Quarterly Essay 64 The Australian Dream
Quarterly Essay 64 The Australian Dream

Author: Stan Grant

Publisher: Schwartz Publishing Pty. Ltd.

Published: 2016-11-21

Total Pages: 141

ISBN-13: 1863958894

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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 co-exists with the boys of Don Dale, and the many others like them who live in the shadows of the nation. Grant examines how such Australians have been denied the possibilities of life, and argues eloquently that history is not destiny; that culture is not static. In doing so, he makes the case for a more capacious Australian Dream. ‘The idea that I am Australian hits me with a thud. It is a blinding self-realisation that collides with the comfortable notion of who I am. To be honest, for an Indigenous person, it can feel like a betrayal somehow – at the very least, a capitulation. We are so used to telling ourselves that Australia is a white country: am I now white? The reality is more ambiguous … To borrow from Franz Kafka, identity is a cage in search of a bird.’ —Stan Grant, The Australian Dream

Dead Right
Dead Right

Author: Richard Denniss

Publisher: Black Inc.

Published: 2019-02-11

Total Pages: 119

ISBN-13: 174382081X

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An updated and expanded edition of the bestselling Quarterly Essay

How did the banks run wild for so long? Why are so many aged-care residents malnourished? And when did arms manufacturers start sponsoring the Australian War Memorial?

In Dead Right, Richard Denniss explores what neoliberalism has done to Australia. For decades, we have been led to believe that the private sector does everything better, that governments can’t afford to provide the high-quality services they once did, but that security and prosperity for all are just around the corner. In fact, Australians are now less equal, millions of workers have no sick leave or paid holidays, and housing is unaffordable for many. Deregulation, privatisation and trickle-down economics have, we are told, delivered us twenty-seven years of growth ... but to what end?

Denniss looks at ways to renew our democracy and discusses everything from the fragmenting Coalition to an idea of the national interest that goes beyond economics. This is a sparkling book of ideas, and the perfect starting point for thinking about how we can best shape Australia’s future.

The Return of History
The Return of History

Author: Jonathan Pearlman

Publisher: The Jewish Quarterly

Published: 2021-05-06

Total Pages: 125

ISBN-13: 1743821891

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“For a long time now, the authority of knowledge has been under siege from those who march under the banner of pure belief.” —Simon Schama Welcome to the new JQ. The Return of History investigates rising global populism, and the forces propelling modern nativism and xenophobia. In wide-ranging, lively essays, Simon Schama explores the age-old tropes of Jews as both purveyors of disease and mono-polists of medical wisdom, in the wake of a global pandemic; Holly Case takes us by train to Hungary; Mikołaj Grynberg reflects on Poland’s commitment to forgetting its atrocities; and Deborah Lipstadt puts white supremacy under the microscope, examining its antisemitic DNA. Recently discovered letters about Israel from Isaiah Berlin to Robert Silvers are published here for the first time. In new sections on History and Community, Ian Black revisits a turning point in the Arab–Israeli conflict, and Elliot Perlman traces the roots of the Jewish farmers in Uganda. And in three insightful, erudite book reviews, Hadley Freeman, Benjamin Balint and Robert Manne cast light on second-generation Holocaust memoirs and the work of Paul Celan and Götz Aly. The Return of History is a truly global issue, bringing together esteemed, well-known voices and those you’ll be exhilarated to read for the first time.

Quarterly Essay 78 The Coal Curse
Quarterly Essay 78 The Coal Curse

Author: Judith Brett

Publisher: Black Inc.

Published: 2020-06-22

Total Pages: 163

ISBN-13: 1743821360

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Australia is a wealthy nation with the economic profile of a developing country – heavy on raw materials, and low on innovation and skilled manufacturing. Once we rode on the sheep’s back for our overseas trade; today we rely on cartloads of coal and tankers of LNG. So must we double down on fossil fuels, now that COVID-19 has halted the flow of international students and tourists? Or is there a better way forward, which supports renewable energy and local manufacturing? Judith Brett traces the unusual history of Australia’s economy and the “resource curse” that has shaped our politics. She shows how the mining industry learnt to run fear campaigns, and how the Coalition became dominated by fossil-fuel interests to the exclusion of other voices. In this insightful essay about leadership, vision and history, she looks at the costs of Australia’s coal addiction and asks, where will we be if the world stops buying it? “Faced with the crisis of a global pandemic, for the first time in more than a decade Australia has had evidence-based, bipartisan policy-making. Politicians have listened to the scientists and ... put ideology and the protection of vested interests aside and behaved like adults. Can they do the same to commit to fast and effective action to try to save our children’s and grandchildren’s future, to prevent the catastrophic fires and heatwaves the scientists predict, the species extinction and the famines?” —Judith Brett, The Coal Curse

Quarterly Essay 60 Political Amnesia
Quarterly Essay 60 Political Amnesia

Author: Laura Tingle

Publisher: Black Inc.

