The Morrison Government: Governing through crisis, 2019-2022

by Brendan McCaffrie (Editor), Michelle Grattan (Editor), Chris Wallace (Editor)

Leading thinkers on the policies and leadership of the Morrison Government from 2019 to 2022. Australia has rarely endured as many difficulties as it did during the COVID-19 pandemic-dominated Morrison Government's term of office from its surprise 2019 election win to the 2022 poll. How did government perform? How did policy and administration fare during this tumultuous political period? Was Australia's national government resilient in the face of the massive pandemic challenge, and were its operations reshaped by it? Leading scholars and journalists, including Karen Middleton, Michelle Grattan, Chris Wallace, Julianne Schultz, Katharine Murphy, Stephen Duckett, Brendan McCaffrie and Stan Grant, answer these questions in a searching examination of policy and leadership under the Morrison Government from 2019 to 2022.

305 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 1, 2023

Reviews

[Tom J · Rating 3 out of 5]

when a book has different contributors per chapter, you end up with a variable quality/tone. when the chapters are well edited and the topics are coherent, you end up with something that is more than the sum of its parts. that is not what is happening here.

editing in this book is shocking, from the wildly varying tone, poor copy editing and choices of what was included in the book. multiple times i had to re-read sentences because typos changed the meaning, multiple times i had to force myself through a chapter because it was borderline unreadable tripe. the section on the integrity is a notable example of someone being so red and mad about something that they can't write about it objectively any more, with myriad shitty little jabs thrown in and the author making repeated intolerably snide asides to the reader. i don't care that you personally were involved! i'm not here to read "geoffs's shit jokes", i'm here to read about the morrison government

it's a pity because when it's good, it's very good. australian political books are rare and this is a model that could work well! it's just a shame that the choice of topics and authors were so poor

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is part of the Commonwealth Administration series which analyses the commonwealth governments since 1984 from the perspective of the effectiveness of their administration. The 22 essay writers are almost entirely academics rather than journalists. This explains why the book is heavily focused on the administration of the government more so than the politics.

The book reveals very little new information but will become a useful reference for this period. It analyses the Morrison Administration from many different perspectives.