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Cargando... Australian story : Kevin Rudd and the lucky countrypor Mungo MacCallum
   Ninguno Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro.  shawjonathan | Dec 4, 2009 |  sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
Pertenece a las seriesQuarterly Essay (Nº 36)
In Australian Story, Mungo MacCallum investigates the political success of Kevin Rudd. What does he know about Australia that his opponents don't? This is a characteristically barbed and perceptive look at the challenges facing the government and the country. MacCallum argues that the things we used to rely on are not there anymore. On the Right, the blind faith in markets has recently collapsed. The Left lost its guiding light with the demise of the socialist dream. In entertaining fashion, MacCallum dissects the myths that made Australia: the idea of the Lucky Country, with endless pastures, a workingman's paradise, a new Britannia, and more. In newly uncertain times, MacCallum argues, Rudd has sought to tap into these myths, in the process reclaiming them from John Howard. Australian Story is both a canny assessment of the Rudd government's election - winning approach and a broader meditation on the nation's core traditions at a time of major change and challenge. ''Rudd has made it clear that he is looking forward to a long time in office ... If the polls are to be believed, he is still seen as the best man for the job by an overwhelming majority of Australians. But why? What is it about this repetitive, boring, God - bothering nerd that appeals to the proverbially laid - back, cynical, disengaged public?'' - Mungo MacCallum, Australian Story This special Christmas issue also includes Robert Manne's Quarterly Essay Lecture, Is Neo - Liberalism Finished? No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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This essay is mainly interested in the nature of Kevin Rudd's appeal to voters. It discusses policy, of course. It also quotes poetry, mainly bush verse, including a savage parody of 'Clancy of the Overflow':
He was poisoning the water when he chanced upon a slaughter
So he joined in patriotically to massacre and rape
And he sees the vision splendid of the native problem ended
and a land made safe for cattle from Tasmania to the Cape.
It takes the odd potshot at contrarian rightwing columnists. It produces some fabulous quotes, including for example a definition of a modern progressive as 'a fella that stumbles forward every time somebody shoves him'. (Sadly there are no footnotes, so we often don't know what wits are being quoted – I'm guessing Mungo himself did the Paterson parody.)
That is to say, there's a lot to enjoy. There's also substance – of an airy sort. It discusses Rudd's policies, and his largely successful response of the Great Recession (as Robert Manne calls it later in the book), but mainly it argues that he taps into some deeply held myths about what it means to be Australian – egalitarianism, fairness, the larrikin–dutiful citizen dichotomy, that reluctant progressiveness, 'fervent, if understated, nationalism'. 'For all his nerdiness and prolixity,' MacCallum concludes,
there is something very Australian about him, and the voters recognise it. In a totally unexpected way, Rudd has given them back their Lucky Country – and this time not in a spirit of irony, but one of self-belief.
Hmmm ... But I enjoyed the ride.
This issue also includes the 2009 Quarterly Essay Lecture, 'Is Neo-Liberalism finished?' a search for the meaning of the Great Recession by Robert Manne. The lecture isn't as much fun as the title essay, covers some of the same ground, occasionally manages to be incomprehensible when explaining how the Great Recession came about. Where MacCallum takes cheerfully bitter potshots, Manne eviscerates in earnest.
And then there's correspondence about Noel Pearson's Radical Hope which over all confirms that Pearson's conversation is mainly with conservative white leaders, but also shows him as eager to do more than simply pontificate as a lone voice. (