Stephen Mills, The Professionals: Strategy, Money and the Rise of the Political Campaigner in Australia, Black Inc, Collingwood, 2014 In any arena a mix between competition and technology is likely to result in growth. The demand for political professionals in Australia has been amplified by an obvious contest between the two major parties, while technology has helped in researching voter preferences, promoting political messaging and easing campaign coordination to service the political professional’s ultimate goal – electoral success. A clear distinction between a professional and amateur is of course pay. But the type of service is key. In 1915 Archibald […]

“Show me a young Conservative and I’ll show you someone with no heart,” supposedly said Winston Churchill. “Show me an old Liberal and I’ll show you someone with no brains.” Today it’s common to hear that young Australians aren’t interested in politics. This coincides with a perceived weariness toward democracy not just in Australia but supposedly increasing across the Western world. Certainly, the unique benefits of Australia’s formal institutions, from the rule of law to parliamentary democracy, don’t always invite tender reflection among a young population charging ahead with unprecedented affluence and opportunities. Promoting national icons like the Australian Flag, […]

Having worked as a young professional in the South Pacific I’ve often been impressed at the commercial success of some minority groups. It’s clear some groups have, under far from ideal economic and political conditions, managed to build success and wealth from virtually nothing. In some cases this has happened in just under a generation. In the late 1800’s the British began shipping Indians to work as indentured laborers on Fiji’s sugar cane plantations. Life in these early years was tough – near suffocating humidity and grinding hours don’t suggest comfortable conditions or a bright future. But today the Indo-Fijian […]

Allen West, Guardian of the Republic, Crown Forum, New York, 2014 ‘George Bush doesn’t care about black people,’ said Kanye West awkwardly during the Hurricane Katrina appeal. Observing the United States from afar one often hears she is ‘a nation of contrasts.’ Only in America, Chris Rock suggested a few years ago, can the best golfer be a black guy, the best rapper a white guy and the tallest basketball player a Chinese guy. A contrast, therefore, between narrow-minded commentary and a serious assessment of America’s current state of affairs is unsurprising. Former Republican Congressman Allen West’s memoir Guardian of […]

Being a great fan of the American economist Thomas Sowell I recently purchased and read his autobiography A Personal Odyssey. It’s interesting to read about the experiences that shaped, in my view, one of the most prolific living economists around today. Sowell, almost 90 years old, has written over 50 books on economics, politics, and legal and social issues. But what makes him unique is how he unpacks and places complex issues at the feet of general readers. This skill, he notes, was built after receiving tough but warranted criticism of his early fictional writing. ‘Once I realized how little I knew about writing,’ […]

It’s no surprise that many would like to be as good at basketball as Kobe Bryant or at golf as Tiger Woods. And it’s equally no surprise that this isn’t possible. But there’s one way to make us ‘more equal’ and that’s to make those better off much worse. To continue with sports, for example, let’s say we limit the amount of time Bryant and Woods train each day. This would disrupt their performance and, in doing so, reduce the gap between our abilities. But the objective has been achieved – we’re now more equal (although still a great deal […]

The late Senator Neville Bonner (1922-99) was Australia’s first federal Aboriginal Parliamentarian, serving in Australia’s federal Senate from 1971 to 1983. I decided to dust off Bonner’s story in a recent Australian magazine because his life and political success is a classic conservative example of rallying around principle over complexion. What’s often brushed aside in the reflections of Bonner is that he was a member of Australia’s Liberal Party – Australia’s equivalent of the GOP. While the political contexts in the United States and Australia clearly differ, Bonner’s journey has familiar appeal to black conservative politics in America – facing […]

Kim Carr, A Letter to Generation Next: Why Labor, Melbourne University Press, 2013 Australian Senator Kim Carr’s A Letter to Generation Next: Why Labor is a rare addition the shallow pool of books encouraging young Australians to be more involved in politics. Carr – a federal Senator for Victoria since 1993 – clearly sees much more of a role for government in his appeal for the next generation to join the Australian Labor Party’s cause. The role of government, Carr recalls in George Black’s words from the New South Wales Chamber in 1891, is to “make and unmake social conditions.” […]

Theodore Dalrymple, The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World, Monday Books, 2012 ‘The most decisive thing that’s happened in my political lifetime,’ said John Howard in a 2009 interview, ‘is the collapse of Soviet imperialism. It dwarfs anything else.’ This is significant from Howard, whose political life covers nearly half a century. His observation, however, is lost on a generation of younger Australians. Certainly, oppressive regimes exist today but are fewer in number, while command and control economics have been trounced by liberal market capitalism and globalisation. For anyone under forty the idea of growing up on […]