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Earthquake: the election that shook Australia
The best of Niki Savva’s scene-setting newspaper columns from The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, along with a riveting and deeply informed analysis of Australia’s epoch-making 2025 election.
Labor’s landslide victory on 3 May 2025 wreaked havoc across the political landscape. It triggered ministerial assassinations, trashed reputations, destroyed careers, fractured the Coalition, and threatened to fracture it again. It took the Liberal Party to the brink of extinction and turned Anthony Albanese into a Labor hero.
When the Coalition government was overthrown in 2022 after nine years in office, it was tempting to portray the loss as merely a personal repudiation of Scott Morrison. Then, when opposition leader Peter Dutton torpedoed the referendum on establishing an Indigenous Voice to parliament, his standing as a political leader improved and the prime minister’s nosedived. That was when, according to Niki Savva, the conservative Coalition thought it had the upcoming election in the bag.
But Niki had noticed the ground the emergence of the teal independents and the long-term threat they represented to the Liberals; the false dawn of Dutton saying no to the Voice referendum; and the overlooked reality, even back in August 2023, that, ‘The 2022 federal election result was no ordinary defeat … It delivered last rites to the broad-church party that Robert Menzies created.’
In her highly popular columns, Niki Savva captured all this and more in her typically uncompromising, penetrating, and prescient way. Now, following on from So Greek, The Road to Ruin, Plots and Prayers, and Bulldozed, she also provides a detailed, considered analysis of what went on behind the scenes, accompanied by her trademark access to important players and eyewitnesses, of an election that transformed Australian politics.
Labor’s landslide victory on 3 May 2025 wreaked havoc across the political landscape. It triggered ministerial assassinations, trashed reputations, destroyed careers, fractured the Coalition, and threatened to fracture it again. It took the Liberal Party to the brink of extinction and turned Anthony Albanese into a Labor hero.
When the Coalition government was overthrown in 2022 after nine years in office, it was tempting to portray the loss as merely a personal repudiation of Scott Morrison. Then, when opposition leader Peter Dutton torpedoed the referendum on establishing an Indigenous Voice to parliament, his standing as a political leader improved and the prime minister’s nosedived. That was when, according to Niki Savva, the conservative Coalition thought it had the upcoming election in the bag.
But Niki had noticed the ground the emergence of the teal independents and the long-term threat they represented to the Liberals; the false dawn of Dutton saying no to the Voice referendum; and the overlooked reality, even back in August 2023, that, ‘The 2022 federal election result was no ordinary defeat … It delivered last rites to the broad-church party that Robert Menzies created.’
In her highly popular columns, Niki Savva captured all this and more in her typically uncompromising, penetrating, and prescient way. Now, following on from So Greek, The Road to Ruin, Plots and Prayers, and Bulldozed, she also provides a detailed, considered analysis of what went on behind the scenes, accompanied by her trademark access to important players and eyewitnesses, of an election that transformed Australian politics.
492 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 24, 2025
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275 people want to read
About the author
Niki Savva
5 books49 followersNiki Savva is an Australian journalist, known for her political 'insider' books. Born in Cyprus before emigrating with her family as a child, she became a cadet journalist in 1969, while still in her teens. Savva served as political correspondent for The Australian, she led the Canberra bureau of The Herald Sun and then The Age. In 1997 she moved into politics, working for a decade for Liberal Party Treasurer Peter Costello and Prime Minister John Howard.
Since 2008, Savva has returned to journalism as a columnist for print and television media, presenting insider knowledge of Australia's conservative politics but from a centrist, sometimes progressive, point-of-view. From 2016 to 2025, Savva wrote a series of four insider books on three consecutive Prime Ministers - Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison - and their would-be successor, Peter Dutton.
Since 2008, Savva has returned to journalism as a columnist for print and television media, presenting insider knowledge of Australia's conservative politics but from a centrist, sometimes progressive, point-of-view. From 2016 to 2025, Savva wrote a series of four insider books on three consecutive Prime Ministers - Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison - and their would-be successor, Peter Dutton.
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December 9, 2025
As Alan Barth once noted, “news is only the first draft of history.” These drafts both inform and shape public opinion. Some more so than others. Niki Savva is one of those writers. She has long been at the forefront of Australian politics, either shaping it as an adviser in the Howard government or analysing it as a columnist across various mastheads. In recent years, she has become the pre-eminent writer of post-election analyses in Australia. Earthquake can be considered a sequel to her trilogy examining the gradual implosion of the Abbott–Turnbull–Morrison governments.
