Whatever happened to good government? What are the signs of bad government? And can Malcolm Turnbull apply the lessons of the past in a very different world? In this crisp, profound and witty essay, Laura Tingle seeks answers to these questions. She ranges from ancient Rome to the demoralised state of the once-great Australian public service, from the jingoism of the past to the tabloid scandals of the internet age. Drawing on new interviews with key figures, she shows the long-term harm that has come from undermining the public sector as a repository of ideas and experience. She tracks the damage done when responsibility is “contracted out,” and when politicians shut out or abuse their traditional sources of advice. This essay about the art of government is part defence, part lament. In Political Amnesia, Laura Tingle examines what has gone wrong with our politics, and how we might put things right. “There was plenty of speculation about whether Turnbull would repeat his mistakes as Opposition leader in the way he dealt with people. But there has not been quite so much about the more fundamental question of whether the revolving door of the prime ministership has much deeper causes than the personalities in Parliament House. Is the question whether Malcolm Turnbull – and those around him – can learn from history? Or is there a structural reason national politics has become so dysfunctional?” —Laura Tingle, Political Amnesia

Laura Tingle is political editor of the Australian Financial Review. She won the Paul Lyneham Award for Excellence in Press Gallery Journalism in 2004, and Walkley awards in 2005 and 2011. In 2010 she was shortlisted for the John Button Prize for political writing. She appears regularly on Radio National's Late Night Live and ABC-TV's Insiders.

Whatever happened to good government? What are the signs of bad government? And can Malcolm Turnbull apply the lessons of the past in a very different world? In this crisp, profound and witty essay, Laura Tingle seeks answers to these questions. She ranges from ancient Rome to the demoralised state of the once-great Australian public service, from the jingoism of the past to the tabloid scandals of the internet age. Drawing on new interviews with key figures, she shows the long-term harm that has come from undermining the public sector as a repository of ideas and experience. She tracks the damage done when responsibility is 'contracted out,' and when politicians shut out or abuse their traditional sources of advice. This essay about the art of government is part defence, part lament. In Political Amnesia, Laura Tingle examines what has gone wrong with our politics, and how we might put things right. ‘There was plenty of speculation about whether Turnbull would repeat his mistakes as Opposition leader in the way he dealt with people. But there has not been quite so much about the more fundamental question of whether the revolving door of the prime ministership has much deeper causes than the personalities in Parliament House. Is the question whether Malcolm Turnbull – and those around him – can learn from history? Or is there a structural reason national politics has become so dysfunctional?’—Laura Tingle, Political Amnesia

Finalist, 2016 Walkley Award for Long Feature Writing With the politics of rage and resentment dominating many Western nations, including Australia, Laura Tingle's calm, perceptive analysis is more relevant than ever. What has happened to good government? Can Malcolm Turnbull apply the lessons of the past to put things right? When leaders surf the wave of discontentment all the way to power, how do they deal with our great expectations? In her crisp, profound and witty essays, Laura Tingle seeks answers to these questions. In Political Amnesia, she ranges from ancient Rome to the demoralised state of the once-great Australian public service, from the jingoism of the past to the tabloid scandals of the internet age. In Great Expectations, Tingle argues that governments can do less since deregulating the economy, but they still talk like they can do more, and we still expect them to do more – leading to anger, frustration and disengagement. In Search of Good Government also contains a major new essay that analyses Turnbull's leadership and brings the story up to date. 'This is precisely the kind of political journalism we don't get to see often enough.' Sydney Morning Herald

Over the past two decades, Australia has been experiencing a sustained period of accelerated socio-cultural change, accompanied by existential threats from natural disasters and the Covid pandemic, and punctuated by repeated cycles of political upheaval. The divisive and hyper-partisan version of party politics that has accompanied these events has hamstrung the nation' s capacity to respond to the challenges of the day &– from dealing with climate change, to advancing gender equity, or to renovating the buckling structures of social welfare. At the same time, we have seen the quality of our democracy compromised. In The Shrinking Nation, leading cultural historian Graeme Turner examines a wide range of social and cultural change, including the role played by a media environment swamped by misinformation, the social consequences of neoliberal economic policy, and the divisive legacy of the culture wars, before considering how we might strengthen the bonds of community and belonging that tie our nation together.

This book examines the impact of several decades of public sector reform in four Westminster systems – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Political and managerial change has re-defined roles and relationships and how their public sectors function. Often this occurs in comparable ways because of a common administrative tradition, but choices made in different country contexts also produce divergent outcomes. In analysing the results and implications of reform, fundamental issues of and tensions in public administration and management are addressed.

This book centres around the reinvention of the traditional roles of librarian and archivist in the digital age, exploring their position as memory makers and curators. The author details the skillsets and methods available to them for the purpose of identifying, collecting, selecting, refining, reducing and summarising a flood of data into useful business information through the eSARS process. Then, the author describes the skills and concepts used by recordkeepers when dealing with the curated information so that only valued business information is selected, registered, protected and accessed. Acknowledging the influence of our current climate crisis, the book details the evolution from paper-based corporate knowledge to digital-human collective intelligence. This book relies heavily on the systems analysis concepts of recordkeeping informatics such as information culture, the records continuum, metadata, business processes and access. This book combines the artistic science of curation with the science of digital recordkeeping to assume control over information in the Digital Memory Age.