In The Best Australian Political Writing 2008, the ABC’s Tony Jones, a latish replacement as editor for the Canberra-bound Maxine McKew, has assembled forty-two pieces of non-fiction first published in 2007. The result is a mixed bag of genres, including columns, investigative journalism, polemic, book extracts and essays (but, alas, no fiction). The subject matter includes the November federal election, indigenous affairs, the environment, the ‘war on terror’, Australian values, and the artlessly named ‘culture wars’. The package sounds enticing, but while there’s plenty of insightful and relevant commentary – and some sublime prose – there’s also sometimes an ephemeral limpness, and an earnestness, to the anthology.
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