This volume focuses on the 2025 election, in which Labor won a historic victory and the Liberals suffered a historic loss. Savva explores this across two sections of roughly equal length: first, a collection of her columns dating from the Morrison era to only a few months ago; second, a deeper account of the events that produced Labor’s victory. This structure, however, does not make for a good book, and it is hindered further by Savva’s superficial analysis, which concentrates on personalities rather than the structural forces underpinning the results.
The outcome of the 2022 election is important for understanding 2025. However, spending 100 pages—a quarter of the book—reproducing columns on this period feels superfluous, especially given Savva had already published a book covering it. These columns should have been synthesised, particularly as Savva repeats the same points again and again. There are only so many times one can read that Morrison “doesn’t hold a hose,” alongside other well-worn gaffes, before realising she may not have much new analysis to offer.
The second set of columns, covering 2022–2025, suffers from the same flaw: relentless repetition. These pieces should have been cut entirely, because the analysis section in the latter half of the book simply revisits the same events and repeats the same arguments. The analysis itself often reads like an overlong Savva column, stretched to 200 pages instead of 800 words. Key points recur, and major events are described several times. The book might have worked as a collection of columns or as a focused analysis of the election. By trying to be both, it manages to be neither.
If you read the news regularly, as I do, you will gain only minimal political insight from these chapters. For me, only three things stood out: first, that Dutton personally vetoed Andrew Hastie’s attempt to establish a bipartisan committee on AUKUS because he did not want the Greens or independents involved; second, the internal manoeuvring behind Labor announcing a tax change before the election and the Liberals deciding to oppose it; and third, the factional politics within Labor that led to Mark Dreyfus’s downfall as attorney-general.
The last example, however, is marred by Savva stating that Dreyfus’s “distinguished career had ended in the bloody night of a long knife.” A historical pun referencing a Nazi pogrom is not an apt way to describe the demise of a Jewish politician. This is a conspicuous instance of a broader problem: Savva is too often hyperbolic and prone to throwaway, unmeasured lines. Another example appears on page 160, where she describes the Liberals’ nuclear policy as “threatening to look like a cross between Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.”
Savva also devotes an exorbitant amount of space to leadership speculation. First regarding Albanese in his initial term, and now Ley as opposition leader. She even concludes the book by recounting a dinner with Albanese at the Lodge, where she mused on when he should quit politics. She had previously suggested he retire after the first or second year of a second-term government. Such assertions seem misguided. No leader since Menzies has retired while in office, and Albanese is arguably the most powerful prime minister since Howard. Why would he quit now?
This fixation on leadership speculation highlights a broader issue beyond Savva’s book: policy analysis is marginal in mainstream reporting. For example, Savva notes in passing that 31 laws were passed on the final sitting day of 2024, but she leaves unanswered what they were, their consequences for Australians, and their electoral impact. Likewise, structural forces, such as the rise of independents, shifting voting patterns among women, Labor’s move to the right, and the erosion the Liberal Party’s “broad church”, are only perfunctorily examined.
Savva is not unique in this regard. Consequential decisions are being made by the current Labor government, yet sections of the media are chronically distracted by comparatively minor matters involving the opposition. The Coalition are in the political doldrums and pose no serious threat to Labor for at least another half-decade. Who their leader is and what policies they have pales in comparison to who is in government and the new policies being implemented right now. Two interrelated examples illustrate this: one particular, one broad.
Beginning with the particular: at the same time the Coalition abandoned net zero, the government announced a new bilateral Treaty on Common Security with Indonesia. The treaty commits both nations to regular security consultations and, if necessary, joint responses to security challenges. This announcement carries significant strategic weight for Australia. Following the Pukpuk Treaty with Papua New Guinea, it marks another step in Australia’s efforts to strengthen security alliances in the Indo-Pacific amid an increasingly assertive China and a declining America.
International relations in the Indo-Pacific are central to Australia’s future. If diplomacy and deterrence fail, the consequences could be catastrophic: a great-power war involving Australia. People claim climate change is existential; a war between nuclear powers is actually existential. These agreements deserve front-page analysis, not passing mention. When this treaty was announced, much of the media was fixated on the net-zero political theatre, and the treaty was drowned out in the cacophony.
