My reading

I’ve noticed that my choices of reading material have tended to be skewed way more towards the political since getting actively involved in politics and blogging. Where once I’d be content with picking up the occasional “Monthly” and reading Terry Pratchett I’ve now got a subscription to Monthly, pick up the new Quarterly Essay within a few days of its being released and grab anything that Robert Manne has to say. Further, my RSS aggregator gets me the latest from Larvatus Prodeo, Andrew Bartlett, Greensblog and Frogblog and the blogs which I read that aren’t strictly political tend to have political implications.

I’m currently reading “The Latham Diaries” and “Dear Mr Rudd”. The former is a really interesting look at the way parliamentary party politics works and gives me a slightly more personal knowledge of some of Australia’s key political figures such as Paul Keating, Kim Beazley, Simon Crean, Graham Richardson and Gareth Evans. Latham writes as someone who has to deal with these people on an almost daily basis rather than a biographer who has done a few interviews and has a scrapbook of newspaper clippings. Latham hasn’t exploded and started calling everyone names, yet, but I’m looking forward to finding out what his grievances are and where they come from.

At his core, Latham seems to be someone who genuinely wants perpetual social democratic reform of the country and continuous renewal of the Labor Party. Running up against the party machine and the men (and women, but they haven’t been mentioned) who fuel it seems to have made him dislike anyone who’s afraid to get up and say what they’re thinking. In a 1996 entry he talks about the lack of original thought going on in the minds of the parliamentary ALP and how they think “What would Paul (Keating) do?” before embarking on any endeavour. Reading this makes me incredibly glad I didn’t join the ALP.

I’ve finished Mark McKenna’s essay on the republic in “Dear Mr Rudd” and find it very interesting that he refers to the coming President of Australia with “she” and “her” rather than the gender-neutral “they”. I’m assuming that this is an attempt to counter the fact that we tend to not have female political leaders as often as men and hence using a gender neutral pronoun could allow people to still think of our President as a man (exclusively?) With Rudd saying the Republic is on his agenda (but not his first term agenda) I’m cautiously optimistic about the direction this nation takes over the coming decades.

Pat Dodson’s essay on Aboriginal reconciliation is notable for its embrace of the Republican cause. According to Dodson, the only way the country’s going to fully reconcile its past with its future is by becoming a nation of its own, facing up to the atrocities which were committed and seeking to include Aboriginal Australians as a genuine part of Australian society rather than tacking a preamble on to a Constitution which deals with matters of trade rather than national identity.

While other countries look to their constitution and see an affirmation of their independence and a document which binds them together as a people, Australia sees the replication of the British Constitutional Monarchy and a system of government where the power is vested in the Queen and exercised on her behalf by the Governor-General (who doesn’t have to be Australian) with almost no mention of parliament nor the Prime Minister.  How can we hope to take control of our identity, government, institutions, future if our Constitution is not our own?  The Apology is one step towards better relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australia, moving past our colonial past is another.

One thing that impresses me so far with “Dear Mr Rudd” is that the essays flow into each other.  The book, then, has a sense of continuity to it which is hard to achieve with so many authors writing about so many different themes.  I’m very excited about getting to the end of the book and having a (big) picture in my head of a progressive Australia which is achievable.