- 50 pages into this ridiculously overlong, self-indulgent, 400 page tome, I’ve decided I don't ever want to read a political book as batshit boring as this.
- It’s a microscopic examination of the backroom manoeuvrings of small, incompetent, lying, out of touch, right wing politicians.
- I would rather spend a week in the fires of hell than persevere with this.
- In these dark times, an age of extreme polarisation, warring factions, Trump stupidity, it's necessary to remind ourselves of the great Western liberal traditions that are the very foundation of our free and caring societies.
- This book is a gem. It's exceptionally well written and argued by long time New Yorker essayist and best selling author Adam Gopnik. Being rich in history, ideas and analysis, it's not an easy read. But, given concentration, it handsomely pays off. I can see myself returning to this book over and over again.
- The right’s critique of liberalism is well known: change risks order. Respect for the military and reverence for religion are uppermost in its ideology. Benjamin Disreali, British Conservative leader, understood that nationalist jingoism trumped economic interest for the working classes.
- Secularism, cosmopolitanism, permissiveness, relativism, on the other hand - these liberal boasts have a catastrophic effect on ordinary people.
- We are living through a revolt by the right against liberal reason. The EU, for example, is deemed a liberal folly. But this view of liberalism is a cartoon.
- ‘Intersectionality’ is currently a dominant political theory that paints a familiar, broad picture of oppression through 'cultural framing and control', usually referred to as 'identity politics'. The sophisticated version identifies types of difference and oppression that are invisible to most eyes.
- The book is full of fabulous proclamations and summations:
- ‘The right wing wants cultural victories and gets nothing but political ones; while the left wing wants political victories and gets only cultural ones’;
- On free speech and its discontents: ‘Unless the speaker is actually about to cut your throat you have to let him work his jaw’. (But hate speech is a different matter, because of its harm to minorities);
- ‘A thousand small sanities are usually wiser than one big idea’;
- The rise of populism: ‘...these problems are permanent...these passions - the desire for simplicity, the hunger for a more closed and clannish society, the sheer anxiety of living with uncertainty - are always ready to explode’;
- 'Liberal institutions and practices are fragile';
- 'Those societies that glorify militarism almost invariably lose wars'.
- ‘We have to believe in passionate policies, passionate in their affirmation of values and principles...the difference between centrists and liberals is that centrists emphasise the difficulty of these choices, while liberals emphasise their simplicity.’
- Not an analysis by any means - more a campaign story, as Jensen reports on various events held during the campaign by both leaders, and what they were saying. (The back cover blurb is spot on).
- The quotes by attendees at the events are interesting. Mainly politicians and well-known observers and players (eg Bill Kelty, Arthur Sinodinos).
- This is a portrait of Shorten and Morrison as much as anything. Shorten comes off second best. He’s a boy obsessed by his mother. He's not a grown-up.
- I was expecting more interpretation, less plain and ordinary observation. There are few statistics or numbers or demographics. Little mention of the polls and how wrong they were or why. No mention of the state of the economy or the lies being constantly told by Morrison and Frydenberg. No views on why Australians across the country swallowed these lies holus-bolus. Very disappointing.
- The best part of this essay is the delicious descriptions of how players looked or appeared: For example, ‘Shorten squints....his eyelashes are uncommonly long. He has the large pleading eyes of a child left alone in his cot’; ‘Peter Barron....stands back on the grass like a driver at a mafia funeral...He walks from his shoulders down, the way a pendulum swings in a clock’; ‘[Bowen’s] face is a continuous line, as if the cartoonist hasn’t lifted his pen’. There are many others. This is the work of a gifted writer.
- This is a sad story, beautifully told. Two lonely people, one old Australian woman, one young Chinese man, are grappling with family and personal tragedies.
- Cheng constructs a rather simple narrative but she enriches it with reflections on motherhood, family, illness, anxiety, death, and most of all loneliness. Her characters are captured and wounded by loveless families. Andy, the young student from Hong Kong, ‘felt like an insect trapped in amber, imprisoned and alone’.
- The old lady, Meg, castigates herself for ‘talking without really saying anything’.
- Death is a real presence in the story, and lives are thwarted, not fully lived. Potential is not realised. ‘No family’s perfect. Every family is broken’.