Now the broad example: the nauseating speculation about the leadership of Sussan Ley has diverted attention away from a lacklustre and increasingly secretive government. Labor currently has vast amounts of electoral capital and a massive window of opportunity to implement much-needed structural reform to make Australia fairer and more prosperous. Instead, Labor is sticking with an incrementalist approach to policy, tinkering with problems rather than fixing them.
Sean Kelly’s recent Quarterly Essay, “What Does Labor Stand For?”, highlights the problem. If it takes 20,000 words to answer the question, perhaps Labor only stands for holding power. This is also indicative of an increasingly dishonest government. Labor pilloried the Morrison government for its lack of transparency yet may now be making things worse. The Centre for Public Integrity has noted that Labor is not honouring its “commitments to transparency, respect for Parliament, robust checks and balances, and action to stamp out corruption and undue influence.”
Three instances illustrate this point. First, Labor was recently forced to release a review on the “jobs for mates” culture, which it had sat on for two years. Second, Labor is moving to weaken freedom-of-information laws by introducing fees for non-personal requests, expanding cabinet exemptions, and allowing refusals for requests taking more than 40 hours to process. Third, Labor routinely avoids parliamentary scrutiny by exempting major policies from Senate committee review and minimising debate wherever possible.
With the opposition at its weakest and the government bypassing scrutiny wherever possible, the media has an increasingly important role in holding those in power to account. Democracy depends on a press willing to scrutinise those who wield authority, not those who have already lost it. By focusing on the opposition and neglecting the details of government policy—where real power and impact lie—much of the media, including Savva’s book, falls short of this duty. The result is a less accountable government.
Subscribe for free to receive new book reviews and political analyses directly: https://callumscolumn.substack.com/
This volume focuses on the 2025 election, in which Labor won a historic victory and the Liberals suffered a historic loss. Savva explores this across two sections of roughly equal length: first, a collection of her columns dating from the Morrison era to only a few months ago; second, a deeper account of the events that produced Labor’s victory. This structure, however, does not make for a good book, and it is hindered further by Savva’s superficial analysis, which concentrates on personalities rather than the structural forces underpinning the results.
The outcome of the 2022 election is important for understanding 2025. However, spending 100 pages—a quarter of the book—reproducing columns on this period feels superfluous, especially given Savva had already published a book covering it. These columns should have been synthesised, particularly as Savva repeats the same points again and again. There are only so many times one can read that Morrison “doesn’t hold a hose,” alongside other well-worn gaffes, before realising she may not have much new analysis to offer.
The second set of columns, covering 2022–2025, suffers from the same flaw: relentless repetition. These pieces should have been cut entirely, because the analysis section in the latter half of the book simply revisits the same events and repeats the same arguments. The analysis itself often reads like an overlong Savva column, stretched to 200 pages instead of 800 words. Key points recur, and major events are described several times. The book might have worked as a collection of columns or as a focused analysis of the election. By trying to be both, it manages to be neither.
If you read the news regularly, as I do, you will gain only minimal political insight from these chapters. For me, only three things stood out: first, that Dutton personally vetoed Andrew Hastie’s attempt to establish a bipartisan committee on AUKUS because he did not want the Greens or independents involved; second, the internal manoeuvring behind Labor announcing a tax change before the election and the Liberals deciding to oppose it; and third, the factional politics within Labor that led to Mark Dreyfus’s downfall as attorney-general.
The last example, however, is marred by Savva stating that Dreyfus’s “distinguished career had ended in the bloody night of a long knife.” A historical pun referencing a Nazi pogrom is not an apt way to describe the demise of a Jewish politician. This is a conspicuous instance of a broader problem: Savva is too often hyperbolic and prone to throwaway, unmeasured lines. Another example appears on page 160, where she describes the Liberals’ nuclear policy as “threatening to look like a cross between Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.”
Savva also devotes an exorbitant amount of space to leadership speculation. First regarding Albanese in his initial term, and now Ley as opposition leader. She even concludes the book by recounting a dinner with Albanese at the Lodge, where she mused on when he should quit politics. She had previously suggested he retire after the first or second year of a second-term government. Such assertions seem misguided. No leader since Menzies has retired while in office, and Albanese is arguably the most powerful prime minister since Howard. Why would he quit now?
This fixation on leadership speculation highlights a broader issue beyond Savva’s book: policy analysis is marginal in mainstream reporting. For example, Savva notes in passing that 31 laws were passed on the final sitting day of 2024, but she leaves unanswered what they were, their consequences for Australians, and their electoral impact. Likewise, structural forces, such as the rise of independents, shifting voting patterns among women, Labor’s move to the right, and the erosion the Liberal Party’s “broad church”, are only perfunctorily examined.
