Readings.com.au: John Button Prize 2009 Longlist

Seven Seasons In Aurukun: My Unforgettable Time At A Remote Aboriginal School

Paula Shaw recounts her experiences of two years teaching at the school at Aurukun in Cape York. She paints a colourful picture of life in a remote Aboriginal community in the sweltering tropics. With the place itself as much of a character as her colleagues, the traditional owners and the eccentric whitefellas who congregate in faraway places, it is a taste of the intensity of relationships in a small community.

Seven Seasons in Aurukun also offers an insight into the everyday realities of alcoholism, violence and welfare dependency in Aboriginal communities, and the struggle to make a difference in the face of such chronic problems. Yet we also see the persistence efforts of community leaders to improve their circumstances and maintain culture, and the small achievements that make the difference between survival and going under.

Seven Seasons in Aurukun is the runner up to the 2007 Iremonger Award for Writing on Public Issues.

The Henson Case

The Australian Prime Minister called them 'absolutely revolting'. Their removal from a Sydney art gallery was hailed by the Daily Telegraph as a 'Victory for Decency'. Cate Blanchett and members of the arts community claimed charges laid over them would affect Australia's cultural reputation.

Only now do we have the opportunity to hear the full story behind the Bill Henson photographs, which grabbed national attention in May 2008 when 20 images were removed from an exhibition and the photographer was investigated for child pornography.

David Marr, author of Dark Victory and the award-winning biography Patrick White: A Life, examines the pornography/art debate with exclusive interviews with Bill Henson, members of the NSW police force, child abuse campaigners and important figures in the Australian arts scene.

Quarterly Essay 34: Stop At Nothing: The Life and Adventures of Malcolm Turnbull

What does Malcolm Turnbull stand for? In Stop at Nothing Annabel Crabb tells the story of the man who would be prime minister. Based on extensive interviews with Turnbull as well as those who have worked with him, this is an essay full of revelations. Crabb delves into young Malcolm’s university exploits – which included co-authoring a musical with Bob Ellis – and his remarkable relationship with Kerry Packer, the man for whom he was at first a prized attack dog, and then a mortal enemy. She asks whether Turnbull – colourful, aggressive, humorous and ruthless – has what it takes to re-invigorate the Australian Liberal Party in the wake of John Howard. She discusses his vexed relationship with Kevin Rudd, and the looming presence of Peter Costello. This is a scintillating portrait by one of the country’s most incisive reporters.

“How would Australia be different if he were prime minister? What are his most closely held policy convictions? I asked dozens of Malcolm Turnbull’s political colleagues this question, asking them to name three. Many of them had to pause before responding. ‘You’ll have to excuse me. I’m eating some chocolate,’ was the best initial response, from a Liberal on the other end of a phone line.” ANNABEL CRABB, STOP AT NOTHING

Annabel Crabb is the Sydney Morning Herald’s political sketchwriter and appears regularly on ABC TV’s Insiders. She is the author of Losing It: The Inside Story of the Labor Party in Opposition (2005).

The Times Will Suit Them

For over a decade John Howard took advantage of international crises and local anxieties to not only stay in government, but to radically reshape Australian public life. The Times Will Suit Them digs behind the headlines to explain the success of Howard's radical new conservatism. It shows how the Howard government and its small legion of culture warriors responded to deep changes engendered by two decades of economic reform by importing moral agendas from the US. The result was a brand of deeply postmodern' conservatism which undermined much that traditional conservatives hold dear. From Hansonism to children overboard to the intervention in the Northern Territory and beyond, The Times Will Suit Them offers a fresh and provocative analysis from two Young Turks. It is compelling reading for anyone seeking to understand the drivers in contemporary Australian politics.

The Land Of Plenty: Australia In The 2000s

The book that tells the story of Australia today: how we got here, and where we’re going. A blistering exposé and manifesto for every Australian.

