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AbstractTraditionally, public order clashes between police and protesters in Australia were intermittent and erratic, but police responses were often repressive and violent. By the 1990s, most police leadership was advocating a low-key strategy: one of communication and dialogue, negotiated management, and a less coercive approach to large-scale protests. This article argues that policing of demonstrations responds to the dynamics of differing protest contexts and behaviours. It explores the policing of some significant contemporary demonstrations in Australia ranging from industrial disputes to anti-globalization protests (1998 national waterfront dispute, 2007 Sydney Asia-Pacific Economic Corporation summit, and the 2014 G20 mega event in Brisbane). Although the policing approaches were markedly diverse, these case studies involved limited confrontation. Despite some notable exceptions, modern-day policing of protest in Australia has usually been non-confrontational, partly the result of police–protester liaison and dialogue. The psychological threat of police force, rather than its actual implementation, has restricted potential protest participation and limited violent clashes. A delicate and fragile balance exists between the police maintenance of order and security and the facilitation of a peaceful protest.

One of the key concepts for the human part of the grand narrative of Big History is known as "collective learning." It is one very prominent broad trend that sweeps across all human history. Collective learning to a certain degree distinguishes us as a species, got us out of Africa and the foraging lifestyle of the Paleolithic, and underpinned demographic cycles and human progress for 250,000 years. This paper looks at collective learning as a concept, its evolution within hominine species, its role in human demography, and the two great revolutions of human history: agriculture and industry. The paper then goes on to explain the connection of collective learning to Jared Diamond's Tasmanian Effect. Collective learning also played a key role in the two Great Divergences of the past two thousand years. One is industry and the rise of the West, described to great effect by Kenneth Pomeranz; the other is the less well known: the burst of demography and innovation in Song China at the turn of the second millennium c.e . Finally the paper concludes with insights into how collective learning forges a strong connection between human history and cosmology, geology, and biology, through what is widely recognized as one of the unifying themes of Big History: the rise of complexity in the universe.