Savva is not unique in this regard. Consequential decisions are being made by the current Labor government, yet sections of the media are chronically distracted by comparatively minor matters involving the opposition. The Coalition are in the political doldrums and pose no serious threat to Labor for at least another half-decade. Who their leader is and what policies they have pales in comparison to who is in government and the new policies being implemented right now. Two interrelated examples illustrate this: one particular, one broad.
Beginning with the particular: at the same time the Coalition abandoned net zero, the government announced a new bilateral Treaty on Common Security with Indonesia. The treaty commits both nations to regular security consultations and, if necessary, joint responses to security challenges. This announcement carries significant strategic weight for Australia. Following the Pukpuk Treaty with Papua New Guinea, it marks another step in Australia’s efforts to strengthen security alliances in the Indo-Pacific amid an increasingly assertive China and a declining America.
International relations in the Indo-Pacific are central to Australia’s future. If diplomacy and deterrence fail, the consequences could be catastrophic: a great-power war involving Australia. People claim climate change is existential; a war between nuclear powers is actually existential. These agreements deserve front-page analysis, not passing mention. When this treaty was announced, much of the media was fixated on the net-zero political theatre, and the treaty was drowned out in the cacophony.
Now the broad example: the nauseating speculation about the leadership of Sussan Ley has diverted attention away from a lacklustre and increasingly secretive government. Labor currently has vast amounts of electoral capital and a massive window of opportunity to implement much-needed structural reform to make Australia fairer and more prosperous. Instead, Labor is sticking with an incrementalist approach to policy, tinkering with problems rather than fixing them.
Sean Kelly’s recent Quarterly Essay, “What Does Labor Stand For?”, highlights the problem. If it takes 20,000 words to answer the question, perhaps Labor only stands for holding power. This is also indicative of an increasingly dishonest government. Labor pilloried the Morrison government for its lack of transparency yet may now be making things worse. The Centre for Public Integrity has noted that Labor is not honouring its “commitments to transparency, respect for Parliament, robust checks and balances, and action to stamp out corruption and undue influence.”
Three instances illustrate this point. First, Labor was recently forced to release a review on the “jobs for mates” culture, which it had sat on for two years. Second, Labor is moving to weaken freedom-of-information laws by introducing fees for non-personal requests, expanding cabinet exemptions, and allowing refusals for requests taking more than 40 hours to process. Third, Labor routinely avoids parliamentary scrutiny by exempting major policies from Senate committee review and minimising debate wherever possible.
With the opposition at its weakest and the government bypassing scrutiny wherever possible, the media has an increasingly important role in holding those in power to account. Democracy depends on a press willing to scrutinise those who wield authority, not those who have already lost it. By focusing on the opposition and neglecting the details of government policy—where real power and impact lie—much of the media, including Savva’s book, falls short of this duty. The result is a less accountable government.
Subscribe for free to receive new book reviews and political analyses directly: https://callumscolumn.substack.com/
November 28, 2025
hey so uh, what the fuck is this?
this is not what i expected when i bought this book. the first third is simply columns that savva has already written and which are marginally appropriate for the book, which is... odd. savva either lacked the connections she needs to write in the style of her previous books or she simply decided not to bother for this one, and it's very odd to read. i guess there's something laudable in getting paid to write an entire book and only writing 2/3rds of it, but it's frustrating that there is genuinely no effort to revist these columns and try to make them into some kind of coherent narrative. the context they provide is useful, but you couldn't do ANYTHING with them? they're just unceremoniously dumped into the start of the book.
once the actual book starts, you can start to understand why. savva does not appear to have the same inroads with labor that she has with the coalition (from being a former staffer for costello) and so a lot of her content on labor is just repeating things that were in the news, albeit with a consistent and unpleasant bias against labor. while this is understandable it also kind of sucks! the previous books are good because her insights are informed by actual reporting and conversations with the people involved, this book entirely lacks this when it comes to labor. as a result the book has to rely on savva's political nous and savvy, and unfortunately it's not hard to see that neither is really up to the task.
