Today, I was delighted to receive my brand new copy of Government, Politics, Power and Policy in Australia by Dennis Woodward, Andrew Parkin and John Summers.

The book is of particular interest not only for the subject matter, but because it features one of my photographs on the cover!

Mine is a preview copy, as the book is still yet to be released. Having purchased a previous edition of this same text many years ago, I am quite confident that it will be well-received by academics and students alike. I certainly found the book to be very engaging and informative at a time when I was seeking to understand Australia’s system of parliamentary democracy.

The cover shot is one that I took on a holiday to Canberra in 2006. The photo has been one of my most successful on Flickr, with 41 comments and 37 favourites. Pearson sought to purchase a licence for the image via Photologium, and I was only too happy to supply it to them.  The image is not only featured on the cover, but the chapter pages and related marketing material.

Government, Politics, Power and Policy in Australia (ISBN 9781442508736) will soon be available at most bookshops, and is published by Pearson Education Australia. More info from the publishers here.

For nearly a century, ‘Whelan the Wrecker’ was a Melbourne institution. No other company could lay claim to demolishing more of Melbourne than Whelan’s, which operated from 1892 to 1991*. And it all started with Jim Whelan who carted goods for a living.

During the 1880’s, credit was easily available. And a Scotsman named Alexander Sturrock decided to make some money out of the boom by purchasing a block of land in Brunswick and having it subdivided to accommodate 19 weatherboard cottages. The trouble was that owing to the boom, there was a gross over-supply of housing. By 1892, Sturrock’s houses were still largely unoccupied and were the target of vandals and vagrants. So he decided to cut his losses, and accepted £10 each from Jim Whelan who demolished them and sold the wood for scrap, which was in short supply at the time.

And that is how Jim Whelan started his ‘timber business’. To keep his yard stocked, he demolished buildings. The business simply grew from there.

In A City Lost and Found: Whelan the Wrecker’s Melbourne, Robyn Annear traces the history of the business of ‘Whelan the Wrecker’, the buildings that they demolished and the people who occupied them.

We learn of the early projects and the unique way that Whelan had his men demolish a building – buy removing the roof, ceilings and floors and then knocking down the brick walls manually. It was dangerous and hard work, with plenty of risks. Later, more advanced and safer methods of demolition were employed.

One of the most fascinating tales in A City Lost and Found relates to the demolition of the Colonial Mutual Life (CML) Building on the corner of Elizabeth and Collins Streets. This was the grandest of all buildings, literally built to last forever. When Whelan’s received the demolition job in 1960, they grossly underestimated the quality of construction. CML took a lot longer than anyone ever expected to bring to the ground and the company lost a lot of money in the process. In fact the whole saga makes for such a fascinating story that one almost feels sorry for the demolishers, rather than a sense of sadness at losing one of the city’s finest buildings.

One of the most bizarre stories relates to a City of Melbourne bi-law, enacted in 1951 to ban the cast-iron verandah (in favour of the cantilever type). In fact, the law required that all buildings in the city centre had to have them demolished, despite their cultural significance. Whelan’s received the majority of verandah-pulling jobs, but it was a controversial and extreme response to the ‘danger’ that someone may injure themselves on a pole. Sadly, Melbourne has still not recovered from the vandalism of 1951, with cast-iron verandahs remaining a rarity in the centre of Melbourne.

Whelan’s tore down many of Melbourne’s finest buildings. People still feel anger when they consider what was destroyed in the name of ‘progress’. The book does chart the rise of the ‘heritage movement’ in the 1960’s and 1970’s, but is perhaps kinder to the demolishers than most people would consider appropriate. And the controversy of midnight demolitions (designed to wreck just enough of a building to prevent the granting of a last-minute heritage order) was hardly touched upon. This despite Whelan’s active role in the practice.

The final chapters of the book chart the advent of heritage legislation in the 1980’s, which is both seen as a positive development and a decision that was made way too late.
The odd formatting of chapters in this book still defy logic, and the author’s sudden change to a colloquial style of writing (as if it were a spoken conversation) is confusing at points, but overall I enjoyed the book. A City Lost and Found makes for a fascinating read and is a must-have for anyone interested in Melbourne’s heritage.

Annear, R. (2005) A City Lost and Found: Whelan the Wrecker’s Melbourne. Black Inc. Books, Melbourne.
ISBN 1 86395 389 2

*Delta Demolitions purchased the name Whelan the Wrecker for $50,000 when the original business went into liquidation.

When released a few months ago, the controversial Latham Diaries were hot property. With an explosive launch there were loud cries of objection from high quarters, and then all the noise from Canberra stopped. Very suddenly.

