JUDITH BRETT From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia got Compulsory Voting. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
Australian politicians might rank low in public esteem but as this incisive book from Judith Brett reveals, our system of voting is admirable compared to the rest of the world’s democracies and certainly superior to those of the United Kingdom and the United States....
PHILIP CHUBB Power Failure: The inside story of climate politics under Rudd and Gillard. Reviewed by Kurt Johnson
How did the politics of climate change become so intractable? Power Failure gives an account of the Rudd–Gillard years – a pertinent reminder as Australia goes to the polls in 2019. Again, something is in the air. It is the acrid tang of a looming election. With it...
ROBERT MANNE On Borrowed Time. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks
From asylum seekers to politics, climate change and the personal challenges of dealing with cancer, Robert Manne’s essays are a rich canvas and urge us to interrogate prejudice and injustice wherever they threaten to take root. When Robert Manne, Emeritus...
ANDREW P STREET The Short and Excruciatingly Embarrassing Reign of Captain Abbott. Reviewed by Chris Maher
This unashamedly partisan account of Australia’s recent political history is part comedy, part reality check. It’s been said that on the night Tony Abbott lost power, you could hear the sound of a thousand comedians crying. And not only in Australia – tears were shed...Crime Scene: ANGELA SAVAGE The Dying Beach: Jayne Keeney PI in Krabi; PETER COTTON Dead Cat Bounce. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Two recent Australian crime novels – a PI mystery set in Thailand and a police procedural in Canberra – give a strong sense of place. The Dying Beach is the third Jayne Keeney book from Angela Savage, following on closely from Behind the Night Bazaar and The...DAVID MARR Political Animal: the Making of Tony Abbott (Quarterly Essay 47). Reviewed by Linda Funnell
He’s anti-abortion and his career owes a debt to Alan Jones. Does Tony Abbott have a problem with women? There’s an unsettling recent tradition of the political subjects of Quarterly Essays meeting with ill fortune. Think of Annabel Crabb’s profile of then-Opposition...STEVE LEWIS and CHRIS UHLMANN The Marmalade Files. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
This slickly sliced satire offers an insider’s view of federal politics. In a political world that contains all the strange twists of, say, the James Ashby/Peter Slipper case, or the Malcolm Turnbull/Godwin Grech imbroglio, how could fiction possibly top reality?...
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