Australian Politics
For a reform politician, these three books should be compulsory reading. They are not, for such a reader, heartening. But they do ‘serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate’.
Brian Dale’s Ascent to Power, very much less than fair to Neville Wran, is an unintended expose of the nature of political journalism in this country and its practitioners.
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It was in the wake of the landslide re-election of Daniel Andrews’s Labor government in November 2018 that the former Coalition prime minister, John Howard, christened Victoria ‘the Massachusetts of Australia’. Coming from Howard, this characterisation of Victoria was not meant as a compliment. Rather, it seemed designed as a consolation message for the local Liberal Party. He was providing them with an alibi for their lengthening record of under-performance in the state. Victoria, Howard seemed to be saying, was simply impervious to the party’s conservative values.
... (read more)Ego: Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberal Party’s civil war by Aaron Patrick
Before the May 2022 federal election, Anthony Albanese, partly to silence critics of his ‘small target’ campaign and partly to manage wider expectations, proposed to lead a Labor government that under-promised and over-delivered. A deliberately thin ‘look-at-them’ election campaign was designed to keep the focus on a tired and compromised Coalition government, rather than following Labor’s usual approach of fighting for voters’ attention with big new ideas. For a social democratic party which exists for reform, it was an unorthodox strategy and one not without risks. The political capital from any ‘over-delivery’ might well accumulate for a ‘re-election’ bid in 2025, but the thinness of Labor’s 2022 enticements would be obvious.
... (read more)Australia's Own Cold War: The waterfront under Menzies by Tom Sheridan
The leaked draft judgment in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito proposed overturning the precedent set by Roe v. Wade, has returned abortion rights to the headlines. In this week’s episode of The ABR Podcast, Linda Atkins reads her essay, ‘Shouting Abortion’, which sets women’s right to terminations within the broader context of intergenerational poverty and the class lines of the medical profession ...
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When I was launching my book Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga story in 2016, one of the guests put it to me that the name Maralinga should be just as recognisable in Australian society as Gallipoli. This comment suggested that the British tests had a broader meaning that spoke to a national mythology and were not just interesting historical events.
... (read more)Diplomatic: A Washington memoir by Joe Hockey with Leo Shanahan
When Scott Morrison called the federal election in early April, he did so on an apologetic note: ‘I get it that people are tired of politics.’ This was a predictable gesture from the prime minister: his term has been marked by a series of controversies that have raised many questions about his capacity to lead on some of the country’s most pressing issues, though relatively few about his skill in internal party politics.
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