Downfall: How the Labor Party Ripped Itself Apart by Aaron Patrick

$29.99 AUD

Category: Politics

It's the biggest and most puzzling story in Australian politics: how did the Australian Labor Party go from a thumping win in 2007 to facing annihilation in the forthcoming election? Other books have pointed to a lack of coherent policies and an over-reliance on polls--all true--but as this book makes c lear, Labor's biggest problem is one nobody wants to talk about; ethics. Dogged by scandal, tainted by self-serving heavies and political opportunists, Brand Labor is a shabby shadow of its former self. Can the much touted next leader, Bill Shorten act to save it, or will he proceed with business as usual? AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW journalist Aaron Patrick takes us behind the scenes of the dying ALP and charts the mistakes, scandals and PR disasters which characterize modern Labor and the simultaneous corrosion of a once great party from within. It will show what led to the shocking political downfall at federal and state levels and asks if--and how--a party so discredited can survive. ...Show more

Robert Menzies: The Art of Politics by Troy Bramston

$49.99 AUD

Category: Politics

Robert Menzies claimed the prime ministership in 1939 and led the nation during the early years of the war, but resigned two years later when he lost the confidence of his party. His political career seemed over, and yet he staged one of the great comebacks to forge a new political party, devise a new g overning philosophy, and craft a winning electoral approach that as to make him Australia's longest-serving prime minister. The lessons Menzies learned - and the way he applied them - made him a model that every Liberal leader since has looked to for inspiration. But debate over Menzies' life and legacy has never settled. Who was Robert Menzies, what did he stand for, what did he achieve? Troy Bramston has not only researched the official record and published accounts, but has also interviewed members of Menzies'  family, and his former advisers and ministers. He has also been given exclusive access to family letters, as well as to a series of interviews that Menzies gave that have never been revealed before. They are a major historical find, in which Menzies talks about his life, reflects on political events and personalities, offers political lessons, and candidly assesses his successors. Robert Menzies is the first biography in 20 years of the Liberal icon - and it contains important contemporary lessons for those who want to understand, and master, the art and science of politics. ...Show more

From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia Got Compulsory Voting by Judith Brett

$29.99 AUD

Category: Politics

It's compulsory to vote in Australia. We are one of a handful of countries in the world that enforce this rule at election time, and the only English-speaking country that makes its citizens vote. Not only that, we embrace it. We celebrate compulsory voting with barbeques and cake stalls at polling stat ions, and election parties that spill over into Sunday morning. But how did this come to be? When and why did we begin making Australians vote? What effect has it had on our political parties, our voting systems, our participation in elections? And how else is the way we vote different from other English-speaking democracies? From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage is a brilliant essay-length book by the celebrated historian Judith Brett, the prize-winning biographer of Alfred Deakin. This is a landmark account of the character of Australian democracy. ...Show more

Political Troglodytes and Economic Lunatics: The Hard Right in Australia by Dominic Kelly

$32.99 AUD

Category: Politics

Political history at its best. This is the story of the hard right in Australia - of how Ray Evans and his boss at Western Mining Corporation, Hugh Morgan, became the pioneers of a new form of right-wing politics whose forceful reshaping of public debates transformed Australian politics. With a calm gaz e, forensic detail and a dry wit, Dominic Kelly shows how they did it. Starting in the mid-1980s, Evans set up four small but potent organisations- the H.R. Nicholls Society (industrial relations), the Samuel Griffith Society (constitutional issues), the Lavoisier Group (climate change) and the Bennelong Society (Indigenous affairs). Their aim was to transform public debate on key issues. Morgan and Evans had an energy that bordered on fanaticism. They lobbied politicians and wrote op-eds. They were born intriguers and colourful rhetoricians, with a wide influence that famously included treasurer-to-be Peter Costello. It was Bob Hawke who called the H.R. Nicholls Society 'political troglodytes and economic lunatics?; yet in their dogged pursuit of influence, the hard right made an impact. From successive backdowns on emissions targets to the rejection of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, the efforts of hard right conservatives continues to be felt today - not only on the right but across mainstream public policy. Political Troglodytes and Economic Lunaticsis a compelling case study in how some very determined people can change a political culture. ...Show more

Best Australian Political Cartoons 2018 by Russ Radcliffe

$29.99 AUD

Category: Politics

With Dean Alston, Peter Broelman, Pat Campbell, Andrew Dyson, John Farmer, First Dog on the Moon, Matt Golding, Fiona Katauskas, Mark Knight, Jon Kudelka, Alan Moir, David Pope, David Rowe, Andrew Weldon, Cathy Wilcox, Paul Zanetti, and many more . . .

A Free Country - Australians' Search for Utopia 1861-1901 by David Kemp

$59.99 AUD

Category: Politics

A Free Country- Australians? Search for Utopia 1861-1901 tells how Australians, inspired by their new democracy, attempted to use their freedom to build a society without social and economic conflict. As the second book in a landmark five-volume Australian Liberalism series, A Free Country shows the suc cesses and missteps in the attempt to establish the legal and moral foundations for a liberal society in Australia, examining the ideological battles of the period. The national politics of twentieth-century Australia had their roots during this time, as utopian dreams of 'social reconstruction? opposed liberal ideals of individual freedom, fostering the concept of 'class wars? and leading to the ongoing involvement of trade unions in politics. As emerging collective ideas of nationalism, empire, race and class challenged individual rights and threatened to seed domestic and international conflict, liberals succeeded in bringing the six colonies into one Australian nation founded on liberal principles, writing a constitution hailed as the most democratic in the world. ...Show more

Behind the Lines: The Year's Best Political Cartoons 2018 by Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House

$19.95 AUD

Category: Politics

Official catalogue for Behind the Lines 2018 political cartoon exhibition, developed by the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House.

