Bulldozed

Niki Savva's Bulldozed, about the fall of the Morrison government and the Labor party's win at the last federal election, was a Christmas treat for myself -- a chance to indulge my ScoMo outrage all over again. It's almost unbelievable to look back now at what Savva, a veteran Canberra journalist, calls 'the worst prime minister I have ever seen,' and marvel that he ever got into power in the first place. I know that for me, the experience of the pandemic meant that I paid more attention to government than ever before -- Dan Andrew's daily press conferences, Scott Morrison's claim that getting hold of vaccines wasn't 'a race' (which it totally was), the whole whirlwind of the JobKeeper program (which my husband was involved in, so I was regularly eavesdropping on work Zoom meetings about it)... a lot of that seems like a dream now, a nightmare that we woke from in May when we found ourselves with actual adults in charge.

Reading Bulldozed I found myself shaking my head -- the moment when Morrison crash-tackled a little boy in a rugby game, 'I don't hold a hose,' the secret trip to Hawaii as bushfires raged, the seamy links to Hillsong, the lies, the storm of bullshit and obfuscation, the refusal to act, the refusal to take responsibility for anything -- I can't say I exactly enjoyed Bulldozed but it was certainly a relief to reflect that it's all over now. Definitely worth reminding ourselves that we must never let it happen again. 

There are also some heartening portraits of Anthony Albanese and his team, who, unlike the last lot, all seem to be decent and intelligent who genuinely want to make the world a better place. They won't be perfect, and they've already done some things I don't agree with, but gee, they are coming off a very low base.