Australia Politics

In a triumph of marketing, the Tasmanian salmon industry has for decades succeeded in presenting itself as world's best practice and its product as healthy and clean, grown in environmentally pristine conditions. But what are we eating when we eat Tasmanian salmon? Richard Flanagan's expose of the salmon farming industry in Tasmania is chilling. In the way that Rachel Carson took on the pesticide industry in her groundbreaking book Silent Spring, Flanagan tears open an industry that is as secretive as its practices are destructive and its product disturbing.

Robodebt was a new debt-creation system that was used to illegally pursue close to half a million Australian welfare recipients for fake debts generated by the thousands. It was described by the Royal Commission's report as a 'massive failure of public administration' caused by 'venality, incompetence and cowardice'. Essentially, Australians were gaslit by their own government, which doggedly and knowingly concocted a program that was both mathematically wrong and illegal, just to shake down innocent people for money, then lied about it for four and a half years.

Darwin longgrassers have been living large since the beginning. They come from all over the Territory to camp in the public spaces around town, to catch up with family and friends, attend health and legal matters, holiday and shop, and drink. Especially drink. And the whitefellas don’t like it. They think they’re noisy and dirty and rude. So, they try to move them on. For 150 years they’ve been trying to move them on. But the longgrassers won’t go. Yet beneath this running battle between the settled and the free lurks an undeniable truth about colonisation that is almost Newtonian in style.

In the twilight of his career, Logan learns he has been a vessel for furthering government interests, not a rogue hitman for a band of vigilantes. The revelation destroys him. But when Jorge Romero—an investigative reporter and Logan's oldest friend—is brutally and inexplicably murdered, Logan allows his fury to deliver him from despair. With an ally in Alice Mason, a homeless witness with a target on her back, Logan goes to war. Against whom, he isn't sure, but he knows powerful forces are at work behind the scenes.

Growing Up Disabled in Australia is the fifth book in the highly acclaimed, best-selling Growing Up series. It includes interviews with prominent Australians such as Senator Jordon Steele-John and Paralympian Isis Holt.

The gripping finale to Three Crooked Kings and Jacks and Jokers brings to a close Matthew Condon's best-selling true-crime trilogy. In 1983, the soon-to-be-knighted Police Commissioner Terry Lewis continues to turn a blind eye to the operation of The Joke, a highly organised system of graft payments from illegal gambling, prostitution and illicit drugs. As the tentacles of this fraudulent vice network spread, the fabric holding together the police, judiciary and political system starts to unravel.

From one of Australia's leading Indigenous journalists comes a collection of fierce and powerful essays proving why the media need to believe Black witnesses and showcasing ways that journalism can be used to hold the powerful to account and make the world a more equitable place. Black Witness is the essential collection of First Nations journalism that we need right now – and always have.

For nearly three decades, Dr Colin Manock was in charge of South Australia's forensic pathology services. In cases of unexpected or unexplained death, it was his job to determine when a person took their final breath, and whether they had died naturally - or not. But Manock did not have the necessary training for such a specialist role, and made serious errors in several major cases. The full extent of his wrongdoing, and the exact number of cases impacted by it, remain a mystery more than twenty-five years after he retired.

Between 2013 and 2022, Tony Abbott begat Malcolm Turnbull, who begat Scott Morrison. For nine long years, Australia was governed by a succession of Coalition governments rocked by instability and bloodletting, and consumed with prosecuting climate and culture wars while neglecting policy. By the end, among his detractors—and there were plenty—Morrison was seen as the worst prime minister since Billy McMahon. Morrison failed to accept the mantle of national leadership, or to deal adequately with the challenges of natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Provoked by a half-hidden account, Ashenden sets out to understand how the story of ‘relations between two racial groups within a single field of life’ has been told and not told, in this town and across the nation. In a riveting combination of memoir, reportage and political and intellectual history, Ashenden traces the strange career of the great Australian silence.

In Sex, Lies and Question Time, former MP Kate Ellis looks at what it is really like to be a woman in Australian politics today. 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. Shocking incidents have exposed the sexism that women in politics face from opposition, the media, the public, even their own colleagues.

In the years that John Howard served in the national parliament he came to understand the special character of Australia; to appreciate its strengths and weaknesses; and most importantly to respect the sense of balance in the formulation of public policy that has long defined us as a nation and made Australia an attractive destination for people from across the world.

In 1999, Munjed Al Muderis was a surgical resident working in Baghdad when the military police marched into the operating theatre and ordered the team to mutilate army deserters. When the head of surgery refused, he was executed. Munjed's choices were stark - comply and breach the medical oath, refuse and face death or flee. That day, Munjed's life changed forever. He escaped to Indonesia and boarded a boat to Australia.

Under the cover of being designated as private correspondence, the letters 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. 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.

James Cook gilt als bedeutendster Entdecker nach Kolumbus. Freilich: Ohne Tupaia, Maheine und Mai wären seine Reisen unmöglich gewesen. Sie führten Cook in die Welt der Südsee ein, bewahrten seine Schiffe vor gefährlichen Korallenriffen und ersparten es ihm, in Neuseeland von den Maori als Eindringling massakriert zu werden.

All aboard the Scomo Express as our hero pulls back the lid on the life and times of one of history's great leaders and humbly serves up a steaming meat pie of everyman wisdom for the hungering masses. These are the unofficial chronicles of Scotty's first 18 months in his new role as head honcho of the largest marketing firm in the country - the Australian federal government - as it unfolded, completely devoid of any self-aggrandisement, doublespeak, sleight of hand or other dirty shenanigans played by the Opposition.

Navigating the Spanish Lake examines Spain's long presence in the Pacific Ocean (1521-1898) in the context of its global empire. Building on a growing body of literature on the Atlantic world and indigenous peoples in the Pacific, this pioneering book investigates the historiographical "Spanish Lake" as an artifact that unites the Pacific Rim (the Americas and Asia) and Basin (Oceania) with the Iberian Atlantic.

From the Hillsong Church to the Family First Party, Australia appears to be experiencing an evangelical revival. In the second Quarterly Essay for 2006, Amanda Lohrey investigates that revival - its shape and scope, and what it means for the mainstream churches and the nation's politics. She talks to young believers and analyses the machinations of the Christian Right. She discusses, with humour and insight, the appeal of the megachurch, the changing image of Jesus and the political theories of George Pell and Peter Jensen.

As a National Public Radio reporter covering the last stand of the Taliban in Afghanistan's southern borderland, Sarah Chayes became deeply immersed in the attempt to rebuild a broken nation. With her NPR assignment finished in early 2002, she left reporting to help turn around the country's fortunes, accepting a job running a nonprofit founded by President Hamid Karzai's brother. With remarkable access to leading players in the postwar government, Chayes witnessed a tragic, perverse turn of events.

In 1996, when Akuch Kuol Anyieth is five, her mother flees to Kakuma with her children, intent on finding safety and freedom for her family, while her husband stays behind in South Sudan to fight in the civil war. The family spends nine years in the camp, eking out an existence amidst famine, disease, unbearable heat and chronic violence. Despite their suffering, Akuch never loses hope or her sense of humour. She’s a bright student who loves learning and does well at the local school.