Sex, Lies and Question Time: The successes and struggles of women in Australia’s parliament by Kate Ellis

$32.99 AUD

Category: #Auspol

In 2017, a survey showed zero per cent of young Australian women would consider entering politics. Zero. In a time when we critically need women in our parliament, and in a country that was an early leader in women's political participation, there is a perception that women and politics don’t mix. Shoc king incidents have exposed the sexism that women in politics face from opposition, the media, the public, even their own colleagues. And those headlines only tell half the story. In Sex, Lies and Question Time, Kate Ellis tells the sometimes enraging, often funny and incredibly honest full story of women in Australian politics today. As well as sharing the experiences of her own fifteen years in parliament, Kate has spoken to politicians from across Australia’s political spectrum, including former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Julia Bishop, Penny Wong, Linda Burney, Sarah Hanson Young and Pauline Hanson. Kate explores issues like sexism, bullying, motherhood, appearances, social media, racism, the sisterhood and, of course, sex. Most of all this book is a powerful call for Australian women to inspire to political leadership, to shape a fairer Australia – where ‘women’s issues’ are everyone’s issues. Why would a woman want to go into politics? From where most women stand, Parliament looks like a toxic boys’ club. Here, Kate Ellis bursts the Canberra bubble to reveal what life is like for our female MPs, and why it’s the best and worst job in the world.   ...Show more

See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Violence by Jess Hill

$32.99 AUD

Category: Cultural Studies

Winner of the Stella Prize 2020.    At the office of Safe Steps, Victoria's dedicated 24/7 family violence response call centre, phone counsellors receive a call every three minutes. Many women are repeat callers- on average, they will go back to an abusive partner eight times before leaving for good. ' You must get so frustrated when you think a woman's ready to leave and then she decides to go back,? I say. 'No,' replies one phone counsellor, pointedly. 'I'm frustrated that even though he promised to stop, he chose to abuse her again.' Women are abused or killed by their partners at astonishing rates- in Australia, almost 17 per cent of women over the age of fifteen - one in six - have been abused by an intimate partner. In this confronting and deeply researched account, journalist Jess Hill uncovers the ways in which abusers exert control in the darkest - and most intimate - ways imaginable. She asks- What do we know about perpetrators? Why is it so hard to leave? What does successful intervention look like? What emerges is not only a searing investigation of the violence so many women experience, but a dissection of how that violence can be enabled and reinforced by the judicial system we trust to protect us. Combining exhaustive research with riveting storytelling, See What You Made Me Do dismantles the flawed logic of victim-blaming and challenges everything you thought you knew about domestic and family violence. ...Show more

How Good is Scott Morrison? by Peter van Onselen, Wayne Errington

$34.99 AUD

Category: #Auspol

Without fear or favour, How Good is Scott Morrison? examines the trials and tribulations of our 30th prime minister. Investigating Morrison's unlikely rise to the liberal leadership and his miracle electoral win, van Onselen and Errington put his leadership under the spotlight. Covering Morrison's disas trous management of the catastrophic bushfire season that was highlighted by the extraordinary statement, 'I don't hold the hose, mate,' and the decision to holiday while the country burned, How Good is Scott Morrison? shows his resolve and the redemption the government's response to the pandemic brought him. Right now, Scott Morrison seems unassailable and sure to win the next election, but what exactly is his vision for Australia? A pragmatist rather than an ideologue, he is a deeply Pentecostal religious man but he doesn't wear his faith as a badge of honour. So what does he really believe in? When the history of this period is written, Morrison will certainly be seen as an election winner but will he be viewed as having had the courage and vision to change Australia for the better, or the worse?   ...Show more

A Liberal State: How Australians Chose Liberalism over Socialism 1926-1966 by David Kemp

