Academic literature on the topic 'Censorship Australia History 20th century'

In the 1940s, the totalitarian occupying regimes of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union implemented the strictest control and ideological guidance of intellectual and spiritual life of all time in Estonia. Essentially, the mechanisms and results of control are known. Cultural life was subjected to strict pre-censorship and post-publication censorship, and in the Soviet era also to thematic dictation. The intellectual and spiritual resistance of Estonians in those years, in other words their refusal to accept the ruling ideology, has been studied very little. The most widespread way of putting up intellectual and spiritual resistance was to remain silent, in other words to avoid creating works that were agreeable to the authorities. Selective silence, that is the selection of one’s points of emphasis, and splitting, in other words writing for oneself works that one keeps in one’s drawer while at the same time writing for publication in print, are also placed in this category. Recording actual history in diaries through the eyes of contemporaries of events, reading intellectually and spiritually enjoyable literature, and other such actions were ways of putting up intellectual and spiritual resistance. The main objective of this study is to ascertain in historical context the attempts to put up intellectual and spiritual resistance in the comedies from the 1940s by Hugo Raudsepp (1883–1952), one of the most outstanding Estonian playwrights of the 20th century. Ideologically speaking, dramatic literature was clearly one of the most vulnerable branches of literature. It was created for public presentation in theatres, after all, for which reason authors had to be particularly careful in their wording. On the other hand, plays provided both authors and directors with opportunities to conceal messages between the lines. For this reason, theatre became exceedingly popular in Estonia by the final decades of the Soviet era. The ridicule and mocking of the Soviet regime were especially enjoyed. The subjugation of Estonian intellectual and spiritual life to the ideological requirements of the occupying regime was launched at the time of pre-war Stalinism (1940–1941). Its aim was to rear Soviet-minded people who would help to justify, fortify and enhance the Soviet regime. The systematic control of the activities of creative persons and the working out of dictates and regulations were nevertheless not yet completed during the first year of Soviet rule. Many outstanding cultural figures remained silent or earned a living by translating texts. At that time, Hugo Raudsepp wrote the non-political novel Viimne eurooplane [The Last European], which is noteworthy to this day, while his plays from the period of independent Estonian statehood were not staged in theatres. Starting with the German occupation (1941–1944), the point of departure for Hugo Raudsepp was writing between the lines in his comedies in order to get both readers and theatregoers to think and to give them strength of soul. In 1943, he wrote the comedy Vaheliku vapustused [Interspatial Jolts], which has later been styled as a masterpiece. He concealed numerous signs between the lines of this play referring to the fate of a small people, in other words Estonia, between its great neighbouring powers the Soviet Union and Germany. Performances of this play were soon banned. Performances in theatres of all other plays by Hugo Raudsepp were similarly banned, with one exception. During post-war Stalinism in 1944–51, the sovietisation of Estonian cultural life resumed. Hugo Raudsepp did not initially write on topical Soviet themes, rather he sought subject matter from earlier times. His first play from that period entitled Rotid [Rats] (1946) was about the German occupation during the Second World War and it ridiculed the occupying Germans. Raudsepp also skilfully wove messages supporting Estonian cultural identity into the play. The play was staged in the Estonia Theatre but was soon banned. Raudsepp’s second play from that period, Tagatipu Tiisenoosen (1946), earned first prize at the state comedy competition in that same year. The action in the play was set in the period of Estonian National Awakening at the end of the 19th century. It ridiculed Baltic Germans and the behaviour of parvenu Estonians. Similarly to his previous play, he demonstrated nationalist mentality in this comedy by way of nationalist songs. It is noteworthy that by the summer of 1947, Tagatipu Tiisenoosen had also reached expatriate Estonians and it was staged with an altered title as the only Stalinist- era play from Soviet Estonia in Canada (1952), Australia (1954) and Sweden (1956). The thematic precepts imposed on Estonian writers and the mechanism for ensuring that those precepts were followed became even stricter starting in 1947. Raudsepp wrote his next 7 plays on required Soviet subject matter: post-war land reform (Tillereinu peremehed [The Owners of Tillereinu], 1947), monetary reform (Noorsulane Ilmar [Ilmar the Young Farmhand], 1948), kolkhozes (Küpsuseksam [Matriculation Exam] and Lasteaed [Kindergarten], 1949, Mineviku köidikuis [In the Fetters of the Past] (1950) and his so-called Viimane näidend [Last Play], 1950 or 1951), and the beginning of the Soviet regime in Estonia in 1940 (Pööripäevad Kikerpillis [Solstices in Kikerpill], 1949). Hugo Raudsepp skilfully wove words of wisdom for Estonians on surviving under foreign rule through the mouths of his characters, or discreetly laughed about Soviet reality in a way that the censors did not grasp. Post-war cultural policy culminated with the 8th Plenum of the Estonian Communist (Bolshevist) Party (EC(B)P) Central Committee on 21–26 March 1950, where among other things, the EC(B)P Central Committee Bureau was accused of allowing the exaltation of the superiority of Western European science and culture. Cultural figures were branded bourgeois nationalists and they faced serious ordeals. The fate of the great figure of Estonian dramatic literature was very harsh. Hugo Raudsepp was depicted as a ‘fascist henchman’ in 1950. He was expelled from the Estonian Writers’ Union and was deprived of his personal pension. He was arrested on 11 May 1951. Opposition to the Soviet regime was stressed in the charges presented to him. His play Vaheliku vapustused, which the German occupying regime had banned, and his only play that was allowed at that time, Lipud tormis [Flags in the Storm], were named as the primary evidence supporting the charges. Hugo Raudsepp was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in the autumn of 1951. He hoped to the last possible moment that he would be allowed to serve his sentence in Estonia. Unfortunately, on 18 February 1952 he was sent by train from Tallinn to Narva and on 19 February on to Leningrad. From there his journey took him to Vjatka, Kirov and finally Irkutsk oblast. This great man’s health was poor, and he soon died on 15 September 1952. Very few new literary works appeared in the 1940s. The historical nadir is altogether seen in post-war book production in the era of Stalinism. Estonian theatre was similarly in a most difficult situation due to censorship, shortage of repertoire, scarcity of funding, and layoffs and sackings of theatre personnel. Nowadays the survival of theatre at the time, regardless of difficult times, is appreciated, and actors are recognised for preserving Estonian identity and uniting the people. Hugo Raudsepp’s role as a playwright in supporting intellectual and spiritual resistance to foreign authorities has to be recognised on the basis of his occupation-era comedies. Hugo Raudsepp was one of the most productive authors of his day, writing a total of 11 plays in 1943–51. According to the assessment of scholars of literature, he never once rose with these works to the leading-edge level of his previous works. It was impossible to create masterpieces that would become classics in that time of strict ideological precepts and the monitoring of their observance. Taking into consideration the extremely restricted creative conditions, his works were still masterpieces of their time. As Hugo Raudsepp’s oeuvre demonstrates, spirit still managed to cleverly trump power regardless of censorship and official precepts. The denunciation of Stalin’s personality cult in 1956 once again opened the door to the theatre for Hugo Raudsepp’s best comedies from Estonia’s era of independent statehood. The witticism and laughter of Hugo Raudsepp’s comedies gave people renewed strength of soul.

