Her strength as a chief of staff was a sign of his weakness as a prime minister: she gave him the option of disengaging. Credlin allowed Abbott to be who he wanted to be: the good bloke, the philosopher, the weekend fire-fighter, the surfer, the orator, the man of action. If Abbott was a natural leader, it could have worked. But he lacked the most important attribute of all: judgement.Tony Abbott and his chief of staff, Peta Credlin, ran a brilliant campaign in opposition. But their approach led to disaster in government.When Abbott became prime minister, he and Credlin ruthlessly controlled ministers, backbenchers, the public service and the media. They shut out voices that questioned Abbott’s way. Everything started to unravel.Credlin & Co. is the story of a relationship that determined the fate of a government. It shows in stunning detail the disastrous consequences of power abused, and the broken people left in its wake.Aaron Patrick is the print editor of the Australian Financial Review and author of Downfall: How the Labor Party Ripped Itself Apart (2013).

    Julia Gillard had plenty of warnings, but even she lasted longer than Abbott. Abbott ignored all the warnings, from beginning to end — the public ones, the private ones, from his friends, his colleagues, the media. His colleagues were not being disloyal. They did not feel they had betrayed him; they believed he had betrayed them. Their motives were honourable. They didn’t want him to fail; they wanted the government to succeed, and they wanted the Coalition re-elected. Abbott and Credlin had played it harder and rougher than anybody else to get where they wanted to be. But they proved incapable of managing their own office, much less the government. Then, when it was over, when it was crystal-clear to everyone that they had failed, when everyone else could see why they had failed, she played the gender card while he played the victim. In The Road to Ruin, prominent political commentator, author, and columnist for The Australian Niki Savva reveals the ruinous behaviour of former prime minister Tony Abbott and his chief of staff, Peta Credlin. Based on her unrivalled access to their colleagues, and devastating first-person accounts of what went on behind the scenes, Savva paints an unforgettable picture of a unique duo who wielded power ruthlessly but not well.

    A poll fought between two wildly ambitious men who want to win their first election, whatever it takes. Mark Di Stefano finds out what is happening behind the scenes and how the two campaigns manufacture, massage and manipulate their parties, policies and principles. What a time to be alive documents the daily ride of an historic election campaign, week by long week, taking you into the bizarre world of staged photo ops, booze-drenched regrets and dirty direct messages. The exposure of the unscripted moments with political leaders, their over-worked staff and secretive minders, shows how the sausage that is this Australian election, is made and reveals what is really inside.

    A political betrayal. A constitutional crisis. The Palace Letters is the groundbreaking result of one historian’s fight to expose secret letters between the Queen and the then Australian governor general, Sir John Kerr, during the dismissal of prime minister Gough Whitlam in the 1970s. Whitlam was a progressive prime minister whose reforms proved divisive after two decades of conservative leadership in Australia. When he could not get a budget approved, it sparked a political deadlock that culminated in his unexpected and deeply controversial dismissal by Kerr.More than 200 letters between Kerr and the Queen from the period exist in the archive, and historians have long believed that they could reveal the extent to which Buckingham Palace knew about or approved of the dismissal. But until now they have remained hidden in the National Archives of Australia, protected from public scrutiny through their designation as ‘personal’.In the face of this, Professor Jenny Hocking embarked on a 10-year campaign and a four-year legal battle to force the Archives to release the letters. In 2015, she secured a stellar pro bono team that took her case all the way to the High Court of Australia. On 29 May 2020, the court ruled in her favour, requiring the correspondence to be released.Now, Professor Hocking is able to reveal the previously hidden trove of letters. And, drawing on never-before-published material from Kerr’s archives and submissions to the court, Hocking traces the collusion and deception behind the dismissal, and charts the role of High Court judges, the Queen’s private secretary, and the leader of the opposition, Malcolm Fraser, in Kerr’s actions, and any prior involvement of the Queen and Prince Charles in Kerr’s planning.

    This is economics writing at its best.From egalitarian beginnings, Australian inequality rose through the nineteenth century. Then we became more equal again, with inequality falling markedly from the 1920s to the 1970s. Now, inequality is returning to the heights of the 1920s. Leigh shows that while inequality can fuel growth, it also poses dangers to society. Too much inequality risks cleaving us into two Australias, occupying fundamentally separate worlds, with little contact between the haves and the have-nots. And the further apart the rungs on the ladder of opportunity, the harder it is for a kid born into poverty to enter the middle class.Battlers and Billionaires sheds fresh light on what makes Australia distinctive, and what it means to have – and keep – a fair go.‘A thought-provoking book which emphasises how far we have strayed from confidently discussing public policies that seek to give meaning to our egalitarian spirit.’ – Laura Tingle‘Be warned: this book will open your eyes and prick your conscience.’ – Ross Gittins

