A couple of weeks ago, I read both Barrie Cassidy’s Party Thieves and Mungo MacCallum’s Punch and Judy. Both are insta-books on the 2010 election, published an alarmingly short time after the event. This publishing phenomenon perhaps existed overseas for some time (I haven’t checked), but really seemed to take off in Australia after the 2007 election, where publishers were in a race for each other to deliver books on the campaign as speedily as possible after it. Earlier this year, we saw Nicholas Stuart’s book on Kevin Rudd’s government, Rudd’s Way rushed into print, without an index and with a hasty rewrite, to capture whatever sort of market publishers felt existed for a book on KRudd that would claim to be an overall assessment of his rise and fall and governing style while his dispatch from high office was still fresh in everyone’s minds.
Now we’ve got Paul Howes’ “campaign diary”, Confessions of a Faceless Man from Melbourne University Publishing, the same mob who brought out Cassidy’s book.
In a rather acerbic piece on Howes and his tome, Andrew Elder quotes the AWU National Secretary:
It’s a year in politics that will be dissected, studied and written about for decades to come.
But will it be? Good luck convincing a publisher that there’s a need for a considered and well researched and reflective book on the 2010 election not written in a month or so to satisfy the rush to get the thing in a bookshop while there’s still a perceived public demand for such a text.
Unless I’m wrong, no book on the 2007 election has been published since the initial flurry of insta-books. That’s something quite new – there are good and substantive books on previous Australian elections published after up to two years had elapsed.
I’m glad you’ve read Cassidy’s book, Mark. That means the rest of us probably don’t need to. At least Mungo would’ve been amusing.
Yes, did you require a cure for insomnia, or perhaps I’m being too unkind.
I reckon I’d rather read my own death warrant than anything Cassidy wrote. I looked at the abysmal Onesiders once and that was enough. The News Ltd filth sitting there in our taxpayer-funded studio, the animated robotic Labor/Rudd bashing, the in-your-face anti-progressiveness of the assembly – that told me all I needed to know about Cassidy, and more. How very ABC!
Its been a developing phenomena also. On them, you’d think they are sketches rather than studies.
If issues are serious enough it may take time for a view to mature.
For instance, I remember the doco recently on ABC, I think that covered the Iraq War, from a distance.
I was still being amazed at the assessment the the Brits were actually defeated at Basra ( I think ), despite knowing it and then forgetting it; looking back, it was soft sudsed by the media at the time.
Things of gravitas would normally require a little quality time for reflection before leaping to judgement on a given event, surely?
Yet a book is something no dearer than a packet of smokes, in some cases and people like to “keep up”: pays to test your judgement and as some have said, knowledge is the default currency in the real world.
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I suspect that although you’re right in trend terms, Mark, analysis of this one will continue. John Menadue has already highlighted the appalling media coverage with the focus almost entirely on trivia and an attempt, largely successful, to shield Abbott and his colleagues from serious scrutiny.
And there is the question of the Rudd coup. Was it primarily a reaction to the collapse in polling support (as a straight shooter like Stephen Smith suggests), were there other factors such as Rudd’s alienation from large sections of Caucus and the PS, a concern about the TV evening news-grab focus, or some combination of these?
Most people right up to Howard have felt that incumbency would have got Rudd over the line despite likely taking many hits. But there is still the question of how stable the working relations would have been.
I think there will be quite a lot for analysts to work on for some time yet.
C’mon, folks, the fashion for political quickies in Australia goes way back before 2007. The first was almost certainly Kerr’s King Hit by the late Clem Lloyd and Peter Sekuless, published early in 1976 by Cassell Australia n the wake of the Whitlam dismissal. It was put together incredibly fast and it sold its socks off. One of the first local examples of disposable book publishing. There were many others before the 2007 election.
Ooops — sorry, the co-author of Kerr’s King Hit was Andrew Clarke, not Peter Sekuless. Apologies to you both, Peter and Andrew!
I think the main reason we haven’t had any books on the 2007 election is the same reason that in the eleven years of the Howard Coalition government the ABC did not produce a single substantive documentary on the previous thirteen years of Labor government but within twelve months of their removal we had a two hour doco. and Howards been given the “Queen Mum” treatment ad nuaseum ever since.
One would think the people involved in the absolutely disastrous decision to remove Rudd would be apologising for such a stupid decision.
Yet all have either been promoted or kept their jobs.
Amazing
If you want to spend the time, there is a Richard Fidler interview with Cassidy here.
I talked to Mark about it and he pointed out that there is a question of who Cassidy spoke to and the reliability of the information they gave him.
It would have been a good chance for some to spin history in their own interests.
“Good luck convincing a publisher that there’s a need for a considered and well researched and reflective book on the 2010 election not written in a month or so to satisfy the rush to get the thing in a bookshop while there’s still a perceived public demand for such a text.”
Correct. Such a “worthy” book would bore the pants off 99.9% of the population and almost certainly lose money. Moreover, it would almost certainly be written by a pompous academic who would stuff it full of jargon and opaque paragraphs that are meant to convey the author’s genius but instead suck the life out of the topic.
But if someone is determined to write a “worthy” book of this kind, they can always do it in their own time and whack it up on the internet free of charge.
Such is the beauty of capitalism and its bounteous gifts.
@11 – Good thing there’s no market for unpredictable and unusually interesting and surprising opinions, or you’d be a rather poor person.
Indeed Kim. SC tedious contributions remind me of a former visitor who used to specialise in cutting and pasting among his other talents. I think he got banned for an overly generous display of these talents at one stage.
Brian, also, Cassidy had a poisonous relationship with Rudd from the very beginning. He and Jon Faine on local Melbourne radio whinged, throughout his prime ministership, about their lack of access to him.
They would constantly chat about the good old days, when Howard was so often available to them, and when they did get to speak to the P.M. both of them were quite rude and combative.
I get a sense that Cassidy is finally getting back at him, and from that interview, also a hint of jealousy that he missed out on being part of the ‘in crowd’.
I’m waiting for the Rudd story from the man himself.
Hopefully after the vultures have had their turn, Rudd will publish his own account of the story.
No doubt it will be as self-serving as these books tend to be, but I can’t help but think that the Cassidys and Howes of this world are letting their biases dictate their opinions,and I, for one, would like to hear the story from the other perspective.
There is a most interesting book, in that, but I fear we will never read it.
As it was, his comments were left completely unreported and undiscussed by msm; most notably the ABC. Sure, they set up the interview, but were clearly unhappy with his fair opinion of their crappy, biased, election performance.
It just took off around the blogs, to a very limited audience, and that’s how a few of us know about it.
That is the problem. Anybody who has gutse enough to put their finger on the painful spots will not be published, and certainly not have a job, in the media here. It is a circle jerk.
From an historian’s point of view I don’t mind these election quickies. They provide primary sources for the historians of the future. And like all primary sources they will have to be subject to deep analysis, in conjunction with public and private papers of all the participants, which themselves will have to be read with care. There is a great book oin the rise and fall of Rudd, the 2010 election and the creation of the hung parliament. For the historian of high politics it is pure gold. But it will be a long time before it can be written.