Prophetic Political Writing

[ The University of Melbourne Voice Vol. 3, No. 2  12 May - 9 June 2008 ]

By Silvia Dropulich

A long-time ABC TV Lateline fan, this reviewer was concerned that her review of The Best Australian Political Writing edited by Tony Jones, would be biased – and it is – the four-time Walkley Award winning journalist presents a must-read selection of incisive analytical pieces covering the past year in politics.

“Clearly politics has its own momentum but you have to keep one eye on the rear-vision mirror,” said Jones.

“That’s where the lessons of history are to be found and by any measure the election of 2007 was political history.

“By the end of such a year so much has been said and written that the winnowing process for a book such as this is gruelling.

“Not everyone will agree with our choices but what stands out for me is that the best writing from all corners of politics is provocative, foresenic, and uncompromising.”

Jones describes The Best Australian Political Writing, published by Melbourne University Publishing, as bringing together the prophetic pieces, those that added depth to our understanding, subtlety and new perspectives, and those whose undeniable passion just made you stop and think.

The book is divided into seven sections: All the Way to the Lodge; The Lucky Country?; The Heat is On; Prosecuting the War on Terror; Australian Values; The Culture Wars; and Howard’s Fall. It features more than 40 writers including former Prime Minister Paul Keating, Robert Richter QC, Noel Pearson, Professor Marcia Langton, Simon Mann, Geoffrey Blainey and Phillip Adams.

In a Sydney Morning Herald piece Paul Keating recounts how when it was clear that the Howard Government had been defeated many Labor supporters around him had said ‘you must be so happy’.

“But my emotion was not happiness; rather, it was relief,” writes Keating. Relief that the nation had put itself back on course. Relief that the toxicity of the Liberal social agenda was over.”

Simon Mann in an article from The Age looks at the making of Kevin Rudd, which tracks the evolution of the Queensland wunderkind from when he was right-hand man to Premier Goss. Mann asks: How did he operate in the cauldron of everyday decision-making as he morphed from political sidekick into policy maestro?

“Methodical, process-driven and naturally conservative, Rudd was to many people the proverbial man on a mission,” writes Mann.

“Many found his style abrasive and uncompromising, and Goss himself has conceded that Rudd was at times during those torrid years in Queensland a bit of a bastard, ‘because sometimes you have to be if you want to make a difference’.”

In Veils and Vegemite author and lawyer Randa Abdel-Fattah asks if it is the case that Islam has the public fascinated and on edge.

“Our status as Australians feeds off the un-Australian status of others,” she says in the Sydney Morning Herald piece.

“We can only feel truly Australian by measuring ourselves against those we deem to be truly not.”

Abdel-Fattah argues that the values debate has primarily focused on women’s dress and attitudes to certain social norms (such as alcohol, a day at the beach or sexuality).

“Integration, fitting in, assimilation: it doesn’t matter whether you belong to a union or recycle your plastic; it’s whether you wear a bikini to the beach, date, or can join in a jovial who-got-more-pissed-on-the-weekend Monday morning water cooler conversation that are the pivotal points that rate you on the 1–10 scale of What Makes You an Aussie.”

The Best Australian Political Writing by Tony Jones, 416 pp, PB, $32.95 (MU Bookshop $29.66) MUP April 2008.