Australia Politics

Darwin longgrassers have been living large since the beginning. They come from all over the Territory to camp in the public spaces around town, to catch up with family and friends, attend health and legal matters, holiday and shop, and drink. Especially drink. And the whitefellas don’t like it. They think they’re noisy and dirty and rude. So, they try to move them on. For 150 years they’ve been trying to move them on. But the longgrassers won’t go. Yet beneath this running battle between the settled and the free lurks an undeniable truth about colonisation that is almost Newtonian in style.

Lachlan Macquarie is credited with shaping Australia's destiny, transforming a harsh, foreboding penal colony into an agricultural powerhouse and ultimately a prosperous society. He also helped shape Australia's national character. An egalitarian at heart, Macquarie saw boundless potential in Britain's refuse, and under his rule many former convicts went on to become successful administrators, land owners and businesspeople.

How far would you go for someone you love...on a unicycle? Brothers and sisters often dare each other to do things – it's what siblings do. However, when Connie Johnson dared her brother, Samuel, to embark on a one-wheeled odyssey around Australia, she knew it was a big ask. But Connie knew exactly what she was doing and was sure he wouldn't say no. Not this time. Born a year apart, Connie and Samuel Johnson have always been close.

Dubai is feted internationally as a beacon of modernity: glittering skyscrapers, a cultural melting pot, even a new player in the space race. The city's ruled by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, an all-powerful multi-billionaire who counts the Queen and Donald Trump as friends. His kingdom's progressive propaganda defies a medieval underbelly. And nowhere is that more apparent than in the Sheikh's own palace, where numerous women have now risked their lives by sounding the alarm about what's really going on in the United Arab Emirates.

Argued with intelligence and passion, this book is essential listening for everyone who loves Australia enough to want to make it a better place for us all. Australia's unprecedented run of economic growth has failed to deliver a more stable or harmonious society. Individualism is rampant. Income inequality is growing. Public education is under-resourced. The gender revolution is stalling. We no longer trust our major institutions or our political leaders. Yet esteemed social researcher Hugh Mackay remains optimistic.

The Great Barrier Reef is dying. Extreme weather is becoming all too familiar. And the Coalition government is divided and paralysed. In this vivid, urgent essay, Anna Krien explores the psychology and politics of a warming world.

Over thousands of years, humans have developed mechanisms to help us live together in ever-larger social groups. We developed a set of 'moral emotions' such as empathy, guilt and outrage, as well as a tendency to favour people in our in-groups and a propensity to punish perceived wrongdoers. Our culture also evolved, giving us powerful tools like religion and politics that could expand community sizes and maintain moral order. While these mechanisms served our ancestors well, though, our evolved sense of right and wrong is out of step with the modern world.

Could the first words spoken by Homo sapiens have been ‘hey, hold the baby!’? Madeleine Beekman, a visionary evolutionary biologist walks readers along a path through deep time that our forebears trod toward creating human language, populating the planet, and understanding the universe. Human accomplishments, all rooted in language, didn't come from supposedly male dominated activities like hunting or making war, their origin lies in a culture of caring, of looking after the weakest among us, our relatively helpless children.

For nearly three decades, Dr Colin Manock was in charge of South Australia's forensic pathology services. In cases of unexpected or unexplained death, it was his job to determine when a person took their final breath, and whether they had died naturally - or not. But Manock did not have the necessary training for such a specialist role, and made serious errors in several major cases. The full extent of his wrongdoing, and the exact number of cases impacted by it, remain a mystery more than twenty-five years after he retired.

In this dazzling report from the campaign trail, Erik Jensen homes in on the insecurities that drive Bill Shorten and the certainties that helped Scott Morrison win. He considers how each man reflects, challenges and comforts the national character. Who are Morrison’s 'quiet Australians'? What did Shorten Labor fail to see? And will fear always trump hope in politics? The Prosperity Gospel sheds new light on the politics of a divided nation.

How did the banks run wild for so long? Why are so many aged-care residents malnourished? And how is it that arms manufacturers sponsor the Australian War Memorial? In this passionate essay, Richard Denniss explores what neoliberalism has done to Australian society.

Buraadja provides a powerful account of the Liberal Party’s approach to indigenous affairs. The party’s record of successes and failures is frankly evaluated as an important basis for developing effective approaches to persistent problems.

Who am I really? What have I done? What is important and meaningful to me? What difference does it make that I have lived? What does it mean to be truly human, and where am I on that scale? Morrie Schwartz, the beloved subject of the classic, multimillion-copy number one bestseller Tuesdays with Morrie, explores these questions and many more in this profound, poetic, and poignant masterpiece of living and aging joyfully and creatively. Later life can be filled with many challenges, but it can also be one of the most beautiful and rewarding passages in anyone's lifetime.

This year has seen unprecedented scrutiny of Rupert Murdoch’s empire in Britain. But what about in Australia, where he owns 70 per cent of the press? In Bad News, Robert Manne investigates Murdoch’s lead political voice here, the Australian newspaper, and how it shapes debate. Since 2002, under the editorship of Chris Mitchell, the Australian has come to see itself as judge, jury and would-be executioner of leaders and policies. Is this a dangerous case of power without responsibility?

In the wake of the pandemic, will we see a new politics of social security and concern for the future? Between the fires and the plague, Scott Morrison had no choice but to adapt his style of leadership. But does he have an exit strategy for Australia from the pandemic? In this original essay, George Megalogenis explores the new politics of care and fear. He shows how our economic officials learnt the lessons of past recessions and applied them to new circumstances.

All aboard the Scomo Express as our hero pulls back the lid on the life and times of one of history's great leaders and humbly serves up a steaming meat pie of everyman wisdom for the hungering masses. These are the unofficial chronicles of Scotty's first 18 months in his new role as head honcho of the largest marketing firm in the country - the Australian federal government - as it unfolded, completely devoid of any self-aggrandisement, doublespeak, sleight of hand or other dirty shenanigans played by the Opposition.

In 1999, Sierra Leone was in the midst of a brutal civil war where mindless violence, vicious amputation and the rape of young enslaved women were the everyday weapons of bloody conflict. It was also where rebel soldiers snatched the young Aminata Conteh-Biger from her father's arms, then held her captive for months. After she was released, the UNHCR recognised that her captors still posed a serious threat to her safety. So, still in her teens, she was put on a plane and flown to Australia to start afresh as a refugee in a land she knew nothing about.

Growing up, Alyssa Huynh heard stories from her family about their journey from Vietnam to Australia following the fall of Saigon and the racism they experienced upon arrival. While the discrimination she faced was different, she never quite felt like she belonged either. Longing for a safe space, she turned to the internet. Through sharing her writing online, she created a supportive community for fellow Asians and people of color with similar experiences, as well as for allies.

It should've been the happiest time of Lee Barnett's life. She was married to a man she loved and trusted, Harris Todd, and she was pregnant with her first child. But things quickly turned from dream to nightmare when Harris demanded a divorce. Rich, powerful and well-connected in their hometown of Charleston, USA, he was able to spin the court proceedings in his favour, leaving Lee emotionally and financially devastated. And then came the final blow: she lost custody of her beautiful daughter, Savanna, who was only 11 months old.

In this wise and illuminating essay, Laura Tingle looks at leadership, economics, history and more. Competitiveness has marked our relationship from its earliest days. In the past half-century, both countries have remade themselves amid shifting economic fortunes. New Zealand has been held up as a model for everything from tax reform to the conduct of politics to the response to COVID-19. Tingle considers everything from Morrison and Ardern as national leaders to the different ways each country has dealt with its colonial legacy.