$59.99 AUD

Category: #Auspol

A Liberal State- How Australians Chose Liberalism over Socialism 1926-1966 explores the revival of Australian political liberalism after the Great Depression of the 1930s and its sweeping domestic political triumph after World War II over utopian socialism. The fourth title in a landmark five-volume Au stralian Liberalism series, A Liberal State examines how Australians reasserted their claim to control their own lives, following decades of expanded government control over economic and social life, and intrusive wartime and post-war restrictions. From the 1920s Robert Menzies became the major voice for liberal thought in the nation's political life and David Kemp looks at his role in reconstructing liberal and conservative politics. The book highlights the importance of the factional struggles within the Labor Party arising from its adoption of a Socialist Objective, and the domestic and international advance of utopian socialist ideology during World War II and the Cold War. A Liberal State tells of Jack Lang's advocacy of the socialisation of industry in New South Wales in the 1930s, and of Menzies as war-time prime minister and his key relationship with John Curtin. It assesses Menzies's historic Forgotten People statement of liberal ideas, the formation of the Liberal Party of Australia, and how, after his election victory in 1949, Menzies rebuilt a liberal basis for national policy during sixteen and a half years as prime minister. ...Show more

From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia Got Compulsory Voting PB 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 book-length essay 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

The Palace Letters: The Queen, The Govenor General and the plot to dismiss Gough Whitlam. by Professor Jenny Hocking

$32.99 AUD

Category: #Auspol

What role did the queen play in the governor-general Sir John Kerr's plans to dismiss prime minister Gough Whitlam in 1975, which unleashed one of the most divisive episodes in Australia's political history? And why weren't we told? Under the cover of being designated as private correspondence, the lett ers between the queen and the governor-general about the dismissal have been locked away for decades in the National Archives of Australia, and embargoed by the queen potentially forever. This ruse has furthered the fiction that the queen and the Palace had no warning of or role in Kerr's actions. In the face of this, Professor Jenny Hocking embarked on a four-year legal battle to force the Archives to release the letters. In 2015, she mounted a crowd-funded campaign, securing a stellar pro bono team that took her case all the way to the High Court of Australia. Now, drawing on never-before-published material from Kerr's archives and her submissions to the court, Hocking traces the collusion and deception behind the dismissal, and charts the private role of High Court judges, the queen's private secretary, and the leader of the opposition, Malcolm Fraser, in Kerr's actions, and the prior knowledge of the queen and Prince Charles. Hocking also reveals the obstruction, intrigue, and duplicity she faced, raising disturbing questions about the role of the National Archives in preventing access to its own historical material and in enforcing royal secrecy over its documents. ...Show more

Cathy Goes to Canberra - Doing Politics Differently by Cathy McGowan

$29.95 AUD

Category: #Auspol | Series: Biography Ser.

Whenever anyone tells you that only the big parties or star candidates have a chance of winning a seat in federal parliament, just say 'Cathy McGowan'. Running as a community-backed independent candidate, Cathy won the previously safe Liberal seat of Indi in 2013 and again in 2016 and passed Indi on to another independent in 2019 - a first in Australian history. Cathy tells how thousands of ordinary men and women in north-eastern Victoria got together, organised themselves and made their voices heard in Canberra. ...Show more

Hoodwinked: How Pauline Hanson Fooled a Nation by Kerry-Anne Walsh

$7.50 AUD

$29.99 (74% off)

Category: #Auspol

Pauline Hanson claims to represent the average Australian but The Stalking of Julia Gillard's Kerry-Anne Walsh has discovered nothing could be further from the truth.