- As the novel develops Cheng contrasts, respectfully and subtly, not just two different people but two distinct cultures, Chinese and Australian. Whether it be food, houses, animals, family life, law, education, ambition, recreation - illness and other constraints are dominant.
- This is a superb novel that will stay with you long after you've read it. You know these people and you feel for them.
- Set in the early sixties mostly in outback Australia, in an Aboriginal reserve and a couple of fictitious towns, this is an Indigenous story filled with a fair bit of drama and tension. But unfortunately the novel is seriously flawed and disappointing.
- While we can't help but sympathise with the awful predicament of the Indigenous people, the narrative too often descends into rank sentimentality and melodrama, the characters becoming caricatures.
- The focus is on the fraught relationship between the Aborigines and their white masters. They are yet to be constitutionally recognised as full citizens and are under the surveillance and 'protection' of the State. The racism is ugly.
- The police are disgraceful as you would expect - arrogant, petty and brutal. But sprinkled throughout the white community there are real humans, who are always coming to the rescue.
- There was room here for real tragedy and darkness but Birch never allows it. It's all too nice.
- This is a tiresome account of the same old dickheads. After 50 pages I asked myself should I continue? In Fire and Fury the chaos was new information and therefore revealing. Now, it’s all old news, and nothing surprises us.
- Steve Bannon features strongly again. He’s used as a chorus, brazenly and crudely commenting on everything and everyone.
- Trump is once again portrayed as a stupid, demented, certifiably insane, totally self-obsessed, cruel, ugly and miserable turd. He even dislikes his 13 year old son Barron, and his marriage to the mysterious Melania has presumably descended to a transactional, self-preservation agreement.
- Wolf’s problem is that, after the last two and a half years of Trump’s presidency, we know Trump is rubbish, and we know all the White House staffers, lawyers and other grossly incompetent has-beens who have come and gone through that chaotic period.
- That’s why this book is essentially boring. The most interesting chapters are ‘Kavanaugh’ and the Epilogue on the fizzer that was the Mueller Report.
- It will sell perhaps 10% of Fire and Fury’s huge numbers. And the great majority of buyers will only skip through it at best.
- This is a very clearly written and enlightening book. It's Energy 101. A compulsive read for anybody interested in Australia's never-ending electricity, energy and climate crisis debate. Warren is not a politician or environmental activist but a highly experienced player and regulator in our energy industry over many years.
- There are fascinating chapters on renewables and climate change; how electricity is generated and supplied through national mechanisms; why prices have aggressively increased over the last decade, our rooftop solar energy obsession; the future of our coal power stations; the rapidly growing wind and solar industries; and others.
- Warren thoroughly dissects Finkel and the NEG, and savagely condemns conservative politicians for mindlessly abandoning these effective options on the pretext that they privilege, or even legitimise, ‘renewables’. They've indulged in a ‘catastrophic policy fail’. ‘Renewables generation is now a mature technology...targets or commitments should be abolished...they [are] redundant’. The marketplace is the powerful enabler. Commercial realities are in play and must be allowed to play out by governments.
- ‘The need to ‘firm’ renewables is the big electricity policy challenge of the 21st century’. The baseload inflexibility of coal-fired power stations and nuclear reactors make them unsuitable as technologies to firm large-scale intermittent generation.
- He returns to difficult concepts a number of times as the book progresses, deepening our understanding. (But often the constant and needless repetitions means a decent editor went missing).
- He's pro gas, as it can provide flexible backup. ‘We need to stop demonising gas. Gas is a renewables enabler. We will need it to support the high-renewables grid we are building right now.‘ (He doesn’t mention the impact on agriculture or the environment unfortunately, but leaves us with the firm impression that political, anti-gas mining decisions, particularly by the Andrews government in Victoria, will need eventually to be reversed).
- Incredibly, there's no mention of Adani (or the Galilee Basin) throughout the book, not even in the index. Because Warren considers it irrelevant to the far bigger issues. He's a hard-headed realist, driven only by reason and common sense. ‘Electricity doesn’t work so well if it’s turned into a popularity contest’.
- The book could have been improved with some charts and tables, just to visually clarify a lot of the extremely valuable information provided. Nevertheless the arguments are clear and lucidly presented, and the author's talent for arresting similes makes even difficult concepts come vividly to life.
- And exceptionally good read.