Published: 2015-11-19

Total Pages: 122

ISBN-13: 1863957863

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Whatever happened to good government? What are the signs of bad government? And can Malcolm Turnbull apply the lessons of the past in a very different world? In this crisp, profound and witty essay, Laura Tingle seeks answers to these questions. She ranges from ancient Rome to the demoralised state of the once-great Australian public service, from the jingoism of the past to the tabloid scandals of the internet age. Drawing on new interviews with key figures, she shows the long-term harm that has come from undermining the public sector as a repository of ideas and experience. She tracks the damage done when responsibility is 'contracted out,' and when politicians shut out or abuse their traditional sources of advice. This essay about the art of government is part defence, part lament. In Political Amnesia, Laura Tingle examines what has gone wrong with our politics, and how we might put things right. ‘There was plenty of speculation about whether Turnbull would repeat his mistakes as Opposition leader in the way he dealt with people. But there has not been quite so much about the more fundamental question of whether the revolving door of the prime ministership has much deeper causes than the personalities in Parliament House. Is the question whether Malcolm Turnbull – and those around him – can learn from history? Or is there a structural reason national politics has become so dysfunctional?’—Laura Tingle, Political Amnesia

The Australian Disease
The Australian Disease

Author: Richard Flanagan

Publisher: Black Inc.

Published: 2015-09-23

Total Pages: 38

ISBN-13: 1921870494

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Non-freedom to the Western mind is inevitably linked with images of backwardness – Soviet tractors, East German Trabants, Kim Jong Il’s haircut. But non-freedom these days is also iPads, iPhones and a dazzling array of less iconic but ubiquitous consumer goods that flood our stores, our homes and which increasingly are used to define our ideas of worth and happiness. It is a full-lipped smile achieved with the aid of collagen made from skin flensed from dead Chinese convicts. The Australian Disease is Richard Flanagan’s perceptive, hilarious, searing exposé of the conformity that afflicts our public life. From Weary Dunlop to Vassily Grossman, from David Hicks to Craig Thomson, Flanagan takes us on a wildly entertaining and unsettling trip. If we are to find hope, he says, we must take our compass more from ourselves and less from the powerful.

Not Waving, Drowning
Not Waving, Drowning

Author: Sarah Krasnostein

Publisher: Quarterly Essay

Published: 2022-03-21

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 174382209X

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How can we mend Australia’s broken mental health system? Mental illness is the great isolator - and the great unifier. Almost half of us will suffer from it at some point in our lives; it affects everybody in one way or another. Yet today Australia's mental health system is under stress and not fit for purpose, and the pandemic is only making things worse. What is to be done? In this brilliant mix of portraiture and analysis, Sarah Krasnostein tells the stories of three women and their treatment by the state while at their most unwell. What do their experiences tell us about the likelihood of institutional and cultural change? Krasnostein argues that we live in a society that often punishes vulnerability, but shows we have the resources to mend a broken system. But do we have the will to do so, or must the patterns of the past persist into the future? "In our conception of government, and our willingness to fund it, we are closer to the Nordic countries than to America. However, we're trending towards the latter with a new story of Australia. The moral of this new story is freedom over equality, and one freedom above all - the freedom to be unbothered by others' needs. However, as we continue to saw ourselves off our perch, mental health might be the great unifier that climate change and the pandemic aren't." Sarah Krasnostein, Not Waving, Drowning This issue also contains correspondence discussing Quarterly Essay 84, The Reckoning, from Gina Rushton & Hannah Ryan, Amber Schultz, Malcolm Knox, Janet Albrechtsen, Kieran Pender, Sara Dowse, Nareen Young, and Jess Hill

Superpower
Superpower

Author: Ross Garnaut

Publisher: Black Inc.

Published: 2019-11-06

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 1743821174

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The fog of Australian politics on climate change has obscured a fateful reality: Australia has the potential to be an economic superpower of the future post-carbon world. We have unparalleled renewable energy resources. We also have the necessary scientific skills. Australia could be the natural home for an increasing proportion of global industry. But how do we make this happen? In this crisp, compelling book, Australia’s leading thinker about climate and energy policy offers a road map for progress, covering energy, transport, agriculture, the international scene and more. Rich in ideas and practical optimism, Superpower is a crucial, timely contribution to this country’s future.

Australia Fair
Australia Fair

Author: Rebecca Huntley

Publisher: Black Incorporated

Published: 2019-03-18

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13: 9781760641399

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What do Australians want most from their next government? In this vivid, grounded, surprising essay, Rebecca Huntley listens to the people and hears a call for change. Too often we focus on the angry, reactionary minority. But, Huntley shows, there is also a large progressive centre. For some time, a clear majority have been saying they want action - on climate and energy, on housing and inequality, on corporate donations and the corruption of democracy. Would a Shorten Labor government rise to this challenge? What can be learnt from the failures of past governments? Was marriage equality just the beginning? In Australia Fair, Rebecca Huntley reveals the state of the nation and makes the case for democratic renewal - should the next government heed the call. "Often the claim is made that our politics and politicians are poll-driven. This is, on the whole, bunkum. If polls were influential, we would have invested much more in renewable energy, maintained and even increased funding to the ABC, and made child care cheaper. We may already have made changes to negative gearing and moved towards adopting elements of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. We would have taken up the first iteration of the Gonski education reforms. These are some of the issues where a democratic majority comes together, a basic agreement crossing party lines." Rebecca Huntley, Australia Fair