George Megalogenis

The book is fast-paced and very informative. I really like that fact that it is so easy to understand even for someone who did not come from Australia and only had basic understanding of recent events in Australian history. I now understand Australian politics much better after reading this book. Highly-recommended

Fairly interesting history of Australian rules football, intertwined with personal reminiscences and culminating in a retelling of the on- and off-field buildup to the Tigers' 2017 premiership. The title is misleading, though; the political parallels are fairly tenuous, and the book doesn't mount any kind of argument until the (brief) conclusion, which itself doesn't go much further than the obvious platitudes about the failings of 21st-century political leadership.

ike everyone else, I’m trying to make sense of the Australian election results: there’s a bigger picture here, and it’s a real shame that the first act of the ABC’s new MD is to axe the online edition of The Drum, which provided a place for intelligent opinion from outside the usual ossified media sources.

Published in March 2016, this essay Balancing Act, Australia between Recession and Renewal was written before the election and it makes interesting reading now. As we can see, our show more political commentators are scrambling to deal with what amounts to paralysis while we wait to see if we end up with a majority government emasculated in more ways than one, a minority government governing either with some sort of negotiated agreement or at the whim of the independents, or *shudder* utter chaos. But back in March Megalogenis was reminding us of the media’s role in the national conversation that Australia has to have, about how we manage the economy in the wake of the mining boom, the birth of the Asian century and out-of-control globalisation. We weren’t having that conversation when Abbott’s Hockey budget was shredded; it was analysed by our media as a failure of marketing, a problem they thought would be solved by the delivery of a new salesman, i.e. Malcolm Turnbull.

And now in the election results we see the results of media and political failure to read the tea leaves…

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/07/05/balancing-act-quarterly-essay-by-george-mega... show less

Sure to become one of the definitive guides on this period of modern Australian history. Megalogenis combines his skills as an economist and journalist to analyse the Australian landscape of the past 20 years, explaining why the electorate has made the decisions it has, and giving meaningful insights into the men we elect to govern us.

This is a very even-handed book, with the author mainly letting the two main 'characters' - Keating and Howard - speak for themselves, often allowing them to show more to show their own mendacity and backflips.

A book that should be read by all Australian in the lead up to the election. Sadly, most Australians would care about, let alone understand, the message in this book. show less