1990s.
20 November 2024
Trump’s election supports the case for a Department of Trade and Resources
The geopolitical danger in which Australia finds itself after the election of Donald Trump reinforces an argument made by Paul Barrett. His was to re-establish a free-standing Department of Trade and mine is to combine trade and resources as they were between 1977 and 1983.
30 August 2024
Path not taken: the Petroleum and Minerals Authority at fifty
Speaking recently on the ABC, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz claimed that Australia was giving away its natural resources. This he found mind-boggling. Would a sovereign mining company have made a difference?
28 August 2024
Australia should promote authentic ‘collective security’ in the Indo-Pacific
In a recent article for the Washington Post on the militarisation of Australia’s north, the Minister for Defence, Richard Marles, said: We’re working together [with the United States] to deter future conflict and to provide for the collective security of the region in which we live.
29 July 2024
On Palestine, history shows the way: a comparison of Labor Foreign Policies
In handling the Israel-Palestine problem, the Albanese Government could learn much from how the Chifley Government navigated the Netherlands’ dispute with the Indonesian Republic in the 1940s.
6 January 2024
Iraq War Release should include records beyond the National Security Committee Records from 2003
What was the advice to Government from officials about the reliability of intelligence on the war?
1 January 2024
The War Power in Australia: Lessons from the Iraq War in 2003
The release of some of the cabinet documents from 2003 calls attention to how the war power is exercised in Australia.
18 August 2023
Australia, alliances and deterrence: AUKUS will not make us safer
By entering the AUKUS Partnership in 2021, Australia has undertaken to co-operate with the United States and the United Kingdom, two nuclear-weapon states, with objectives that include acquiring nuclear-powered submarines that would be armed with conventional weapons. This has the potential to weaken both the Treaty on theNon-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), by setting a damaging precedent for other states, and the Treaty of Rarotonga.