Kim Carr, A Letter to Generation Next: Why Labor, Melbourne University Press, 2013 Australian Senator Kim Carr’s A Letter to Generation Next: Why Labor is a rare addition the shallow pool of books encouraging young Australians to be more involved in politics. Carr – a federal Senator for Victoria since 1993 – clearly sees much more of a role for government in his appeal for the next generation to join the Australian Labor Party’s cause. The role of government, Carr recalls in George Black’s words from the New South Wales Chamber in 1891, is to “make and unmake social conditions.” […]

Theodore Dalrymple, The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World, Monday Books, 2012 ‘The most decisive thing that’s happened in my political lifetime,’ said John Howard in a 2009 interview, ‘is the collapse of Soviet imperialism. It dwarfs anything else.’ This is significant from Howard, whose political life covers nearly half a century. His observation, however, is lost on a generation of younger Australians. Certainly, oppressive regimes exist today but are fewer in number, while command and control economics have been trounced by liberal market capitalism and globalisation. For anyone under forty the idea of growing up on […]