 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  Nick Bryant explains how America has always been a deeply divided country, and has little prospect of changing.
British journalist Nick Bryant has long had a love affair with the United States, a fascination that began when he was a teenager. He first visited the country in the late 1980s, armed with a student visa. He would later spend years living in New York covering the Trump presidency. Over his many decades as a journalist he has not only lived in the US, but studied its history. The Forever War mixes the personal experience of the outsider with impressive historical research. He argues that America’s current toxic political divide - a cold civil war threatening to turn hot - has strong historical antecedents. Moreover, America, Bryant argues, has never reconciled itself to its racist, fractured past. The culture war over critical race theory, he argues, is excessive. The reality is the country was built on a racist scaffolding. From enslavement, to Jim Crow, and in our own day, voter suppression. The picture Nick Bryant paints of America, past and present, is a carnival of violence and mayhem. Political assasinations, lynchings, mass shootings, children murdered at school, children unwitting killers themselves, handling guns they shouldn’t, in any rational world, have access to. And yet gun laws are deeply entrenched, in part due to a selective reading of the constitution. We often think of America as a premier global democracy, but this is a myth. In an exhaustive dissection of the electoral system, we are exposed to a deeply flawed democracy that aims more to stop people voting than encourage it. The vagaries of the electoral college system means American democracy is unrepresentative. This is a country where everything is politicised, especially cultural issues. The courts - even the supreme court - which should be impartial, are openly politicised as well. There is not much cheery news in The Forever War. Nick Bryant, a one time fan, describes leaving his New York apartment and travelling to JFK airport, but not looking back nostalgically to the Manhatten skyline, which he once thought was studded with diamonds. As the title suggests, America’s war with itself will continue on, its many historical issues unresolved. If violence does break out, Bryant suggests it won’t be a full blown civil war, but more like violent spot fires. The one half of liberal voters who believe in the evidence based law will keep the country from going off the rails. A sobering portrait of the real America so often obscured by its glossy, rich, wonderland-like side. The Forever War: America's Unending War With Itself, by Nick Bryant. Published by Viking. $36.99 Review by Chris Saliba  A short collection of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speeches.
A Message From Ukraine is a selection of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speeches, from 2019 to 2023. The speeches were chosen by Zelensky himself and he also wrote the introduction. The book first appeared in 2022 and this new edition features an additional speech, from 2023. Having watched on our television screens the horrible destruction and humanitarian disaster of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for the last two years, one might expect A Message From Ukraine to be full of grim stories from the front, unbearable tales of death and destruction. In fact, Zelensky’s speeches are warm and humane. While they may have been written to bolster morale and help Ukrainians endure the unendurable, their message has a universal appeal. Zelensky stresses that truth and dignity will be the victor in the end. There is a tone of deep empathy in Zelensky’s words - this is the voice of someone who has seen much suffering. A Message From Ukraine is more than a collection of political speeches of the day; it is a timeless book dealing with the deepest of existential themes. It shows that truth and honour can give untold strength, despite the confronting horror of war. A Message from Ukraine, by Volodymyr Zelensky. Published by Penguin. $19.99 Review by Chris Saliba  An excellent study in the Machiavellian cunning of Peter Dutton.
Lech Blaine is a Queensland writer and Journalist, whose previous work includes the memoir Car Crash and the Quarterly Essay, Top Blokes. It seems fitting that the Queenslander has been asked to take on the subject of Peter Dutton, former Queensland policeman and now leader of the Liberal Party opposition. Blaine writes a witty and entertaining biography of Dutton (or “Dutts”, as he is known to his mates), yet beneath the japes lies a bubbling anger at the more notorious aspects of Dutton's politics. His treatment of asylum seekers, minorities and the Indigenous community, to name a few. Pauline Hanson has often been an admirer of Dutton, and that perhaps will tell the reader enough. Dutton also feels most at home in the company of shock jocks like Ray Hadley, railing against so-called cultural elites like the ABC. Most of Dutton's negative attitudes Blaine traces back to his time as a policeman, where he saw the worst aspects of criminal behaviour at close hand, including violence and the sexual abuse of minors. Blaine claims that Dutton sees the world through this dark prism. Progressive lefties may want to see the best of human nature, but Dutton has seen reality for himself. Do gooders in the form of social workers and the plodding judicial system have only coddled violent criminals. Pulling back the lens and taking an historical view, the essay also traces the transformation of the Liberal Party, from highbrow Menzies, through middlebrow Howard, to lowbrow Dutton. The party once appealed to moderate, middle class Australians, but now stokes fears of xenophobia and feelings of grievance. The party has wilfully abandoned blue ribbon inner city seats, making possible their take over by Teal independents. The future strategy for the Liberals is to pick up seats in outer suburban Australia. But as Lech Blaine argues, this is unlikely to work. Bad Cop: Peter Dutton's Strongman Politics makes for a bracing read. Lech Blaine provides penetrating analysis and an historical perspective on events, with fascinating sections on Queensland culture and politics, most notably the notorious Joh Bjelke-Petersen years. The portrait that emerges of Dutton is of an almost Shakespearean villain, a modern day Iago, whispering dark suspicions into the nation's ear, yet a man destined to come undone by the mistrust and cynicism he has sown. Bad Cop: Peter Dutton's Strong Man Politics: Quarterly Essay 93, by Lech Blaine. Published by Black Inc. $27.99 Review by Chris Saliba  A tragic accident is told in harrowing, intimate detail.
