 Peril for Penelope the Pug when she gets lost in Puggleton Park. Can she find her way home again?
“It’s a truth everyone knows that all dogs need a forever home,” opens Puggleton Park, the first in a series of Regency-era chapter books for emerging readers. Poor Penelope the Pug has found herself lost in Puggleton Park. Whilst relaxing with her Lady, she eyed a dreadful squirrel and decided to chase it. Bad move. Now she finds herself a stray. All is not lost, however. Good fortune manifests in the person of the kindly Lady Diggleton, who takes it upon herself to find Penelope’s Lady. This turns out to be no easy task, further complicated by Lady Diggleton’s friend Lady Picklebottom, who finds stray dogs quite horrid and wants Penelope sent away. Can Penelope be reunited with her Lady and live happily ever after? Deanna Kizis (with delightful illustrations by Hannah Peck) has written a fun and often funny take on the Jane Austen classics. The story is full of society balls, high teas and proper decorum (Penelope is put through her paces by the fastidious dog trainer Mr Weeby), ending with a surprise disclosure by the dowager Lady Foxwise. A spirited and amusing frolic that doesn’t disappoint. Readers 7-10 years Puggleton Park, by Deanna Kizis. Published by Penguin. $11.99 Review by Chris Saliba  How an illegal government program slowly unravelled.
Robodebt was a harebrained scheme hatched by a group of public servants hoping to make happy their political masters. Welfare recipients have never been popular with the electorate, easily demonised, and so here was some low hanging fruit. The scheme, as imagined, would reap a whirlwind of budget savings by recouping badly guesstimated debts from those unlucky enough to receive a letter. The problem was it was illegal from the get-go, and blind Freddy could have told you so. Debts were worked out with a fundamentally incorrect model, by trying to squeeze the square of tax office data into the circle of the fortnightly centrelink payment system. Rick Morton tells the sorry story of senior public servants watering down or hiding legal advice and their political masters who didn’t want to ask too many questions, preferring to pursue a tough on welfare cheats rhetoric. Mean Streak provides a valuable document of how disastrous public policy is made, with a jaw dropping cast of bunglers, sycophants, careerists and cowards. It was only for the heroic acts of a few who took the Commonwealth to court that the system collapsed. A cautionary tale of government overreach. Mean Streak: A Moral Vacuum, a Dodgy Debt Generator and a Multi-billion Dollar Government Shake Down, by Rick Morton. Published by Fourth Estate. $35.99 Review by Chris Saliba |
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