At the NSW state election in 2011, the public turned on the 16-year-old Labor administration with unprecedented fury. The Government that had won spectacular victories in 1999 and 2003 was defeated with a swing that was an Australian postwar record. How did it manage to stay in power for four terms? What were its achievements and why did things unravel so badly?In From Carr to Keneally respected experts analyse the four terms of Labor government in NSW: the premiers and th...

The first biography of Australia's first female Prime Minister.Julia Gillard has always been an exceptional figure in Australian politics, widely admired by her adversaries as well as in the electorate. And now she is also an exceptional figure in Australian history: the first woman to be this country's Prime Minister.The path to power has been far from smooth. Gillard's career has been marked by pitched battles with jealous rivals and powerful factions. But ...

In this urgent essay, George Megalogenis argues that Australia risks becoming globalisation’s next and most unnecessary victim. The next shock, whenever it comes, will find us with our economic guard down, and a political system that has shredded its authority.Megalogenis outlines the challenge for Malcolm Turnbull and his government. Our tax system is unfair and we have failed to invest in infrastructure and education. Both sides of politics are clinging defensively to an old mo...

Casebooks in business history are designed to instruct students in classrooms and boardrooms about the evolution of business management. The first casebook for the study of business history in a Canadian context, Joseph E. Martin's text will help students, both in the classroom and the boardroom, understand the Canadian economy and guide them in making sound decisions and contributing to a healthy, growing economy.Thirteen original case studies from the mid-nineteenth to the twenty...

No Australian prime minister has had to face such a difficult and challenging political environment as did Julia Gillard. Her impressive legislative record was overshadowed by pitched battles with jealous rivals and a remarkably hostile media, as well as her own struggles to communicate effectively with the public.Following her successful The Making of Julia Gillard, award-winning biographer Jacqueline Kent analyses our first woman prime minister's tumultuous term in offic...

Dick Smith takes on the hot topic of our times, arguing that Australian and global population growth carries enormous risks, dangers that none of our political parties is prepared to address.In 2011 the world's population exceeded 7 billion. Each year we add nearly 80 million people and by mid-century we will require twice as much food and double the energy we use today. Australia will be deeply affected by these trends - we have the fastest growing population of a...

In Trivial Pursuit George Megalogenis considers Australia's political dead zone.The Hawke, Keating and early Howard years were ones of bold reform; recently we have seen an era of power without purpose. But why? Is it down to powerful lobbies, or the media, or a failure of leadership, or all of the above? And whatever the case, how will hard decisions be taken for the future?In Trivial Pursuit, Megalogenis dissects the cycle of polls, fo...

Australians once trusted the democratic process. While we got on with our lives, we assumed our politicians had our best interests at heart.Not anymore. That trust has collapsed.Mark Latham joined the Labor Party in the late 1970s hoping to improve people's lives through parliamentary service. Twenty-five years later, the Opposition Leader ended up as disillusioned as the rest of us. The scorching honesty of ***The Latham Diaries***ensured he'd burned his political bridges,...

A jaw-dropping account of how one company came to own every poker machine in the state of Tasmania – and the cost to democracy, the public purse and problem gamblers and their families.The story begins with the toppling of a premier, and ends with David Walsh, the man behind MONA, taking an eccentric stand against pokie machines and the political status quo.It is a story of broken politics and back-room deals. It shows how giving one company the licence to all the poker mac...

Jim Sillars argues convincingly that the referendum gives the Scottish people the power to create a better country, helps renew our belief in socialism as the answer to the economic and social crisis facing the country, and challenges the idea in the Yes campaign that independence means “change but no change” and that a Yes voter endorses Alex Salmond and the SNP. There is a far more radical road, with better policies than those Salmond is offering in the first independence elections in 20...

Did the Chiko Roll change Australian history?As a matter of fact, yes. Efforts by the reviled US company IT&T to take over the company making the Roll in the early 1970s marked a turning point in Australian foreign investment policy. And this is just one of the strange twists and turns in the buying and selling of Australia.Takeover is an authoritative, engaging account of the history of foreign investment in Australia – both the economics and the ...

Silencing Dissent is a timely, disturbing and unnerving book'from the foreword by Robert ManneFor over a decade, the Howard government has found ways to silence its critics, one by one. Like the proverbial frog in boiling water, Australians have become accustomed to repeated attacks on respected individuals and organisations. For a government which claims to support freedom of speech and freedom of choice, only certain kinds of speech and choices appear to be accep...