savva clearly tries to stay relatively unbiased in her reporting, but ultimately she's incapable of fully extracting herself from the liberal point of view. there's a section in the columns where she describes peter dutton in almost glowing terms, briefly mentioning his issues and then falling back on the same "he's actually a really good bloke in private" that was endemic in australian political circles around the time of his ascension to lead the liberal party. read with hindsight, it's hard to not think "you would not think this if you were not a liberal party member" as dutton remains the same stubbornly unelectable fuckwit throughout. there's a tone of almost shock in the second half of the book where savva seems genuinely surprised that dutton's myriad character flaws are causing problems, and it really only makes sense if she genuinely believed her own bullshit and bought into the spin. dutton was never going to be electable south of brisbane, and it's very close to being a disqualifyingly stupid opinion to think anything else.
of course, towards the end of the book there is an almost identical section praising andrew hastie as being "actually a really good bloke in private" and ignoring his myriad character flaws. doubtless he will be successful!
the actual coverage of the election takes up about half the book, which is odd given the title. we step through dutton's collapse and albo's success, and it's generally quite good! when it comes to labor savva remains thoroughly cut off from the real inside scoop, and it leads to her constantly repeating the same few cliches. albo stopped drinking. albo "curled into a little ball". albo ran a flawless campaign. how did he do that? how did the largest swing in modern federal politics happen? hard to say really, if you were to take the view of this book it largely happened in the background while dutton toured the country causing electoral disasters.
the book then moves on to a discussion of labor post the election. not in a real sense of their political goals or the weight of the victory, but in a weirdly grubby realpolitik sense. clearly one of savva's contacts is former attorney general mark dreyfus, as his removal from the cabinet gets treated with more severity than, well, the liberal national coalition collapsing. despite this being largely a factional issue that almost nobody cares or has heard about, there is page after tedious page of various unnamed labor officials slamming richard marles. it's like there's a single issue she got some real inside goss on, so the book has to pivot dramatically to investigate something that maybe 2 people in the world still care about.
the very end of the book is savva providing some unsolicited political advice to anthony albanese. albanese, having just won an historic victory and with unmitigated support in his party, should retire halfway through his second term! this would allow someone else to come in and... what? what issues would be fixed by doing this? what would be gained? these questions aren't even considered, because savva is just saying shit at this point. she talks about how menzies was the only pm to choose when he could leave office, and this is presumably enough of a justification for one of the most electorally successful politicians in australian history to simply leave the job. genuinely, savva, what the fuck are you talking about?
there's also an opportunity for savva to take yet another swipe at an entirely unrelated labor figure, dan andrews. savva clearly dislikes andrews a lot, because he appears in this book several times and she cannot let his name pass without throwing some insults his way. he is pig headed, arrogant, and definitely shouldn't have gone to china because of their human rights abuses. of course, dutton's active attempts to get donald trump onside are simply political calculations and in no way deserve criticism. but that bastard dan andrews?
overall, it's better than nothing. there's a good book here somewhere, but it's about half the length and probably more in the format of mark distefano's shorten/turnbull campaign diary. as it is, this is a particularly poor effort from one of the few people in australia who's political writing i tend to enjoy. hopefully whatever she puts out next is better, because this is far beneath her usual output.
this is not what i expected when i bought this book. the first third is simply columns that savva has already written and which are marginally appropriate for the book, which is... odd. savva either lacked the connections she needs to write in the style of her previous books or she simply decided not to bother for this one, and it's very odd to read. i guess there's something laudable in getting paid to write an entire book and only writing 2/3rds of it, but it's frustrating that there is genuinely no effort to revist these columns and try to make them into some kind of coherent narrative. the context they provide is useful, but you couldn't do ANYTHING with them? they're just unceremoniously dumped into the start of the book.
once the actual book starts, you can start to understand why. savva does not appear to have the same inroads with labor that she has with the coalition (from being a former staffer for costello) and so a lot of her content on labor is just repeating things that were in the news, albeit with a consistent and unpleasant bias against labor. while this is understandable it also kind of sucks! the previous books are good because her insights are informed by actual reporting and conversations with the people involved, this book entirely lacks this when it comes to labor. as a result the book has to rely on savva's political nous and savvy, and unfortunately it's not hard to see that neither is really up to the task.
