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Quarterly Essay

November 2012

Political Animal: The Making of Tony Abbott

By Judith Brett
Correspondence to David Marr’s Quarterly Essay Political AnimalIn Political Animal, David Marr gives us two Abbotts: Politics Abbott and Values Abbott. The first is the man of driving ambition who competes hard for the prizes of political office; the second the man who is a self-conscious conservative, defender of the monarchy, the faith and the family, and motivated by his deep religious b
The pursuit of character over substance

Junk politics

By Mungo MacCallum
Does it really matter whether Tony Abbott, some 35 years ago, punched a wall on either side of the head of Barbara Ramjan? Well, yes, it must, because Tony Abbott himself has told us so. In any sane and rational world such hi-jinks, however sexist and offensive they may appear now, would be dismissed as the excesses of youth, to be forgiven and forgotten by all but the obsessed. But it was Ab

Political Animal: The Making of Tony Abbott

By David Marr
I am not asking the Australian people to take me on trust but on the record of a lifetime and an instinct to serve ingrained long before I became opposition leader: as a student president, trainee priest, Rhodes Scholar, surf life-saver and volunteer fire-fighter, as well as a member of parliament and as a minister in a government. —Tony Abbott, to the Federal Council of the Liberal Party, 30 June 2012   PRINCE HAL   Austral

Us and Them: On the Importance of Animals

By Anna Krien
It was around midnight when I got off the tram at the last stop in Melbourne’s north. As the doors locked behind me, two men, one bare-chested, ran across the street, traffic swerving, and stood in front of the tram, arms crossed. Their eyes were opaque, faces shiny with sweat. “Take us to the city,” one yelled, while the other went around to the
Germaine Greer and 'The Female Eunuch'

The Better Self?

By Louis Nowra
It’s 40 years since Greer published her first book, The Female Eunuch, and became famous. I first read the book when it came out in paperback. By that stage, I had already read Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. I was brought up in a world of women and
Recent Books about Climate Change

Six Degrees of Apocalypse

By Clive Hamilton

Comment

By Judith Brett
Now that John Howard has finally gone, it is possible to start thinking about the future again. All through 2007, as it looked more and more likely that Kevin Rudd would lead Labor to victory, it was hard to think beyond election night. Could Howard perform a miracle af
JM Coetzee’s ‘Diary of a Bad Year’

A Masochistic Scalpel

By Barry Hill
What Happened to Community?

A Husk of Meaning

By Drusilla Modjeska
Thirty years ago or so, the word packed a punch. It's hard to imagine now. In London during the '70s, I fell in with a rather wonderful group of women who were working at community centres and community presses, and elbowing their way out of the strictures of our mother

A Turkish Tale: Gallipoli and the Armenian Genocide

By Robert Manne
During the exact time Australian troops spent in hell on Gallipoli, another event of world-historical importance was taking place on contiguous ground: the Armenian Genocide. Some contemporary scholars think that during this catastrophe, one million people wer
The Best Books for Summer

A Thinking Read

By Peter Craven
Why we're still more English than American

British Rules

By Gideon Haigh
Writing ‘Ordinary People’s Politics’

The Contours of the Everyday

By Judith Brett
The search for the next generation of public intellectuals

Our Future Thinkers

By Drusilla Modjeska
Kim Beazley has been charming mall-goers. And getting angry. And developing a knack for snappy one-liners. Is it too late?

Deserve's Got Nothing to Do With It

By John Birmingham