One Last Spin: The Power and Peril of the Pokies by Drew Rooke

$7.50 AUD

$29.99 (74% off)

Category: #Auspol

A poignant and compassionate work of literary journalism that tackles Australia's most controversial pastime. Almost 200,000 poker machines sing and flash in pubs, clubs, and casinos in every corner of the country. They're highly complex devices, their components designed by mathematicians, musicians, animators, and ergonomic experts. They're also widely considered the most harmful form of gambling, the cause of the majority of gambling addictions. So how did Australia evolve into a pokie nation? With startlingly candid interviews from gambling addicts, politicians, manufacturers, neuroscientists, counsellors, anti-gambling campaigners, and gambling advocates,One Last Spin explores how the machines work to hook people in, and the vicious fight being waged to evict them from the country's social life. It is a confronting tale about the human cost of addiction, of governments pandering to corporate interests, and of the insidious power of the industry's PR spin. ...Show more

The Road to Ruin: How Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin Destroyed their own Government by Niki Savva

$6.25 AUD

$24.99 (74% off)

Category: Politics

'There will be no wrecking, no undermining, and no sniping.' -Tony Abbott, 15 September 2015 Abbott's performances in the party-room debates on education and climate change had ranged between woeful and pathetic. He sounded desperate, he was inconsistent, and -?his colleagues thought?-?slightly ridicul ous. They knew he would never stop going after cheap headlines during soft interviews where he sucked up the oxygen, with revision and division as his calling cards. All they could hope was that people would soon grow tired of listening to him. Normal people might have, but the media grew more and more hysterical, as if a challenge were imminent. In the original edition of The Road to Ruin, prominent political commentator, author, and columnist for The AustralianNiki Savva revealed the ruinous behaviour of former prime minister Tony Abbott and his chief of staff, Peta Credlin. Based on her unrivalled access to their colleagues, and devastating first-person accounts of what went on behind the scenes, Savva painted an unforgettable picture of a unique duo who wielded power ruthlessly but not well. That edition became a major bestseller, and went on to win an Australian book industry award for the best general non-fiction book of the year. Now Savva continues where she left off. This updated edition contains a new, 13,500-word final chapter, in which Savva reveals the inner state of the Turnbull government - and the behind-the-scenes jockeying of friends and foes alike. From the mayhem of an own goal scored by Christopher Pyne, to the ramifications of Tony Abbott's ramped-up destabilisation campaign, it is, as usual, an unputdownable and impeccably sourced account. ...Show more

A Rightful Place: A Road Map to Recognition by Noel Pearson

$27.99 AUD

Category: #Auspol

Soon we will all decide if and how Indigenous Australians will be recognised in the Constitution. In this essential book, several leading writers and thinkers provide a road map to recognition. Starting with the Uluru Statement from the Heart, these eloquent essays show what constitutional recognition m eans, and what it could make possible- a political voice, a fairer relationship and a renewed appreciation of an ancient culture. With remarkable clarity and power, they traverse law, history and culture to map the path to change. The contributors to A Rightful Place are Noel Pearson, Megan Davis, Stan Grant, Rod Little and Jackie Huggins, Damien Freeman and Nolan Hunter, Warren Mundine, and Shireen Morris. The book includes a foreword by Galarrwuy Yunupingu. A Rightful Place is edited by Shireen Morris, a lawyer and constitutional reform fellow at the Cape York Institute and researcher at Monash University. ...Show more

Blackout How can energy-rich Australia be running out of electricity? by Matthew Warren

$29.99 AUD

Category: #Auspol

For 20 years Australia has been in political denial about the seismic changes occurring in the way we power our country. Successive governments continue to tell people that power prices will fall while the lights stay on. Debate is reduced to two equally preposterous narratives: coal-fired, climate chan ge indifference versus an impossibly utopian renewable energy future. This nonsense swirls around an incredulous public while power prices rise, the grid is stretched, energy becomes political poison and the earth warms. How did it come to this and how can we find our way out of this mess? Matthew Warren has worked for all sides of the energy industry, is regularly attacked for being too pro-coal and too pro-renewables, and writes without fear or favour. He has been lobbying for a national climate and electricity policy for over a decade. With an entertaining and fascinating narrative, Blackout cuts through the waffle to chart the disintegration of Australia's energy security, call out what is holding us back, and plot the way for a brighter future.  ...Show more