Dimensions
168 x 235 x 8mm
Many Australians yearn for an alternative politics. Although not politicised, they are deeply worried about where we have got to. At the last election there was no real choice, it was dominated by interest rates and a self-focus. But beneath the surface most Australians want something different.
According to Clive Hamilton – the author of two recent Australian bestsellers, 'Growth Fetish' and 'Affluenza' – we need a completely new politics built on the world as we find it. In his provocative new essay, he throws out a challenge to the party of social democracy, the Labor Party – to both its true believers on the left and its right-wing machine men.
'What's Left?' shows how the world today has little in common with the world that spawned social democracy. Yet social democracy, and the Labor Party in particular, operates in large part in a mental space that has failed to acknowledge these changes. Modern left and right are so alike because they both accept that the principal objective of politics is to stoke the economy and look after the interests of the wealth creators.
This essay that will take up where one of the most influential Quarerly Essays, John Button's 'Beyond Belief', left off, and spark furious debate about the future of the ALP and progressive politics in Australia.