Australia, Davis argues, is built on a dream. A unique democratic experiment, we were once world leaders in developing a uniquely pluralist society. But this has become a dream unfulfilled; a dream betrayed. This book will tell the story of how we have gone backwards and betrayed our national ethos, why this has happened, and how to rebuild it.

Unlike other recent books on Australia today, this will be written entirely from the perspective of suburban Australia. Like Donald Horne’s seminal The Lucky Country, this book assumes that the suburb is the fundamental social unit of Australian society and that all political change will be measured in terms of the anxieties and aspirations of the millions of Australians who live there, either in major cities or increasingly suburbanised country towns.

The Land of Plenty will look at how Australians lived under Howard’s leadership, and through the broader set of global and historical changes that Howard represented. Rather than being a 'book of the left', it will be a book in which every major constituency in Australia has its point of view and attitudes represented in their own terms, with the whole forming an argument about what the nation might become.

Denial: History Betrayed

Denial is the first book to draw together the ideological and psychological elements involved in historical denial.

Tony Taylor surveys major cases in twentieth and twentyfirstcentury historical denial that illustrate the nature of prejudice and how it relates to techniques of the instigators of denial, including their use of popular media and the Internet. Among the issues canvassed are denial and the Armenian atrocities as a governmental phenomenon; Holocaust denial in Australia and overseas as a racist phenomenon; Stalinist denial by Marxist historians post1945 as an ideological phenomenon; Japanese ultranationalist denial from the 1960s to date as a cultural phenomenon; Serbian denial of 1990s Balkan atrocities as an ethnic phenomenon, and others. At a time when most debates seem to accept the arguments of the deniers at face value the book will focus on the pathology of denial as an abuse of history through wilful distortion of events and eager selfdeception.

Denial is also now a major online industry: hate/denial/conspiracy sites have proliferated in the past ten years, a development complicated by new technological developments such as blogging, the strategic diversion of readers from apparently legitimate sites to racist sites, and the jamming of mainstream sites with denial messages.

Many of those involved in debates about denial take the view that it is a legitimate alternative set of opinions about the past, rather than a politically and/or racially motivated distortion of events. Or, they believe that, notwithstanding the loopy parts, deniers have something valuable to say. Denial challenges that view.

Associate Professor Tony Taylor is Director of the National Centre for History Education at Monash University. He has published in the areas of higher education policy, regional and rural education, professional development for teachers and history education. In 19992000 he directed the Australian government's National Inquiry into the Teaching and Learning of History in Australian Schools and was author of the Inquiry's report The Future of the Past. His report led to the establishment of the Commonwealth History Project (200106) and the National Centre for History Education.

Blind Conscience

This profoundly moving book reveals the untold story of the people who struggled to get asylum seekers out of detention and change government policy. Lateline journalist Margot O’Neill, who covered many of these stories while they were happening, paints a compelling and heartbreaking picture through an extraordinary cast of characters. Some, like Petro Georgiou, Julian Burnside and Phillip Ruddock, are very well-known. Others are not famous but simply felt compelled to follow their consciences and act to help desperate people in desperate situations, often to the detriment of their personal well-being.

The Racket

A generation ago in Australia, abortion was a crime. It was also the basis of one of the country's most lucrative and longest-lasting criminal rackets.

The Racket describes the rise and fall of an extraordinary web of influence, which culminated in the landmark ruling that made abortion legal, and a public inquiry that humiliated a powerful government and a glamorous police force.

With forensic skill and psychological subtlety, Gideon Haigh brings to life a story of corruption in high places and human suffering in low, of murder, suicide, courtroom drama, political machinations, and of the abortionists themselves: among them a multi-millionaire philanthropist, a communist bush poet, a timid aesthete and a bankrupt slaughterman.

It is the story, too, of Bertram Wainer, abortion's crash-through-or-crash campaigner, and the moral issue he bequeathed which still divides Australians.

