Australia Politics

Facing not onlt the astounding courage they displayed amid death and chaos but also on the triumphs and pain of their personal lives, Susanna reveals how these 11 Australian women were as influential and heroic in civil life as they were in war.

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.

What would it be like to sit down for an impassioned, entertaining conversation with Hillary Clinton? In Something Lost, Something Gained, Hillary offers her candid views on life and love, politics, liberty, democracy, the threats we face, and the future within our reach. She describes the strength she draws from her deepest friendships, her Methodist faith, and the nearly fifty years she’s been married to President Bill Clinton—all with the wisdom that comes from looking back on a full life with fresh eyes.

In a landmark essay, Stan Grant writes indigenous people back into the economic and multicultural history of Australia. This is the fascinating story of how fringe dwellers fought not just to survive but to prosper. Their legacy is the extraordinary flowering of indigenous success - cultural, sporting, intellectual and social - that we see today. Yet this flourishing coexists with the boys of Don Dale and the many others like them who live in the shadows of the nation.

A powerful and personal guide on how to be effective, no matter who you're trying to influence. Whether it's the racist relative sitting across the table at a family function, or the CEO blind to the institutional barriers to people of colour in the workplace, award-winning journalist and vivacious leader Antoinette Lattouf has some tips and advice on what to do.

Roman Quaedvlieg was always destined to make a mark. As a rookie policeman on the mean streets of Fortitude Valley in the dying days of the Moonlight State, his first arrest was Brisbane's most wanted escapee. Three decades later, he found himself navigating through the corridors of power in Canberra. Tour de Force charts the years in between, during which he truly sees it all.

When the main course is heavy going or unappetising, the 'bits on the side' make life really delicious. Our small, meaningful selections are the ones that make life glorious, and the side dish is the perfect metaphor for what many of us need right now. A Bit on the Side is Virginia's ode to joy, filled with wisdom, stories, memories and recipes, all told with her renowned insight and wicked sense of humour.

Counter terrorism expert Sid Allen knows nothing good ever comes from a phone call at five a.m. Politician Dan LeRoi, chairman of the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, has been shot. Four bullets to the head. The crime scene is chaotic. Homicide. Counter Terrorism. Media. And for Sid, hunting the killer is going to get complicated. Journalist Zephyr Wilde is complicated. She's tenacious and she's got Sid's number. Sid knows the gossip: how Zephyr's mother was murdered when Zephyr was a kid. He doesn't know that Zephyr is still getting letters from her long-dead mother.

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.

Ignited by a lightning strike in a remote forest, the Currowan fire was one of the most terrifying episodes of Australia's Black Summer. It burnt for 74 days, consuming nearly 5,000 square kilometres of land, destroying well over 500 homes and leaving many people shattered. In the aftermath, there were questions. Why were resources so few that many faced the flames alone? Why was there back-burning on a day of extreme fire danger? Why weren’t they better prepared?

From Ethiopia to Sierra Leone, Tanzania to Togo, Dr Andrew Browning has been helping women affected by obstetric fistulas - a debilitating condition resulting from obstructed childbirth - for nearly two decades. Andrew began his African career in the 1990s working with the late Dr Catherine Hamlin and since then has started the Barbara May Foundation, which has built hospitals, trained staff and established programs to heal fistulas and also prevent them from occurring around Africa in the world's most disadvantaged women.

Then There Was You is the eagerly awaited follow-up to Sophie Cachia’s bestselling memoir Then There Was Her. In Then There Was Her, Sophie Cachia revealed how falling in love with a woman turned her whole world upside down. Her story inspired thousands of people to reach out, wanting to share their own journeys of sexual and romantic discovery. Then There Was You is a captivating true life collection of stories told to Sophie about heartbreak, passion, bravery and the healing power of shared experiences.

In 1996, when Akuch Kuol Anyieth is five, her mother flees to Kakuma with her children, intent on finding safety and freedom for her family, while her husband stays behind in South Sudan to fight in the civil war. The family spends nine years in the camp, eking out an existence amidst famine, disease, unbearable heat and chronic violence. Despite their suffering, Akuch never loses hope or her sense of humour. She’s a bright student who loves learning and does well at the local school.

Someone wants Russian millionaire Dmitry Lebedev dead. After years flying under the radar in Sydney, he’s just had a narrow escape when a sex worker is poisoned in his hotel room. In desperation he contacts his former CIA case officer, Ronnie Johnson, offering to expose a traitor inside the Australian government in return for protection.

Millions of Baby Boomers got beach houses, free education, jobs for life and a franking credit-fed retirement. But Millennials have been handed a housing crisis, crippling student debt, the gig economy, a cooked planet, a truly broken political system and now wars, inflation and a global pandemic, as a treat. This fully sucks. But never fear–this book is going to fix everything. Through the power of jokes, history, interviews and sass, so-called comedian Tom Ballard unpicks how his generation got here, and explains why we should probably do a revolution.

In this moving and compelling New York Times best seller, Melinda shares lessons she's learned from the inspiring people she's met during her work and travels around the world. As she writes in the introduction, 'That is why I had to write this book - to share the stories of people who have given focus and urgency to my life. I want all of us to see ways we can lift women up where we live.'

You’ve probably heard that famous 'Well may we say' speech made by Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam on the day he was sacked by the queen’s representative, or seen the grainy footage from the steps of old parliament house. But do you properly understand the extraordinary events leading up to the most dramatic day in Australian political history? How did The Dismissal actually happen? This audio series takes you inside the highest circles of power to uncover pieces of this story that have never been told before.

Knowledge is power. Consent Laid Bare is a conversation starter that will help young women feel less alone, less likely to feel pressured into sexual encounters that they don't want, less ashamed if they find themselves in a tricky situation, and more inclined to hold their perpetrators to account in the moment and afterwards. It will help young men understand that there is a point where pressuring behaviour becomes criminal.

In Sex, Lies and Question Time, former MP Kate Ellis looks at what it is really like to be a woman in Australian politics today. In 2017, a survey showed zero per cent of young Australian women would consider entering politics. Zero. In a time when we critically need women in our parliament, and in a country that was an early leader in women's political participation, there is a perception that women and politics don’t mix. Shocking incidents have exposed the sexism that women in politics face from opposition, the media, the public, even their own colleagues.

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.