Kevin Rudd

This year, Monash University Publishing has launched a new series called In the National Interest, authored by experts in various fields.

In The National Interest books will reflect on the issues of the day: leadership in modern politics, pandemic politics, Australia’s role in the region, and the relationship between the public service and the government of the day. However, while the answers are often complex this new series will add evidence and nuance to debates all too often rendered simplistic. In The National Interest will offer serious general readers evidence-based arguments that spark informed debate on the issues that matter.

The Case for Courage by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is one of the first seven in the series. It argues that courage is not a feeling, it's a decision to act, and that Australia needs to act courageously if we are to deal with the many problems that confront us as a nation.

Over much of the last decade, Australia's democracy has been slowly sliding into disrepair and despair. Our major national policy challenges go unaddressed. Our economic future is increasingly uncertain. And the country is becoming palpably more corrupt as we drift down Transparency Internationals' Corruption Perceptions Index. (p.1)

Rudd argues that we should not be distracted by the usual reasons: the declining calibre of the political class, the polarisation of politics, and the Balkanisation of debate through social media. The Murdoch media monopoly is a cancer on our democracy, and as anyone who's paying attention knows, he is calling for a Royal Commission into Australia's media landscape and half a million Australians have signed his petition. In the first chapters of this little book he makes a convincing case for reform of our media landscape and for its urgency. The politics of anxiety, fear and anger crowd out and overwhelm our natural sense of optimism, enterprise and generosity of spirit.

(And even if you don't read the Murdoch Press, it still sets the agenda. Why do you think the ABC is running headline stories about an an American celebrity interviewing a couple of royals completely irrelevant to Australia and its interests? It got the Royal Commission into Aged Care off the front page very quickly, eh?)

It is, BTW a decade since I reviewed Robert Manne's Quarterly Essay, Bad News, Murdoch's Australian and the Shaping of the Nation. The depressing thing is that much of what Rudd has to say in these early chapters is nothing new, only more so. The latter part of the essay, however, is a call to action. Rudd argues that Australia needs to tackle five big challenges...

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/03/10/the-case-for-courage-by-kevin-rudd/… (más)