The article presents information on the International scientific conference XIX Pavlenkov Readings held on 13-15 October, 2015 in the National Library of Russia, traditionally considering the history of book publishing in pre-revolutionary Russia of the 19th - early 20th century. The conference was devoted to I. Frolova - the historian-bibliognost, a quarter of century having led the Sector of bibliology of the National Library of Russia. At the plenary session and three sections (“History of publishing, History of book collections and rare books”, “History of censorship”) there were highlighted various aspects of book culture history of the Russian Empire: issues of publishing, bookselling, history of censorship, libraries, readership, bibliophilism, and book publishing in the province. Conference

The article deals with review of the history of Russian librarianship in Australia. The role of libraries in preservation of Russian language in the Russian diaspora and national identity in the being in the strange cultural space is defined.

This article investigates the development of public relations in Australia and addresses calls to reconceptualise Australian public relations history. It presents the findings from an analysis of newspaper articles and industry newsletters in the 1940s and 1950s. These findings confirm the term public relations was in common use in Australia earlier than is widely accepted and not confined to either military information campaigns during the war or the corporate sector in the post-war period, but was used by government and public institutions and had increasing prominence through industry associations in the manufacturing sector and in social justice and advocacy campaigns. The study highlights four themes – war and post-war work, non-profit public relations, gender, and media and related industries – that enable new perspectives on Australian public relations history and historiography to be developed.