    

    They plotted. They schemed. They unleashed chaos.Australia lost two prime ministers in three years in a period of political bloodshed that took the nation's government to the brink of collapse - until an extraordinary election changed everything.Venom is the secret history of the brutal power play to lead the government. It sheds new light on the fall of Tony Abbott, the rise of Malcolm Turnbull and the electrifying leadership spill that brought parliament to a halt in August 2018. In a day-by-day account, it reveals the strategy Scott Morrison used to defeat his opponents and claim ultimate authority.David Crowe reported these events for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age as they unfolded. Using more than one hundred interviews with the participants, he tells an epic story of revenge, hatred and the ruthless pursuit of power. And he asks whether the future holds any peace when the past is so full of poison.PRAISE'David Crowe is both wise guide and sage interpreter in this gripping journey through the angry years of Australian politics' Chris Uhlmann'David Crowe writes with precision and clarity - dissecting the characters, deep rivalries and ideological wars that churned through three Liberal Prime Ministers' Patricia Karvelas'A compelling read about a time of Liberal madness' Michelle Grattan'Crowe's book is as good a piece of modern political history as you'll find. It has some failings' Dennis Atkins, The Australian'... a 21st-century contribution to the [revenge tragedy] genre' Jeff Sparrow, Sydney Morning Herald / The Age

    . .In Stop at Nothing Annabel Crabb recounts the Malcolm Turnbull story with characteristic wit and perceptiveness.Drawing on extensive interviews with Turnbull, Crabb delves into the young man's university exploits – which included co-authoring a musical with Bob Ellis – and his remarkable relationship with Kerry Packer, the man for whom he was at first a prized attack dog, and then a mortal enemy. She asks whether Turnbull – colourful, aggressive, humorous and ruthless – has changed sufficiently to entrench himself as prime minister. She tells how he first lost, and then won back, the Liberal leadership, and explores the challenges that now face him as the forward-looking leader of a conservative Coalition government.This is a memorable and highly amusing portrait by one of the country's most incisive writers.‘The most incisive portrait of Turnbull that's been written.’—David Marr

    This is the book that brings you the uncut version of The Killing Season, taking you behind the cameras to reveal the untold stories and candid moments that didn’t go to air. For the first time a more complete version of the truth is revealed.Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard dominate the drama as they strain to claim the narrative of Labor’s years in power. The journey to screen for each of their interviews is telling in itself. Rudd gives his painful account of the period and recalls in vivid detail the events of losing the prime ministership. Gillard is frank and unsparing of her colleagues.More than a hundred people were interviewed for The Killing Season—ministers, backbenchers, staffers, party officials, pollsters and public servants—recording their graphic accounts of the public and private events that made the Rudd and Gillard governments and then brought them undone. It is a damning portrait of a party at war with itself—of the personal rivalries and bitter defeats that have come to define the Rudd-Gillard era.It is also a remarkable insight into the work of Sarah Ferguson, one of Australia’s top journalists.

    Neale McShane The Birdsville police posting is one of the most remote in Australia. It can be extremely lonely and incredibly busy at the same time. Nothing might happen for weeks or months, then problems come crawling out of the woodwork.There aren't many who can handle the job for long - unless you're Senior Constable Neale McShane, who has single-handedly taken care of this beat the size of the UK for the past ten years. Recently retired from this 'hardship posting', Neale now has a stock of stories and adventures from his life and colourful times living with his family in Birdsville.In recounting these tales to his good friend and bestselling author Evan McHugh, Neale delights us with yarns that could only come from the furthest corner of our country. Here are stories of desert dangers, dead bodies, droughts and floods, drinkers and dreamers - and, of course the infamous Birdsville Races, when the town's population swells from 50 to 500.So if Birdsville has remained just a little too far off the beaten track for you, sit back and let Birdsville come to you.

     The highs and lows of Malcolm Turnbull's remarkable career are documented here in technicolour detail by journalist Paddy Manning. Based on countless interviews and painstaking research, it is a forensic investigation into one of Australia’s most celebrated overachievers, Turnbull's relentless energy and quest for achievement have taken him from exclusive Point Piper to Oxford University; from beating the Thatcher government in the Spycatcher trial to losing the referendum on the republic; from defending the late Kerry Packer - codenamed Goanna - in the Costigan Royal Commission to defending his own role in the failure of HIH, Australia's biggest corporate collapse. He was involved in the unravelling of the Tourang bid for Fairfax, struck it rich as co-founder of OzEmail, and fought his own hotly contested battle for Wentworth As Opposition leader he was duped by Godwin Grech's 'Utegate' fiasco; as the most tech-savvy communications minister he oversaw a nobbled NBN scheme. And now he has assumed the leadership of the Liberal Party for the second time after wrestling the prime ministership from first-term PM Tony Abbott. Will Turnbull crash and burn as he has before or has his entire tumultuous life been a rehearsal for this moment?

