Tales From The Political Trenches

Maxine McKew concluded her 2012 memoir Tales from the Political Trenches by recognizing the national hunger for a different kind of leadership one that will leapfrog the current banalities and give Australians something better. What we have instead is one of the longest campaigns in living memory, a political class that continues to play divide and rule and one that has an almost lordly contempt for views that don't fit the neat script dictated by communications teams at five in the morning.

In a revised edition to be released before the September election this year, McKew rejects the conventional view that there's something inevitable about the politics of the lowest common denominator or that a sour entitlement-driven electorate gets the politicians it deserves.

McKew examines a different dynamic the range and depth of considered conversations that are taking place across Australia in workplaces, in schools and universities, and on the sidelines of football games. People are arguing the toss about the state of our schools and the quality and training of teaching, about how we fund child and aged care, about how we design our cities and about the ways that technology is both a transformer and a destroyer. These conversations represent a powerful political tool which can't be denied. The way through our current malaise, McKew argues, is through good old fashioned citizen activism. To turn the conversations about our future into a 'we the people' campaign and demand that those who aspire to lead, actually listen to the rest of us and respond to the new advocacy.