The musical creation of Serbian composers is not well known in the European area, primarily due to censorship in the first half of the 20th century when music influenced by European orientations was considered capitalist and was banned on the one hand, and on the other hand due to the fact that most of the works are written in Cyrillic and thus did not reach the European research circuit. It should be mentioned that the course of development of music history in Europe, with its periodization into stages of Baroque, Classicism, Romanticism, Impressionism, Expressionism, Neoclassicism, Avant-garde, and Postmodernism, was not applied to music in Serbia. However, all these styles will be found in the musical creations of Serbian composers in the period from the end of the 19th century and during the 20th century.

This article presents how the political changes in Bulgaria after 1989 have infl uenced the interpretation of 20th century history. The emergence of the new censorship is traced through the introduction of a new canon for presenting the past. Three decades ago, Bulgaria began its transition from Soviet-type state socialism to political democracy. For historians, this meant removing political and ideological censorship. Initially, this freedom gave historians the chance to upgrade historical knowledge with hidden facts that were inconvenient for the BCP government. Soon, however, new political parties came to power and began to impose their political version of history. This meant re- moving facts related to the history of the communist movement and anti-fascism in Bulgaria. The attempts at rewriting history are especially visible in the presentation of the socialist period. The political intervention began with the renaming of streets, towns, and institutions. Names associated with the anti-fascist resistance and Russian and Soviet history were removed. Instead, names from the time when Bulgaria was part of the Tripartite Pact were restored. The modern political censorship is most evident in the rewriting of history textbooks. The new curricula introduced a mandatory positive presentation of the history of the Third Bulgarian Kingdom. The actions of the Communists had to be presented as terrorist, and the entire post-war government was defi ned as totalitarian. Instead of socialism, we should use the term “communism”. In 2019, when approving the new history textbooks for high schools, right-wing non-governmental organizations intervened and, as a result, facts about the socio-economic development of the country in the socialist period were removed.

The development of Australian biogeographical regionalisation since 1858 has been driven by colonial 19th-centuryexploration and by the late 20th-century biodiversity crisis. The intervening years reduced existing large scaleregionalisation into smaller taxon specific areas of vegetation or endemism. However, large scale biotic biogeographicalregionalisation was rediscovered during multi-disciplinary meetings and conferences, sparking short-term revivals whichhave ended in constant revisions at smaller and smaller taxonomic scales. In 1995 and 1998, the Interim BiogeographicRegionalisation for Australia and the Integrated Marine and Coastal Regionalisation of Australia, AustralianCommonwealth funded initiatives in order to “identify appropriate regionalisations to assess and plan for the protectionof biological diversity”, have respectively replaced 140 years of Australian biogeographical regionalisation schemes. Thispaper looks at the rise and slow demise of biogeographical regionalisation in Australia in light of a fractured taxonomic biogeographical community.

Film and Religion in 20th Century Europa The article focuses on the conflict zones and compromises of the ambivalent relationship which developed between film and religion in Europe. European film production was more reluctant than Hollywood to treat Biblical themes; on the other hand, the Christian Churches oscillated between damning, controlling and producing their own films. Their censorship and criticism were frequently the occasion of stormy internal debates about Church strategy toward the decline of traditional religiosity. Subjects such as the position and role of the pastor in his congregation and the lives of the saints were made into films; specific religious themes, however, remained rare. For the historian, these films offer symptomatic indicators of sensitivities, complex problems and uncertainties concerning religious life at the time.

