Readings.com.au: Robert Manne

Quarterly Essay 43: Bad News: Murdoch's Australian and the Shaping of the Nation

This year has seen unprecedented scrutiny of Rupert Murdoch’s empire in Britain. But what about in Australia, where he owns 70 per cent of the press? In Bad News, Robert Manne investigates Murdoch’s lead political voice here, the Australian newspaper, and how it shapes debate.

Since 2002, under the editorship of Chris Mitchell, the Australian has come to see itself as judge, jury and would-be executioner of leaders and policies. Is this a dangerous case of power without responsibility? In a series of devastating case studies, Manne examines the paper’s campaigns against the Rudd government and more recently the Greens, its climate change coverage and its ruthless pursuit of its enemies and critics. Manne also considers the standards of the paper and its influence more generally. This brilliant essay is part deep analysis and part vivid portrait of what happens when a newspaper goes rogue.

“The Australian sees itself not as a mere newspaper, but as a player in the game of national politics, calling upon the vast resources of the Murdoch empire and the millions of words it has available to it to try to make and unmake governments.” – Robert Manne, Bad News Correspondence

This issue also contains correspondence relating to the previous issue QE42 Fair Share by Judith Brett. Correspondence relating to QE43 Bad News will appear in the next issue.

Robert Manne is professor of politics at La Trobe University and a regular commentator with the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and ABC radio and television. His most recent books include Making Trouble: Essays Against the New Australian Complacency, Goodbye to All That?: On the Failure of Neo-liberalism and the Urgency of Change, Left, Right, Left: Political Essays 1977–2005, Dear Mr Rudd: Ideas for a Better Australia (ed.) and W.E.H. Stanner: The Dreaming and Other Essays (ed.)

Making Trouble: Essays Against The New Australian Complacency

As this eloquent and important book shows, no one in Australia makes a better argument than Robert Manne.

In Making Trouble, Australia’s leading public intellectual takes aim at the “new Australian complacency”.

This is a book that will enlighten and provoke. It covers much ground – from Howard to Gillard by way of Rudd, from Victoria’s bushfires to the Apology, from Wilfred Burchett to Primo Levi.

Making Trouble includes an essay on the new Australian complacency, as well an exchange of letters with Tony Abbott, an appreciation of W.E.H. Stanner, a reflection on ways of remembering the Holocaust and an incisive analysis of the asylum-seeker issue, among others.

Goodbye To All That? On The Failure Of Neoliberalism And The Urgency Of Change

This is the first substantial book to explore what the global financial crisis means for Australia. It looks past “neoliberalism” and “economic rationalism” and asks what kind of social democracy we might hope for in the future. Are the heady days of deregulation and privatisation over? If so, where to from here?

Goodbye to All That? explains the central tenets of neo-liberalism and discusses their consequences. After the GFC, how might we rethink the challenge of climate change, of care, of quality of life more generally? What is the proper role of the market? What parts of the social fabric need to be mended to create a more sustainable, fairer Australia?

With a contribution from the prime minister, as well asleading writers in the field, this book is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the financial crisis, its social implications and potential outcomes for Australia.

Contributors: Kevin Rudd, Robert Manne, Jean Curthoys, John Quiggin, Michael Pusey, Anne Manne, David McKnight, Ian Lowe, Guy Pearse

Dear Mr Rudd: Ideas For A Better Australia

With the election of the Rudd government, there is revived interest in the nation’s future – both the challenges and the opportunities. What kind of future can we imagine for Australia?

Dear Mr Rudd offers new essays by leading Australian thinkers on the key areas of interest: climate change, indigenous affairs, the economy, human rights, education, health, the republic and much more besides.

Each essay serves up in a readable and inspiring way a set of new ideas to consider. This is not an academic contribution or a set of policy statements. Rather, at this time of national renewal, it is an invitation to debate and discussion issued by many passionate and imaginative Australians.

Do Not Disturb: The Media And Australian Politics

At a time when the Howard government has radically narrowed the national vision, the mainstream media has failed to notice or to hold it to account. Do Not Disturb offers diverse and enlightening explanations for this failure. Featuring an array of

Left Right Left

Anyone who has read one of Robert Manne's newspaper columns or one of his powerful Quarterly Essays will find here a treasure-house of thought, argument and evocation. The perfect book for anyone interested in the key political and cultural controversies of the past thirty years.

The Way We Live Now

Australia has undergone profound change in the 90s. The way we live and think has been influenced by recession, by the theories of economic rationalism, by the fall of Keating and the rise of Howard, by debates about race, the republic, the Holocaust, censorship and euthanasia. In The Way We Live Now, Robert Manne charts his response to issues which will critically define the kind of country we will inhabit in the twenty-first century.

Quarterly Essay 13: Sending Them Home: Refugees and the New Politics of Indifference

In the first Quarterly Essay of 2004, Robert Manne tells the stories of individual asylum seekers and finds in their experience the seeds of a devastating critique. Balancing sorrow and pity with a controlled anger, Manne develops a sustained argument about what could, and should, be done for the nine thousand refugees who remain in limbo on temporary protection visas. Sending Them Home also contains a groundbreaking account of conditions in the offshore processing camps on Nauru, whose operations have until now been shrouded in secrecy, and a damning forensic investigation of the recent efforts to return - frequently against their will - many of those who sought our protection and whose countries remain in turmoil. Combining ethical reflection and acute political analysis, this essay initiates a new phase in the refugee debate.

"No one ought to pretend that the unanticipated arrival of the Iraqis, Afghans and Iranians did not pose real ... problems for Australia. However these problems arose not because these people were not genuine refugees. They arose, rather, precisely because the overwhelming majority of them were." —Robert Manne, Sending Them Home

The Howard Years

A powerful collection of essays by Australia's leading thinkers on what the Howard years have meant for Australia, edited by renowned political commentator, Robert Manne. Contributors include: Mungo MacCallum, Judith Brett, Mick Dodson, Helen Irving and W