Laura Tingle on Modern Political Leadership

Laura Tingle on Modern Political Leadership
Author: Laura Tingle
Publisher: Black Incorporated
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2018-09-17
Genre:
ISBN: 9781760640705

In this crisp and timely essay, Laura Tingle examines political leadership in general - some profiles in courage, and cunning - as well as styles of leadership. She looks at Macron and Merkel, Keating and Obama. Tingle notes that leaders must command not only their country, but also their party. Where does this leave Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten? She observes that Turnbull came to power seeking to do the opposite of everything Tony Abbott did, but neither leader's approach has been seen as a success. Why? And what can Australia's next prime minister learn from this?

Quarterly Essay 71 Follow the Leader

Quarterly Essay 71 Follow the Leader
Author: Laura Tingle
Publisher:
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2019-09-26
Genre:
ISBN: 9780369324276

What is true political leadership, and how do we get it? What qualities should we wish for in our leaders? And why is it killing season for prime ministers? In this wise and timely essay, Laura Tingle argues that democratic leaders build a consensus for change, rather than bludgeon the system or turn politics into a popularity contest. They mobilise and guide, more than impose a vision. Tingle offers acute portraits - profiles in courage and cunning - of leaders ranging from Merkel and Howard to Macron and Obama. She discusses the rise of the strongman, including Donald Trump, for whom there is no map, only sentiment and power. And she analyses what has gone wrong with politics in Australia, arguing that successful leaders know what they want to do, and create the space and time to do it. After the Liberal Party's recent episode of political madness, where does this leave the nation's new prime minister, Scott Morrison? ''The Liberal Party has been ripped apart and our polity is the worse off for having one of its major political parties rendered largely ungovernable ... Malcolm Turnbull's fate came down to a series of judgements made not just by him, but by his colleagues, who spent much of his prime ministership failing to follow the leader and also failing in their own collective responsibility for leadership.'' -Laura Tingle, Follow the Leader

Quarterly Essay 60 Political Amnesia

Quarterly Essay 60 Political Amnesia
Author: Laura Tingle
Publisher: Black Inc.
Total Pages: 122
Release: 2015-11-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1863957863

Whatever happened to good government? What are the signs of bad government? And can Malcolm Turnbull apply the lessons of the past in a very different world? In this crisp, profound and witty essay, Laura Tingle seeks answers to these questions. She ranges from ancient Rome to the demoralised state of the once-great Australian public service, from the jingoism of the past to the tabloid scandals of the internet age. Drawing on new interviews with key figures, she shows the long-term harm that has come from undermining the public sector as a repository of ideas and experience. She tracks the damage done when responsibility is 'contracted out,' and when politicians shut out or abuse their traditional sources of advice. This essay about the art of government is part defence, part lament. In Political Amnesia, Laura Tingle examines what has gone wrong with our politics, and how we might put things right. ‘There was plenty of speculation about whether Turnbull would repeat his mistakes as Opposition leader in the way he dealt with people. But there has not been quite so much about the more fundamental question of whether the revolving door of the prime ministership has much deeper causes than the personalities in Parliament House. Is the question whether Malcolm Turnbull – and those around him – can learn from history? Or is there a structural reason national politics has become so dysfunctional?’—Laura Tingle, Political Amnesia

It's the Leader, Stupid

It's the Leader, Stupid
Author: Andrew Adonis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2021-11-02
Genre:
ISBN:

"Leadership is what matters above all in politics: everything else is secondary." Leaders dominate coverage of political history and election campaigns and there is hardly a historian or election analyst who doesn't attribute importance to leadership. But the argument of this book is different. It is that leaders are basically all that matter to the course of politics. In this incisive group portrait of many of the foremost leaders of modern states which are now democracies, from Churchill and Lincoln to Biden and Modi, Andrew Adonis analyses the fundamentals of political leadership in western politics. All the leaders in this book shaped their nations and eras in significant ways, often in their own image and through sharp conflict with rival leaders with radically different agendas. Dramatic and novel accounts of the battles between Gladstone and Marx, and Stalin and Bevin, illuminate the impact of the political struggle between rival leaders on the fate of liberty, constitutions and social and economic structures within as much as between different nations in each generation. Drawing on three decades of experience of politics and government, as historian and journalist and as a politician himself, Adonis offers a stimulating account of modern politics and many of the leaders who shaped it, for good or ill. Each essay is a nugget of insight about the extraordinary human beings engaged in one of the most central activities of modern societies : the leadership of nations.