This thesis explores the neglected history of Australian Catholic social welfare, focusing on the period, 1920-85. Central to this study is a comparative analysis of diocesan welfare bureaux (Centacare), especially the Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide agencies. Starting with the origins of professional welfare at local levels, this thesis shows the growth in Catholic welfare services across Australia. The significant transition from voluntary to professional Catholic welfare in Australia is a key theme. Lay trained women inspired the transformation in the church???s welfare services. Prepared predominantly by their American training, these women devoted their lives to fostering social work in the Church and within the broader community. The women demonstrated vision and tenacity in introducing new policies and practices across the disparate and unco-ordinated Australian Catholic welfare sector. Their determination challenged the status quo, especially the church???s preference for institutionalisation of children, though they packaged their reforms with compassion and pragmatism. Trained social workers offered specialised guidance though such efforts were often not appreciated before the 1960s. New approaches to welfare and the co-ordination of services attracted varying degrees of resistance and opposition from traditional Catholic charity providers: religious orders and the voluntary-based St Vincent de Paul Society (SVdP). For much of the period under review diocesan bureaux experienced close scrutiny from their ordinaries (bishops), regular financial difficulties, and competition from other church-based charities for status and funding. Following the lead of lay women, clerics such as Bishop Algy Thomas, Monsignor Frank McCosker and Fr Peter Phibbs (Sydney); Bishop Eric Perkins (Melbourne), Frs Terry Holland and Luke Roberts (Adelaide), consolidated Catholic social welfare. For four decades an unprecedented Sydney-Melbourne partnership between McCosker and Perkins had a major impact on Catholic social policy, through peak bodies such as the National Catholic Welfare Committee and its successor the Australian Catholic Social Welfare Commission. The intersection between church and state is examined in terms of welfare policies and state aid for service delivery. Peak bodies secured state aid for the church???s welfare agencies, which, given insufficient church funding proved crucial by the mid 1980s.

El Salvador, the smallest and the most densely populated state in the region of Central America, was gripped by a civil war in the 1980s that resulted in the exodus of more than a million people. This thesis explores the causes that led to the exodus. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part contains a historical and theoretical analysis of El Salvador from the time of conquest until the 1980s. An examination of the historical background of the socio-economic and political conflict in El Salvador during this period sets the scene for an account of the mass exodus of Salvadorans in the 1980s. The second part of the thesis involves a qualitative study of Salvadoran refugees, which concentrates on their experiences before and after arriving in Australia. The study explores both the reasons for the Salvadorans’ becoming refugees and their resettlement in Melbourne. In an effort to explain some of the reasons for the socio-economic and political conflict in El Salvador in the 1980s, some concepts and ideas from different theoretical perspectives are utilized: modernisation theory, world-systems theory, dependency theory, elite theory, Foco theory of revolution and economic rationalism. The historical account covers the period from the expansion of the European world economy in the 16th century up to the political conflict of the 1980s. When the Salvadorans began to arrive in Melbourne, the micro-economic agenda in Australia was based on economic rationalism. This shifted the focus away from the state and onto a market-based approach that emphasised vigorous competition and fore grounded a non-collective social framework. The changes to policies in the welfare and immigration areas resulting from this shift are examined for their impact on the resettlement experiences of Salvadoran refugees. The United States foreign policy is also delineated because of the impact it had on the political, economic and social situation in El Salvador. The thesis focused on the time-period from the 1823 Monroe Doctrine to the era of the Cold War of ‘containment of communism’. The Catholic Church has also played a major influence in the political, social and religious life of Salvadorans. The changes that occurred in the post-1965 renewal of the Catholic Church were influential in the political struggles in El Salvador. The second part of the thesis involves a qualitative research study of a small group of 14 Salvadoran refugees. Participants were selected from different professional, educational and socioeconomic backgrounds. The study examines their flight from El Salvador, their arrival in Australia and their long-term experiences of resettlement. Tracking the experiences of refugees over a considerable period of time has seldom been the focus of a research study in Australia. The Salvadorans have been under-researched and no longitudinal studies have been conducted. The Salvadorans who took part in the study became refugees for diverse reasons ranging from political/religious reasons to random repression but certainly not for economic reasons. Their past experiences have influenced their resettlement in Australia and their attempts to build their lives anew have been fraught with difficulties. The difficulties in acquiring a working knowledge of the English language have often led to a downgrading in their professional and employment qualifications, isolation from the mainstream community and the experience of loneliness for the older generation. In addition, many of the participants still experience fear both in Australia and in their home country when they return for a visit. The findings indicate that the provision of extra services, such as counselling, could facilitate their resettlement and integration into Australian society.