    Presenting the one and only Mr Paul Keating – at his straight-shooting, scumbag-calling, merciless best.Paul lets rip – on John Howard: “The little desiccated coconut is under pressure and he is attacking anything he can get his hands on.”On Peter Costello: “The thing about poor old Costello is he is all tip and no iceberg.”On John Hewson: “[His performance] is like being flogged with a warm lettuce.”On Andrew Peacock: “...what we have here is an intellectual rust bucket.”On Wilson Tuckey: “...you stupid foul-mouthed grub.”On Tony Abbott: “If Tony Abbott ends up the prime minister of Australia, you’ve got to say, God help us.”And that’s just a taste.

    It is a tale of ambition, of wealthy widows and marriage mistakes; of money and trade, espionage and mercenaries, hardship and illness. Beyond the facts of discovery and exploration, this book reveals the extraordinary idealism and the influence of the Enlightenment on the founding of Australia.Michael Pembroke provides a compelling portrait of Arthur Phillip. He carefully weaves together the little-known facts and projects us into life in Georgian England – a time when newly discovered territories were the road to untold wealth.‘At long last, a finely written biography of the astonishing egalitarian who became Australia’s founding father. There are gripping descriptions of his amazing sea voyages and moving accounts of the humanity he brought to the government of a penal colony that only he thought would ever become a nation. The book shows the moral vision of a man who gave history its best example of the possibility of the Reformation of the human spirit.’-Geoffrey Robertson QC‘A gripping life of a quite extraordinary man: the most important enlightenment life story that we’ve never had properly told before.’-Andrew Marr, BBC broadcaster and television host‘The colour and dash of Arthur Phillip’s extraordinary life, lived in amazing times in every corner of the world, is told just brilliantly in Michael Pembroke’s utterly absorbing book, destined to become a classic of Imperial literature.’-Simon Winchester, bestselling author and journalistMichael Pembroke is a writer, judge and naturalist. He spent much of his childhood travelling to many of the maritime ports of the colonial era. His first school was at Sandhurst in England in the grounds of a military academy and his last on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour. He completed his education at Cambridge and now lives and writes in Sydney and at the hamlet of Mount Wilson in the Blue Mountains. In 2009 he wrote Trees of History & Romance, a paean to nature and poetry. He is a direct descendant of Nathanial Lucas and Olivia Gascoigne, who arrived in Botany Bay in January 1788.

    People have the right to be bigots. I'm a fixer. Team Australia. Shirtfonting. Choppergate. Stop the boats. Coal is good for humanity. No cuts to health. Sir Prince Philip. The flags. It's all the fault of the febrile media. And that whole onion thing.In August 2013, Australia welcomed Tony Abbott as its new prime minister. This promised to be a marriage between responsible government and a nation tired of the endless drama of the Gillard-Rudd years. But then well Andrew P Street details the litany of gaffes, goofs and questionable captain's calls that characterised the subsequent reign of the Abbott government, following the trail from bold promises to questionable realities, unlikely recoveries to inexplicable own goals, Malcolm Turnbull's assurances of support to the day he pushed the Captain off his bike once and for all. And all this comes with a colourful cast of supporting characters and dangerous loons that only a nation unfamiliar with the concept of below- the-line voting could elect. Here is a unique take on a modern politics Australian style.If Game of Thrones was a deeply irreverent book about politics, then the TV series would probably not rate nearly as well. It would, however, look something like this.

    Australia was alive to the historic possibilities. Here was a new approach for a new time.It was to last three extraordinary years.This is Julia Gillard’s chronicle of that turbulent time – a strikingly candid self-portrait of a political leader seeking to realise her ideals. It is her story of what it was like – in the face of government in-fighting and often hostile media – to manage a hung parliament, build a diverse and robust economy, create an equitable and world-class education system, ensure a dignified future for Australians with disabilities, all while attending to our international obligations and building strategic alliances for our future. This is a politician driven by a sense of purpose – from campus days with the Australian Union of Students, to a career in the law, to her often gritty, occasionally glittering rise up the ranks of the Australian Labor Party.Refreshingly honest, peppered with a wry humour and personal insights, Julia Gillard does not shy away from her mistakes, as well as detailing her political successes. Here is an account of what was hidden behind the resilience and dignified courage Gillard showed as prime minister, her view of the vicious hate campaigns directed against her, and a reflection on what it means – and what it takes – to be a woman leader in contemporary politics.Here, in her own words, Julia Gillard reveals what life was really like as Australia’s first female prime minister.