In 2012, five-year-old Palestinian boy Milad Salama was scheduled to go on a school trip. His family lived in the impoverished town of Anata on the West Bank, where infrastructure such as roads and housing were of a poor quality. The bus traveled along the Jaba road - a road notorious for its safety issues. Conditions were bad on the day of travel, with an approaching storm making visibility difficult. An oncoming truck collided with the bus and seven children died. Help was late to arrive, which if it had come earlier could perhaps have saved lives. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama describes the events of that awful day. Through a brief biographical sketch of Abed Salama, Milad’s father, the reader also gets a short history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how occupation directly affects the lives of Palestinians. The genius of Nathan Thrall’s book is how it shows personal lives caught up in larger historical forces. With its focus on people and their relationships to each other, the book reads very much like a novel. A humbling book that concentrates on the pain and suffering of many Palestinian lives. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, by Nathan Thrall. Published by Allen Lane. $36.99 Review by Chris Saliba  The decline and fall of the Republican Party, as told by one of its own
Liz Cheney's memoir of her time in Congress is a surprisingly good read, a gripping minute-by-minute account of how the Republican Party fell to Donald Trump. It's a story of Republican colleagues Cheney had thought were good and decent, hypocritically supporting a man they in private loathed. Not only that, when it became obvious Trump was dangerous and a threat to American democracy, weak-kneed Republicans continued to trumpet his lies. As Cheney makes clear, Trump didn't do it on his own, he had a legion of enablers in the Republican Party. They should have known better. For non-American readers who've always marveled at how forthright American patriotism is, Cheney makes you understand why. She discusses the importance of the constitution and how America's freedoms were hard fought for. To be a patriot means putting democracy and the constitution above one's political party. An excellent insider's account from someone who has rubbed shoulders with a lot of the main players in the Republican Party, providing a stunning amount of detail, but also some fascinating thumbnail portraits. Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning, by Liz Cheney. Published by Headline. Review by Chris Saliba  Naomi Klein explores how the internet has upended the way we think.
Canadian writer Naomi Klein has spent much of her career investigating capitalism and its effects on society and culture, with a focus on the inequities it creates. Klein felt her work was distinct; readers knew what she stood for. Imagine her surprise when she started noticing online that she was being mixed up with Naomi Wolf, a writer who shot to fame with her feminist treatise The Beauty Myth in 1990. Since then Wolf has had a stellar career, but in recent years has lurched to the far right as a conspiracy theorist. Doppelganger is Naomi Klein's attempt to come to grips with this new age of online extremism. The book explores through literature, history and politics how individuals and even societies have a dark side, an almost evil twin. (Australia often gets a mention, the doctrine of terra nullius seen as a way of denying the existence of First Nations.) If we are honest, according to Klein, we are all vulnerable to this doubling and need only look in the mirror. Doppelganger starts from a flimsy premise, but spins into a fascinating and absorbing book, full of superb analysis and surprising paradoxes. Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, by Naomi Klein. Published by Allen Lane. $36.99 Review by Chris Saliba  A new biography of Rupert Murdoch concentrates on his early years.
