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Dialogue, not diatribes

by
November 2006, no. 286

Ordinary People’s Politics: Australians talk about life, politics, and the future of their country by Judith Brett and Anthony Moran

Pluto Press, $32.95 pb, 337 pp

Dialogue, not diatribes

by
November 2006, no. 286

Of late there has been a good deal of agitated conversation about the political attitudes of ordinary Australians. As Judith Brett and Anthony Moran point out in this compelling new book, this has often taken the form of a ‘war of words within the political élites’, with the right using its supposed empathy for everyday people as a weapon against intellectuals, and the left blaming the deficiencies of John Howard’s Australia on the narrow-minded selfishness of ordinary voters. As it is, those of us who live in ordinary outer suburbs can hardly open Melbourne’s Age newspaper without finding ourselves accused of something, from a new Australian ugliness and the death of manners to the decline of civilisation. Mind you, the thought of being spoken for by anything-but-ordinary people like Janet Albrechtsen is even more distasteful.

Ordinary People’s Politics: Australians talk about life, politics, and the future of their country

Ordinary People’s Politics: Australians talk about life, politics, and the future of their country

by Judith Brett and Anthony Moran

Pluto Press, $32.95 pb, 337 pp

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