Politics, Parties and Issues In Australia: An Introduction

A clear, concise and lively introduction to politics, the political parties, and some crucial policy issues in contemporary Australia. Includes discussion of very recent events including Barack Obama’s election to the US presidency.

Politics is introduced as being part of our everyday lives and is approached broadly, on the premise that it is about the clash of different ideas and interests and the passions involved in this should not be drained in an unrealistic quest for ‘objectivity’. Rather, expression of views should be encouraged, including to help open up questions, and to provoke expression of different views.

The Clean Industrial Revolution: Growing Australian Prosperity In a Greenhouse Age

'A passionate and informative demonstration of how mitigating climate change can be compatible with economic growth' - Professor Ross Garnaut, the Garnaut Climate Change Review 'Humanity' s greatest challenge is to minimise the consequences of climate change. With challenge comes opportunity. This book is about opportunity.' - Professor Peter Doherty, Nobel prize winner 'A fascinating and provocative insight into how business can make the most of the environmental challenge.' - Geoffrey Cousins, business leader and author The world is in the midst of a seismic shift in the way we generate energy and grow economic prosperity. Since the first industrial revolution we've been burning carbon to run our lives, but climate change and dwindling supplies of oil are now forging a new clean industrial revolution which will end our reliance on carbon for good. So where does Australia's economic future lie in this rapidly changing world? In this compelling book, climate scientist and economist Ben McNeil demonstrates the immense economic opportunities which will open up if Australia leads the new clean industrial revolution. He shows how investing, commercialising and exporting the new fuels, materials and technologies for the twenty-first century will boost economic prosperity as well as environmental sustainability. In a world craving clean energy, nations and businesses who are clever and courageous enough to embrace the change will thrive.

Tasmania's Wilderness Battles

Tasmania's old-growth forests, its wild, untamed rivers and its remote, rugged mountain peaks are etched in the minds of most Australians but these wilderness areas have been the focus of bitter conflict between government, big business and environmentalists for the past 30 years. Although told mostly from an environmentalist's point of view, this book is a factual record of events.

Beginning in the 1970s with the flooding of Lake Pedder, it takes the reader through the heady days of the Franklin River blocade and the more recent battles for Tasmania's old-growth forests, culminating with today's controversial proposal for the Gunns pulp mill in the Tamar Valley. Unfolding events reveal something of how politics is done in the island state and why a climate of suspicion and mistrust persists among the various interest groups. These battles also have had ramifications for the whole of Australia. They have played a defining part in the shaping of the Green party as well as The Wilderness Society and The Australian Conservation Foundation.

Never before has Tasmania been examined through the prism of conflicting values over wilderness. This approach shows what influence this single issue has had upon Tasmania's recent history.

The Godfather: The Life Of Brian Burke

Once touted as a future prime minister of Australia, former WA premier Brian Burke has had a rollercoaster political career. This is the first major biography of this charismatic and influential politician who even out of power and disgraced, pulls the political strings in WA and beyond.

As premier, Brian Burke was one of the key players behind the mineral boom that became the infamous WA Inc in the 1980s. After a high profile inquiry, he was jailed for corruption in 1994 for and then again in 1997. Most men would have sought a quiet life after losing their reputation in this fashion, but Brian Burke became a ruthless behind the scenes powerbroker in WA politics, business and unions. With his capacity to deliver fundraising largesse to the ALP, his control over pre-selections, and a cadre of mafia-like devoted supporters, Brian Burke became the Godfather of WA politics. As the Corruption and Crime Commission steadily closed in on him he fled to Ireland, but his fingerprints are still all over WA politics.

Quentin Beresford tracks the rise, fall, resurrection and then collapse of the man in the Panama hat, asking what it is in Burke's personality, the nature of Labor factionalism and the WA business community that has allowed him to obtain such power and influence.