Rupert Murdoch’s influence is ubiquitous, yet the man himself remains oddly opaque. Contradictions abound. During his university days, he toyed with left-wing politics, but soon moved to the right. He painted himself the outsider, but quickly became the establishment. As Murdoch once said candidly: “Monopoly is a terrible thing, until you have it.” Journalist Walter Marsh’s new biography of Murdoch concentrates on the mogul’s formative years in Adelaide at the helm of The News, especially its controversial coverage of the 1959 Stuart royal commission, which brought Rupert and his editor, Rohan Rivett, close to a jail term for seditious libel. The book also works as a dual biography of his father, Keith. Murdoch senior started as the editor of the Melbourne Herald and was soon engineering a series of ambitious business deals that sowed the seeds of the Murdoch empire, but left him overdrawn and overstretched. Rupert clearly inherited his father’s penchant for high stakes and risk taking. Young Rupert is a scrupulously well-researched history that examines the power of the press in the twentieth century, and its influence on politics. Rupert Murdoch remains largely elusive, yet new research shows glimpses of a man under pressure and unable to enjoy his success. Readers interested in Australian politics and publishing will find much to satisfy here. Young Rupert: The Making of the Murdoch Empire, by Walter Marsh. Published by Scribe. $34.99 Release date 1st August. Review by Chris Saliba This review first published at Books + Publishing.  Two experts explain what the Voice to Parliament will and won't do. With cartoons by Cathy Wilcox.
Indigenous leader Thomas Mayo and former ABC journalist Kerry O'Brien have come together to write this short “handbook” to the Voice to Parliament. They have kept its length short, the idea being to make it easily posted or shared. What do you get inside? It's a mix of personal stories, some history of previous referendums, a calling out of the misrepresentations about the Voice (it won't be a third chamber of parliament) and a section devoted to FAQs. A closing essay from Marcia Langton and Fiona Stanley explains how the Voice will help close the gap on Indigenous disadvantage. The final section provides some good tips for spreading the Yes message. What do we learn? The Voice will be a representative body loosely similar to ATSIC (The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission) set up by the Labor Hawke government in 1990, and dismantled by the Liberal Howard government in 2005. The world “loosely” should be stressed. If the Yes vote is successful, then the model could take any form, and change over time, according to legislation. The vexed issue of the Voice's form is really more of a procedural one. The key point is that if the Yes vote is successful, the Voice will be enshrined in the constitution. No government will be able to dismantle the Voice, ensuring continued representation from First Nations people. An accessible explainer and impassioned call to vote Yes. The Voice to Parliament Handbook, by Thomas Mayo and Kerry O'Brien. Published by Hardie Grant. $16.99 Review by Chris Saliba  Stan Grant on the British monarchy, Australia and its legacy of whiteness.
Wiradjuri man and author Stan Grant says he wrote his new book, The Queen is Dead, in an explosive burst and in real time, as events unfolded. Despite the quick writing time, there is nothing rushed or rash in Grant's book. This is a deeply considered work with not a word wasted or out of place. When Queen Elizabeth died, Grant expected there would be some discussion of the effect of colonialism and conquest on the lives of First Nations people. While many may have wished to mourn the queen, there should also have been recognition of the terrible legacy of English invasion and occupation. As a Wiradjuri man, Grant felt this personally. When colleagues and friends confessed feeling a sadness, even shedding a tear, over the queen's passing, Grant felt betrayed. Why didn't his friends consider his perspective, or that of his people's? Didn't they know the queen represented hundreds of years of oppression, suffering and violence? The major theme, you could say, of The Queen is Dead is the notion of whiteness. Whiteness as an historical phenomenon and institutional power. A whiteness that is so pervasive, at every level of society, that white people themselves don't see it. They simply see life proceeding as normal. Yet for First Nations people, everyday they are running up against whiteness – at work, in politics, in popular culture. Most importantly, in everyday life, in the endless comments on race, skin colour and heritage. While Stan Grant discusses the large philosophical issues – the weight of history, white ignorance and blindness, how these power structures crush First Nations people – the book has a deep, almost confessional vein. Grant examines his personal emotions, how they swing from hate and resentment to love and forgiveness. These sections are vulnerable and brave in trying to get across the truth of the author's experience and feelings. They make for humbling reading. Stan Grant brings his formidable mix of intellect, passion and truth-telling to a subject many may want to turn away from. Uncomfortable reading, but essential. The Queen is Dead, by Stan Grant. Published by 4th Estate. $34.99 Review by Chris Saliba |
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