Mark Latham was the former leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) who almost single-handedly turned the electoral fortunes of the ALP around, developing innovative and socially progressive policies for a modern social democratic party. He nearly became Prime Minister, but ultimately lost his first election as Opposition Leader. After ongoing health issues, Latham resigned and two-time election loser Kim Beazley resumed leadership of the ALP.

Latham’s Diaries are a chronicle of the period from when he first entered the Commonwealth Parliament as the member for Werriwa, through to him becoming ALP leader and contesting a federal election, and then his subsequent resignation. Latham details his fight against the ‘machine men’ within the ALP who executed ‘machine politics’ – poll driven policies designed only to tell the electorate what they want to hear. It is a very cynical approach, and as Latham laments, completely devoid of principle. Winning government and power become the sole agenda for Labor’s ‘machine politicians’ rather than reducing poverty and improving the nation. Latham never envisioned this aspect of being a Labor politician. He always assumed principles would come first in the greatest of Labor traditions.

Latham pulls few punches in this explosively frank critique of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party and its entrenched culture of factionalism and excessive union influence. Latham is particularly critical of Kim Beazley, the current leader and the man who has lost two elections for Labor. Latham provides day-by-day accounts of the corrosive culture that Beazley actively fostered; that of timidity and indecisiveness. Kevin Rudd is also shown in poor light as a media slut desperate for status and prepared to do anything to attain power. In fact almost everyone in the Labor party and the media ‘establishment’ come under attack.

Much of the criticism of his fellow MP’s appears justified. There are numerous accounts of back-stabbing, deliberate leaking and muck-raking from within the Labor Party. Indeed, Latham considered that his greatest enemies were not the Tories on the other side of the parliamentary chamber but the power-hungry members within his own ranks. How could the Labor Party win government and lead the nation when it cannot even lead itself?

Latham tried to inject the party with a sense of loyalty as well as modern and innovative social and economic policies. Yet the struggle against his ‘comrades’ seemed almost too much at times. The pressures of a hostile and vengeful ex-wife, voyeuristic print media, antagonistic ‘factional heavyweights’ and his health concerns eventually became too much for him.

The reader reads first hand about the pressures that Latham experienced, initially as a backbencher, then Shadow Minister, then Opposition Leader. We read of the happiness and joy he experienced as he became a father, and the guilt that he felt for being away from his family for so long. What an irony it was, that he was fighting for government policies to provide better parenting and male role models for boys, while at the same time he was unable to be an active father for his two sons.

Latham confronts us with some stark conclusions. His shares his disappointment at the country Australia has become; devoid of ‘social capital’ at the expense of rampant materialism and selfishness. Particularly in the introduction and conclusion, we are invited to open our eyes to what contemporary Australian society has become. The picture Latham paints is only too real.

But the greatest sadness is felt when he sums up his time within the ALP, and reflects on what the old radical workers’ party has become. Latham concludes that organised politics in 2005 is a waste of time if one wishes to change Australian society. And in any case, he argues, there is no point because people are just too selfish to care about helping the poor and welfare-dependant. As long as interest rates remain low the mortgaged masses will be happy, he laments.

Just prior to the launch of the Latham Diaries, Mr. Latham performed what I would regard as the world’s worst ever “dummy spit”. No-one was spared as he repeatedly told the nation of how disillusioned he had become. His interview on ABC Radio 3LO with John Faine on 20 September was ‘a shocker’, as Latham himself might say. At the time, I was verydisappointed in Latham, thinking that he had become the petty, juvenile and aggressive loser than many had portrayed him as.

But after reading his book, my opinion of him is much restored.

Latham is a man who is not eloquent in speech, nor does he hesitate to tell it how it is. After all, it was Latham who publicly described President George W. Bush in parliament as “the most incompetent and dangerous president in living memory” and said that John Howard and George W. Bush were part of a “congo line of suckholes”. Many of us were thinking it, but who amongst us could phrase it like that?

We see that Latham is an educated and honest man, who is well-read on social matters and wanted to bring a fresh and innovative approach to federal politics; breaking the monotony of “machine politics”. He recognised that he made mistakes and said some stupid things during his time in Canberra. But he also made some terrific contributions to the nation, perhaps the most famous being his success in ending the excessive generosity of the parliamentary superannuation scheme from Opposition.

What we are left with is the portrait of an essentially good man who wanted to make our nation stronger, both economically and socially.

For anyone who cares about the future of Australia, I strongly encourage them to read this enlightening book. It makes one think far more deeply about what Australia has become and where we may be headed. One thing is for sure; many years will pass before such an accurate behind-the-scenes book is again published.

Latham, M. (2005) The Latham Diaries. Melbourne University Press. ISBN 0522852157