[Truncated abstract] This thesis offers a re-contextualisation of multiculturalism and immigration in Australia in the 1970s and 80s in relation to crucial and progressive shifts in gender and sexuality. It provides new ways of examining issues of belonging and cultural citizenship in this field of inquiry, within an Australian context. The thesis explores the role sexuality played in creating a framework through which anxieties about immigration and multiculturalism manifested. It considers how debates about gender and sexuality provided fuel to concerns about ethnic diversity and breaches of the 'cultural' borders of Australia. I have chosen three significant historical moments in which anxieties around events relating to immigration/multiculturalism were most heightened: these are the beginning of the 'official' policy of multiculturalism in Australia in 1973; the arrival of large numbers of Vietnamese refugees as a consequence of the Vietnam War in 1979; and 1984, a year in which the furore over the alleged 'Asianisation' of Australia reached a peak. In these years, multiple and recurring representations served to recreate norms as applicable to the white heterosexual family, not only as a commentary and prescriptive device for migrants, but as a means of reinforcing 'Australianness' itself. A focus on the body as a border/site of belonging and in turn, crucially, its relationship to the heterosexual nuclear family as a marker of 'cultural citizenship', lies at the heart of this exploration. Normative ideas of gender and sexuality, I demonstrate, were integral in informing the ambivalence about multiculturalism and ethnic diversity in Australia. Indeed, for each of these years I examine how the discourses of gender and sexuality, evident for example in parliamentary debates such as that relating to the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, were intricately tied to ongoing concerns regarding growing non-white ethnicity in Australia, and indeed, enabled it. ... In pursuing this contribution, the work draws critically upon recent innovative interdisciplinary scholarship in the field of sexuality and immigration, and draws upon a broad range of sources to inform a comprehensive and complex examination of these issues. Sources employed include the major newspapers and periodicals of the time, Parliamentary debates from the Commonwealth House of Representatives, Parliamentary Committee findings and publications, speeches and polemics, and relevant legislation. This inquiry is an interrogation of a key methodological question: can sexuality, in its workings through ethnicity and 'race', be used as a primary tool of analysis in discussing how whiteness and 'Australianness' reconfigured itself through normative heteropatriarchy in an era that claimed to champion and celebrate difference? How and why did ambiguities concerning 'Australianness' prevail, concurrent with progressive and generally politically benign periods of Australian multiculturalism? The thesis argues that sexuality – through the construction of the 'good white hetero-patriarchal family' – both informed, and enabled, the endurance of anxieties around non-white ethnicity in Australia.

This thesis examines the constraints and options inherent in placing feminist demands on the state, the limits of such interventions, and the subjective, intimate understandings of feminism among agents who have aimed to change the state from within. First, I describe the central element of a

This thesis seeks to tell the story of the evolution of ordained ministry in the Christian Church, with an emphasis on the work of the ministry in the Anglican Church of Western Australia since the arrival of the first settlers in 1829. After a brief look at the early days, the focus is on the efforts to recruit ordination candidates in Western Australia during the terms of each of the six Archbishops of Perth from 1914 up to the present time. An integral part of the narrative is the histories of the Perth Clergy Training College, later renamed St John's College, from 1899 to 1929 and John Wollaston Theological College, which has served varying roles from 1957 to the present time. Particular attention is given to the period 1972 to 1981, when Wollaston was home to the Interim Course for candidates who, in those years, were sent interstate for their primary theological education. They returned to Perth for a year's training and reflection in pastoral ministry before being ordained and appointed to parishes. The narrative relates how, with the exception of Archbishop Le Fanu, the Archbishops believed that there should be an ordination training programme in Western Australia. The first and third Archbishops believed that the priority was for ordinands to have a liberal education at University, so they could hold their own, as it were, with the leaders of other professions in the community. Archbishop Carnley, in particular, believed that the teaching of theology snould be university based, because it was a fundamental discipline. And so we follow the story to the present time when theological education is based at Murdoch University and is taught in an ecumenical setting with each participating church conducting its own programmes in the areas of pastoral care and ministry formation. The total process for the training of clergy presently in vogue is one in which the Church in Western Australia should have justifiable pride, yet the study does suggest that there are some areas that Church leaders might well consider ripe for further development.

Doctor of Philosophy
The structure of this study of William Liu will closely reflect his ideas and the major historical influences in his life, and will span the period from 1893 through ninety years spent mainly in Sydney, ending in 1983, the year before the beginning of the attack on multiculturalism launched by the historian Geoffrey Blainey. The memorialisation of Liu in the post-Blainey “immigration debate” period will then be considered. The study will also reflect the changes in protest against racially discriminatory immigration policies in Australia, as Liu moved from a period in which his was an almost isolated critique to one in which he was able to embrace the ever-widening group of people opposed to the ‘White Australia Policy’. This process has not been fully examined, perhaps due to the fact that the protest often appeared to have little impact upon policy. But the way in which Liu and other protestors expressed their view of what Australia should be and how the ‘White Australia Policy’ affected this vision sheds a great deal of light on these periods in Australian history. The structure of this thesis around Liu’s life, beginning with a period in which the ‘White Australia Policy’ was widely accepted, and ending in a period in which multiculturalism was entrenched as official policy, emphasises the cultural shift which was brought about by decades of protest against the Anglo-conformist model of Australian identity

