Stuart Kells

Quentin Beresford, an adjunct professor in politics at Sunshine Coast University, has written and edited about a dozen books, including the excellent Wounded Country (2021), which dealt with the failure of water policy in the Murray-Darling Basin. His latest offering explores thirteen ‘business scandals’ in Australia. Beresford’s definition of a scandal is selective and eclectic. The scope o ... (read more)

Nearly everyone in Australia has a story about bad airline service, and many of those stories involve Qantas, whose ‘mishandled bag rate’ recently doubled and flight cancellations tripled. The formerly smooth and efficient Sydney-Melbourne run is now a dispiriting ordeal. Widespread anger at Qantas provides the context and backdrop for Peter Harbison’s revelatory book (with Derek Sadubin) ... (read more)

This fascinating and frustrating volume is really three books in one: a compilation of revelatory portraits of seven modern economic crises; a beautiful essay on language, literature, and finance; and an effort to draw lessons from the seven calamities. Of the three books, two are brilliant, one less so. Heroes and anti-heroes loom large in each of the economic crises. Harold James’s descriptio ... (read more)