Quarterly Essay is (in my view) a ‘must-read’ Australian publication, with a 25,000-word essay in each issue by a prominent academic or political commentator.
The last-but-one had a brilliant offering by Mungo MacCallum titled ‘Australian Story’: his attempt to fit Prime Minister Kevin Rudd into our generalized perceptions of our Australian history and ethos. Now I reckon that’s quite a challenge. I won’t spoil it for you, except to say Mungo’s critique of the PM’s personality, style, political philosophy and achievements is generally ‘favorable’. It was so good (although I personally am not much of a fan of Kevin Rudd my political philosophy results in voting Green preferencing Labor) that I bought the CD’s and we listened to them on a car trip to Sydney and back.
The current AQ [Issue 37, 2010] has six letters in response to that article, plus MacCallum’s response to the responses.
The Essay this time is by Islam’s highest-profile Australian Muslim academic, Waleed Aly (see some stuff others and I have written about his book ‘People Like Us’ and other matters Islamic-vs.-Christian here: http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/23664.htm et seq). The title: ‘What’s Right? The Future of Conservatism in Australia’.
Aly’s quite a polymath. These days he teaches at Monash University, in Melbourne, and the substance of this essay could comprise a term’s lectures on the history of Western political ideology/ies, as it/they have impacted the Australian political scene. Fascinating!
Aly doesn’t mention Islam very much, though there’s this interesting comment: ‘Abbott speaks like a man who understands what it is to belong to a once-maligned religious minority. In his recent Australian Day speech he cited the unfailingly controversial example of Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali, and followed up immediately with a reference to the Catholic Archbishop Daniel Mannix, whose statements during World War I saw calls for him to be deported’ (p. 104).
The best section, I reckon, was about climate change, and why-and-where various Liberal/National Party politicians fall ideologically on this issue.
If you can’t afford the $19-95 news-stand price (they’re only at better/larger newsagents) go to the local library on your day off and browse a few issues. The next one will have an essay by David Marr on Kevin Rudd, which will no doubt include a more trenchant critique of Rudd’s non-achievements than MacCallum’s (who wrote before the insulation debacle hit the roof (sorry) and the shelving of climate change legislation etc).
Rowland Croucher
May 2010
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