What The Hell Was He Thinking? John Spooner's Guide to the 21st Century by John Spooner

$65.00 AUD

Category: Politics

Hugh Stretton - Selected Writings by Graeme Davison

$32.99 AUD

Category: Politics

His book The Political Sciences was hailed by the Times Literary Supplement as 'a work of near genius.' His Ideas for Australian Cities was a groundbreaking intervention in urban studies and progressive thinking on social reform. This collection of Stretton's writing, compiled by Australia's leading urb an historian, Graeme Davison, includes highlights from these and a wide range of other works, offering a definitive selection on history and politics, urban planning, and social and economic development. Whether criticising Paul Keating or defending life in the suburbs, Stretton was an eloquent original. Robert Manne writes that 'Hugh Stretton may have been Australia's most distinguished post-war social scientist. With great intelligence and subtlety, Hugh's lifelong thinking offers an alternative to the neoliberal orthodoxy that took hold in the Anglophone world from the early 1980s and which, since the global financial crisis, has begun to lose its grip. The time is ripe for a collection.' ...Show more

Run for Your Life by Bob Carr

$34.99 AUD

Category: Politics

Most political memoirs are boring. Bob Carr tears up the rules. He plunges in, beginning with the despair of a young man pining for a political career, convinced he's going nowhere, then vaulting to the exhilaration of a premier who, on one day, saves a vast forest and unveils the country's best curri culum. He lashes himself for ignoring a cry from a prisoner in a cell and for a breach of protocol with a US Supreme Court judge. He considers talking to the leader of a notorious rape gang and celebrates winning power against the odds- a leader without kids or any interest in sport. He describes growing up in a fibro house without sewerage and a 'lousy education' that produced a lifetime appetite for self-learning. He is candid about dealing with the media, dining with royals, working for Kerry Packer. He reveals the secrets he learnt from Neville Wran. He is open about his adulation of Gough Whitlam. Floating above all is Bob Carr's idea of public service in a party, he says, that resembles an old, scarred, barnacled whale. In an era of bland politicians, here's one with personality true to his quirky self. Silence the jet skis! Balance the budget! Liberate the dolphins! Roll out the toll roads! Declare a million hectares of eucalypt wilderness! Be a politician of character. All author proceeds from this book are donated to help the children displaced by the Syrian civil war by funding humanitarian aid through the registered charity Australia for UNHCR. ...Show more

The Dismissal Dossier: The Palace Connection: Everything You Were Never Meant to Know about November 1975 by Hocking, Jenny

$19.99 AUD

Category: Politics

Here is the definitive story of the most divisive episode in Australia's history—the dismissal of Gough Whitlam's Labor government. In her award-winning biography of Gough Whitlam, Jenny Hocking revealed the astonishing secret story of the planning and the people behind the dismissal. Never before released material from Sir John Kerr's private papers revealed the secret role of High Court justice Sir Anthony Mason and Kerr's collusion with Malcolm Fraser. Now, Hocking's forensic investigations reveal explosive files in the UK National Archives that add a disturbing dimension to this untold story. Hocking reveals the Palace connection and unravels the web of intrigue behind the British Office's link to the dismissal of the Whitlam government in the name of the Queen. She brilliantly brings together this hidden history—a mixture of the unknown, the overlooked and the clandestine—to write a political thriller: the story you were never meant to know. ...Show more

John Curtin's War: The Coming of War in the Pacific and Reinventing Australia by John Edwards

$49.99 AUD

Category: Politics

John Curtin became Australia's Prime Minister eight weeks before Japan launched war in the Pacific.Curtin's struggle for power against Joe Lyons and Bob Menzies, his dramatic use of it when he took office in October 1941, and his determination to be heard in Washington and London as Japan advanced, is a political epic unmatched in Australian experience. As Japan sank much of the Allied navy, advanced on the great British naval base at Singapore, and seized Australian territories in New Guinea, Curtin remade Australia. Using much new material John Edwards' vivid, landmark biography places Curtin as a man of his times, puzzling through the immense changes in Australia and its region released by the mighty shock of the Pacific War. It shows Curtin not as a hero and certainly not as a villain but as the pivotal figure making his uncertain way between what Australia was, and what it would become. It locates the turning point in Australian history not at Gallipoli or the Western Front or even Federation but in the Pacific War and in Curtin's Prime Ministership.This two volume work is a major contribution to Australian biography, and to how we understand our history. In this first part, Edwards takes Curtin's story from the late nineteenth century socialist ferment in Melbourne through to his appointment as prime minister and a Japanese onslaught so complete and successful that within a few months of launching it military leaders in Tokyo debated between the options of invading Australia, or sealing it off from Allied help. ...Show more