Feminist and social historians have long been interested in that particularly female ability to become pregnant and bear children. A significant body of historiography has challenged the notion that pregnancy and childbirth considered to be the acceptable and 'appropriate' roles for women for most of the twentieth century in Australia - have always been welcomed, rewarding and always fulfilling events in women's lives. Several historians have also begun the process of enlarging our knowledge of the changing cultural attitudes towards bereavement in Australia and the eschewing of the public expression of sorrow following the two World Wars; a significant contribution to scholarship which underscores the changing attitudes towards perinatal loss. It is estimated that one in four women lose a pregnancy to miscarriage, and two in one hundred late pregnancies result in stillbirth in contemporary Australia. Miscarriage, stillbirth and neonatal death are today considered by psychologists and social workers, amongst others, as potentially significant events in many women's lives, yet have received little or passing attention in historical scholarship concerned with pregnancy and motherhood. As such, this study focuses on pregnancy loss: the meaning it has been given by various groups at different times in Australia's past, and how some Australian women have made sense of their own experience of miscarriage, stillbirth or neonatal death within particular social and historical contexts. Pregnancy loss has been understood in a range of ways by different groups over the past 100 years. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when alarm was mounting over the declining birth rate, pregnancy loss was termed 'foetal wastage' by eugenicists and medical practitioners, and was seen in abstract terms as the loss of necessary future Australian citizens. By the 1970s, however, with the advent of support groups such as SANDS (Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Support) miscarriage and stillbirth were increasingly seen as the devastating loss of an individual baby, while the mother was seen as someone in need of emotional and other support. With the advent of new prenatal screening technologies in the late twentieth century, there has been a return of the idea of maternal responsibility for producing a 'successful' outcome. This project seeks to critically examines the wide range of socially constructed meanings of pregnancy loss and interrogate the arguments of those groups, such as the medical profession, religious and support groups, participating in these constructions. It will build on existing histories of motherhood, childbirth and pregnancy in Australia and, therefore, also the history of Australian women.

This thesis investigates community responses to Poliomyelitis, and the Impact of the disease on those who experienced It, particularly during the epidemics that occurred In Western Australia between 1938 and 1956. The research sources an.: W.A. Health Department records, held mostly at the Battye Library, records held by Australian Archives and Royal Perth Hospital, newspaper reports, comparative studies from several states in Australia and overseas, oral history interviews, biographies and personal records. The history of polio has several layers and the presence or the disease In the community evoked varied and ambiguous reactions, summarised here as fear, frustration and the will to overcome. I have examined the discussion the virus generated amongst members of the public. researchers, health professionals and polio survivors, In order to draw conclusions about the relationship between disease and western society. Polio evoked greater level of fear amongst all members of the community, compared with other Infectious diseases which had a far higher mortality rate. The behaviour of the polio virus challenged theories of Infection current during the first half of the twentieth century. Health and scientific professionals, and the general public, were frustrated by a lack of accurate knowledge concerning the disease. Uncertainty led to the Implementation of a variety of preventative measures, some of which, such as quarantine, were unpopular while others, such as nasal clips, were ineffective. Research aimed at developing a vaccine to conquer the Virus was maintained but scientific and medical professionals disagreed amongst themselves, while members of the general public questioned their capabilities and offered their own homespun solutions. At the same time polio survivors were often noted for their determined efforts to recover from the effects of paralysis.

This chapter draws attention to Australia's very rich tradition of family budget research, which was associated with the Social Policy Research Centre. It explains that the idea of a basic living standard enshrined in wage laws became a reality in Australia at the start of the 20th century. It also charts the history of budget standards research in Australia, focusing on the four major studies that were coordinated during the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. The chapter looks at the latest work that relates to the budget for healthy living and combines public health knowledge and focus group deliberations. It concludes that budget standards only provide a rough-and-ready adequacy benchmark, which should be used with care and in conjunction with other measurement approaches to living standards whenever possible.