'Beresford pulls off what might have seemed an unattainable goal; shedding light on the enigma that is Brian Burke without either caricaturing him or being thrown off balance by his undoubted magnetism.' - Carmen Lawrence, former WA Premier and Federal ALP parliamentarian

Now Or Never

Tim Flannery's Quarterly Essay was a national bestseller. Now or Never combines this landmark essay with nine responses to it by leading figures, and Flannery's reply. The result is an essential short book about the most urgent issue of our time.

Includes responses from Peter Cosier, Richard Branson, David Foster, Geoff Russell, Alanna Mitchell, Ian Lowe, Barney Foran, Barrie Pittock and Gwynne Dyer.

"With scientific gravitas, complemented by a skilful use of layman's language, Tim Flannery paints a serious picture of the planet's future." - Richard Branson

To The Bitter End: The Dramatic Story Of The Fall Of John Howard And The Rise Of Kevin Rudd

On 24 November 2007 Australia resoundingly changed government. If you think you know what really happened during that tumultuous year behind the closed doors of the Liberal Party, in the back rooms of the ACTU and deep in the campaign war room of the Labor Party, think again.

2007 was a year to remember in Australian politics. It saw the dramatic fall of John Howard and the unexpected rise of Kevin Rudd. It saw the Liberal Party buckle under the inertia of incumbency and the Labor Party find new discipline and energy. It also saw the union movement at the centre of the most effective and powerful political campaign in years.

This is the story of that year. It is about faltering ambition, driving ego, confidences lost and gained. It is about friends and enemies, truth and deception, humiliation and triumph.

With unprecedented access to the key players and countless hours of confidential interviews Peter Hartcher's To the Bitter End is a penetrating, riveting and above all revealing exploration of a year when the political stakes had never been higher.

The Statute Of Liberty: How Australians Can Take Back Their Rights

The Australian people emerged from a polyglot mixture of nationalities and other races: a kind of human minestrone. Not only a race, but a race apart, thanks to the kindness of distance. What distinctive moral vision have we attained from the struggles and sacrifices of our forebears? If we are to preserve the part of our heritage to do with freedom, we must write down the entitlement of every citizen in a way that politicians and public servants will respect. That means they must be turned into law. If they are not capable of legal enforcement then they are not 'rights', they are empty promises. The Australian Attorney General is expected to announce a commission to examine the case for an Australian Bill of Rights in December 2008, on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It will be next year's big controversy and a huge political decision for the Rudd government. This short book by Geoffrey Robertson QC is sure to become the primer for this debate. He puts the case for an Australian Bill of Rights cogently and dramatically, proving with evidence from other countries how a statute of liberty helps ordinary citizens and improves standards of governance and public services. He exposes the lies and urban myths the Australian people face from opponents of the bill, and shows how the charter he has drafted reflects the history and real contemporary values of Australians. This is a provocative argument for change, which explains that real democracy only exists if politicians give the courts power to defend citizens against abuses of their human rights by governments and public servants.

Black Politics: Inside The Complexity Of Aboriginal Politics

Drawing on extensive interviews with activists and politicians, Black Politics explains the dynamics of Aboriginal politics. It reveals the challenges and tensions that have shaped community, regional and national relations over the past 25 years.

Why do Aboriginal communities struggle so hard to be heard in mainstream politics? How do remote and urban communities respond to frequent dramatic shifts in federal and state Aboriginal policies?

Since the early 1990s Aboriginal Australia has experienced profound political changes with very real and lasting implications, from the Mabo land rights case in 1992, to the abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) in 2005, to more recent attempts to reduce the autonomy of remote communities. Sarah Maddison identifies the tensions that lie at the heart of all Aboriginal politics, arguing that until Australian governments come to grips with this complexity they will continue to make bad policy with disastrous consequences for Aboriginal people.

Based on original interviews with influential Aboriginal leaders including Mick Dodson, Tom Calma, Alison Anderson, Jackie Huggins, Warren Mundine and Larissa Behrendt, Black Politics seeks to understand why Aboriginal communities find it so difficult to be heard, get support, and organise internally. It also offers some suggestions for the future, based on the collective wisdom of political players at all levels of Aboriginal politics.