Quarterly Essay 71 Follow the Leader

Quarterly Essay 71 Follow the Leader
Author: Laura Tingle
Publisher: Black Inc.
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2018-09-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1743820593

What is true political leadership, and how do we get it? What qualities should we wish for in our leaders? And why is it killing season for prime ministers? In this wise and timely essay, Laura Tingle argues that democratic leaders build a consensus for change, rather than bludgeon the system or turn politics into a popularity contest. They mobilise and guide, more than impose a vision. Tingle offers acute portraits – profiles in courage and cunning – of leaders ranging from Merkel and Howard to Macron and Obama. She discusses the rise of the strongman, including Donald Trump, for whom there is no map, only sentiment and power. And she analyses what has gone wrong with politics in Australia, arguing that successful leaders know what they want to do, and create the space and time to do it. After the Liberal Party’s recent episode of political madness, where does this leave the nation’s new prime minister, Scott Morrison? “The Liberal Party has been ripped apart and our polity is the worse off for having one of its major political parties rendered largely ungovernable ... Malcolm Turnbull’s fate came down to a series of judgements made not just by him, but by his colleagues, who spent much of his prime ministership failing to follow the leader and also failing in their own collective responsibility for leadership.” —Laura Tingle, Follow the Leader

Quarterly Essay 80 The High Road

Quarterly Essay 80 The High Road
Author: Laura Tingle
Publisher: Black Inc.
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2020-11-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 174382162X

Australia and New Zealand are often considered close cousins. But why, despite being so close, do we know so little about each other? And now, in the wake of COVID-19, is it time to change that? In this wise and illuminating essay, Laura Tingle looks at leadership, character and two nations in transition. In the past half-century, both countries have remade themselves amid shifting economic fortunes. New Zealand has been held up as a model for everything from privatisation to the conduct of politics to the response to COVID. Tingle considers how both countries have been governed, and the different way each has dealt with its colonial legacy. What could Australia learn from New Zealand? And New Zealand from Australia? This is a perceptive, often amusing introduction to two countries alike in some ways, but quite different in others. “Jacinda Ardern is not the first reason we have had to look across the Tasman and wonder whether there is another way of doing things . . . New Zealand – perhaps the only place in the world that has suffered isolation and the tyranny of distance more than Australia – has repeatedly jumped out of its comfort zone and changed direction harder, faster and for longer than Australia has done in the past half-century.” —Laura Tingle, The High Road

Doing Politics

Doing Politics
Author: Judith Brett
Publisher: Text Publishing
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2021-11-02
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1922330981

A brilliant collection of the best essays by award-winning writer Judith Brett, long revered by those in the know as Australia’s brightest and most astute political commentator.

The Accidental Prime Minister

The Accidental Prime Minister
Author: Annika Smethurst
Publisher: Hachette Australia
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2021-09-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 073364693X

Nine months after the spill that catapulted him to the prime ministership, Scott Morrison won the 2019 election, shocking politicians and political pundits (and, quite possibly, himself). Yet, unlike his predecessors, little was really known about the former marketing man whose hard-nosed political instincts and 'daggy dad persona' saw him become the 30th Prime Minister of Australia. Voters knew what he allowed them to see - a policy embrace of slogans like 'Stop the Boats'; his deft rebuttal of media enquiries; his love for Jen and his two daughters; that he liked to cook a curry on Saturday nights; and that his faith and the Cronulla Sharks were a big part of his life. But a man is more than sound bites and social media posts. So who the bloody hell is Scott Morrison? In this revealing biography, political journalist Annika Smethurst uncovers the man behind the headlines and slogans to show us what makes Scott Morrison tick. Taking us from his childhood, as the son of a local policeman, to a meeting that would lead to marriage to his teenage sweetheart, The Accidental PM will tell the personal and the political. There are questions about Morrison's early business career and his preselection that, when answered, will paint a clearer picture of the man leading our country and give greater insight into how he won the 'miracle' election. Whether Morrison's ego and temperament will see him falter in hard times or whether he will use the lessons of his life to end the revolving door of PMs to become one of Australia's best prime ministers is still to be discovered. But knowing the man will allow us all to know the path he will lead us on.

A Couple of Things Before the End

A Couple of Things Before the End
Author: Sean O'Beirne
Publisher: Black Inc.
Total Pages: 133
Release: 2020-02-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 174382128X

This brilliant collection mixes the storytelling originality of George Saunders and Lydia Davis with a sensibility all its own, taking the reader on an extraordinary tour of an old and a new Australia. A woman on a passenger ship in 1958 gets involved with a young, wild Barry Humphries. A man looks back to the 1970s and his time as a member of Australia’s least competent scout troop. In 1988, a teenage boy recalls his sexual initiation, out on the tanbark. In 2015, two sisters text in Kmart about how to manage their irascible, isolated mum. Then, in the near future, a racist demagogue addresses the press the day after his electoral triumph. As the cities heat up and lose their water, a lady from one of the ‘better suburbs’ makes every effort to get her family into an exclusive gated community. Outstandingly original, bitingly satirical and written in a remarkable range of voices, A Couple of Things Before the End is a powerful vision of where we are – and where we may be headed. ‘These voices, so superbly heard and rendered, threw me into fits of laughter and slyly broke my heart.’ —Helen Garner ‘Astonishing ... an inventive collection of missives from the end of history. Complicated and savage and difficult and funny and melancholy, it’s both harsh and a caress. How do we speak and write into a future? I think Sean O’Beirne is showing us one way of doing it.’ —Christos Tsiolkas ‘O’Beirne inflects his identifiably Australian characters with a darkly comic and empathetic voice ... altogether, this collection invokes [our] questionable past, ironic present and disturbing future.’ —Books+Publishing