'Sarah Maddison has brought together a formidable range of Indigenous voices and sources and placed their narratives within an analysis to show the depth and complexity of Indigenous cultural and political expression.' - From the foreword by Pat Dodson

Sarah Maddison is Senior Associate Dean in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of NSW. She is coeditor of Silencing Dissent and coauthor of Activist Wisdom.

Quarterly Essay 32: On The US Election: American Revolution

Where were you when America elected Barack Obama? Kate Jennings was in New York, eyes wide open, completing her take on an amazing time: “the run-up to the election … a time when every day felt like a year and we became slightly crazed from worry but also mesmerised, unable to switch off the cable news stations, obsessively tracking the DOW, VIX, LIBOR spreads, polls in red states. So much at stake.”

American Revolution is a dazzling and perceptive look at the United States between hope and despair: an election-year kaleidoscope. Jennings describes how and why the US economy fell off a cliff and how an apparently endless run of primaries and an increasingly rancorous campaign culminated in a world-changing victory. She surveys the characters – Obama, Palin, McCain and the Clintons – and conveys the concepts – derivatives, bailouts and moral hazard. This is an essay that shows America in fascinating flux: it is witty and poetic, acute and evocative.

Kate Jennings is a poet, essayist, short-story writer and novelist. Both her novels, Snake and Moral Hazard, were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. She has won the ALS Gold Medal, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and the Adelaide Festival fiction prize. In the 1990s, she worked as a speechwriter on Wall Street. Stanley and Sophie, a memoir of life in New York City where she has made her home for the past three decades, was published in 2008.

A Question Of Power: The Geoff Clark Case

A gripping courtroom drama and a fearless work of investigative journalism, A Question of Power is the story of a man who spent his life gaining power only to be accused of its ultimate abuse.

Geoff Clark was once the most powerful Aboriginal man in Australia. As chairman of ATSIC he was at the pinnacle of his career when, in 2001, newspaper reports revealed that four women accused him of rape. The crimes they described were brutal – but the claims, dating back to the 1970s, were difficult to test.

In A Question of Power, Michelle Schwarz interviews the key players in the case: Clark, the women who accused him, their respective supporters and lawyers. She digs deep to show the story behind the case and explores the hard questions it raises. Was this a case of trial by media? Was there more to the story than the first reports suggested? What do we really know about Geoff Clark?

Quarterly Essay 30: Last Drinks: The Impact of the Northern Territory Intervention.

In June it will be a year since the Northern Territory intervention was announced. In Quarterly Essay 30, Paul Toohey offers a definitive account of how it came about and what it has achieved. In this riveting piece of reportage and analysis, Toohey examines the wholesale attempt to change an entrenched way of life. He takes a perceptive, at times humorous, look at the encounter between outsiders – doctors, police, military and bureaucrats – and Territory Aboriginals. He unpicks the rhetoric of emergency and assesses the reality of change. What has the intervention achieved? Have children been saved? Will Labor continue with it? What will happen to the lost generations of Aborigines? Is the intervention a new form of paternalism? What are the reasons for the social crisis – the neglect and the violence – and how might things be different?

Howard's End

From the co-writer of John Winston Howard, the definitive biography of the Prime Minister, comes Howard's End, which takes us behind the scenes of both parties on the announcement of the election campaign.Peter van Onselen and Phillip Senior have been offered unprecedented access into the Liberal and Labor camps as John Howard and Kevin Rudd prepare to fight the battles of their careers. In one camp is the most experienced politician in the country who has, since the start of 2007, faced some of the toughest opinion polls in his life in the other is a rookie politician who seems unable to put a foot wrong.Will the combination of a jaded electorate and an 'it's time' mentality translate into success for the ALP on polling day?Whoever wins the election, and in the tradition of Pamela Williams' The Victory, Howard's End will chronicle, analyse and make sense of the result, and its far-reaching implications for the people of Australia.