savva clearly tries to stay relatively unbiased in her reporting, but ultimately she's incapable of fully extracting herself from the liberal point of view. there's a section in the columns where she describes peter dutton in almost glowing terms, briefly mentioning his issues and then falling back on the same "he's actually a really good bloke in private" that was endemic in australian political circles around the time of his ascension to lead the liberal party. read with hindsight, it's hard to not think "you would not think this if you were not a liberal party member" as dutton remains the same stubbornly unelectable fuckwit throughout. there's a tone of almost shock in the second half of the book where savva seems genuinely surprised that dutton's myriad character flaws are causing problems, and it really only makes sense if she genuinely believed her own bullshit and bought into the spin. dutton was never going to be electable south of brisbane, and it's very close to being a disqualifyingly stupid opinion to think anything else.
of course, towards the end of the book there is an almost identical section praising andrew hastie as being "actually a really good bloke in private" and ignoring his myriad character flaws. doubtless he will be successful!
the actual coverage of the election takes up about half the book, which is odd given the title. we step through dutton's collapse and albo's success, and it's generally quite good! when it comes to labor savva remains thoroughly cut off from the real inside scoop, and it leads to her constantly repeating the same few cliches. albo stopped drinking. albo "curled into a little ball". albo ran a flawless campaign. how did he do that? how did the largest swing in modern federal politics happen? hard to say really, if you were to take the view of this book it largely happened in the background while dutton toured the country causing electoral disasters.
the book then moves on to a discussion of labor post the election. not in a real sense of their political goals or the weight of the victory, but in a weirdly grubby realpolitik sense. clearly one of savva's contacts is former attorney general mark dreyfus, as his removal from the cabinet gets treated with more severity than, well, the liberal national coalition collapsing. despite this being largely a factional issue that almost nobody cares or has heard about, there is page after tedious page of various unnamed labor officials slamming richard marles. it's like there's a single issue she got some real inside goss on, so the book has to pivot dramatically to investigate something that maybe 2 people in the world still care about.
the very end of the book is savva providing some unsolicited political advice to anthony albanese. albanese, having just won an historic victory and with unmitigated support in his party, should retire halfway through his second term! this would allow someone else to come in and... what? what issues would be fixed by doing this? what would be gained? these questions aren't even considered, because savva is just saying shit at this point. she talks about how menzies was the only pm to choose when he could leave office, and this is presumably enough of a justification for one of the most electorally successful politicians in australian history to simply leave the job. genuinely, savva, what the fuck are you talking about?
there's also an opportunity for savva to take yet another swipe at an entirely unrelated labor figure, dan andrews. savva clearly dislikes andrews a lot, because he appears in this book several times and she cannot let his name pass without throwing some insults his way. he is pig headed, arrogant, and definitely shouldn't have gone to china because of their human rights abuses. of course, dutton's active attempts to get donald trump onside are simply political calculations and in no way deserve criticism. but that bastard dan andrews?
overall, it's better than nothing. there's a good book here somewhere, but it's about half the length and probably more in the format of mark distefano's shorten/turnbull campaign diary. as it is, this is a particularly poor effort from one of the few people in australia who's political writing i tend to enjoy. hopefully whatever she puts out next is better, because this is far beneath her usual output.
November 26, 2025
Another brilliant and incisive political history and commentary from Niki Savva. This follows directly from where Bulldozed: Scott Morrison’s Fall and Anthony Albanese’s Rise left off. It's presented mostly in a diary fashion through the first Albanese government, the rise of Peter Dutton as opposition leader and covering the disastrous Voice campaign on indigenous representation through until just a few weeks ago (as I write this) into the second Albanese government.
The title of this book could very nearly have been "the fall of the Liberal Party in Australia", and I suspect the only reason that it's not is because the corpse is still twitching. For anyone not familiar with Australian politics, until recently, we have had three main political parties: Labor, Liberal and the Nationals. The Liberal and National parties usually form government together and are referred to as "the Coalition". Politically speaking, Labor are union-based centre-left, the Liberals have been centre-right and the Nationals are a rural-based party that are primarily right wing, but have been deeply captured by mining interests.
Labor and the Nationals are both doing fine. However, the Liberal Party is in deep trouble. The 2022 federal election wiped out the moderate wing of the party, and the conservative wing, already ascendant for the last decade, are running rampant. The problem with that is that the base of a conservative-only Liberal Party in Australia is too small to be elected in a country with compulsory voting (which doesn't favour either extreme), and the Liberals are more concerned with threats from the right (One Nation primarily, a small right wing party whose primary brand is racism and xenophobia) than recapturing more moderate voters.
The author goes into a lot of detail on this, including how Peter Dutton made things much worse over his tenure as the Liberal leader.
The title of this book could very nearly have been "the fall of the Liberal Party in Australia", and I suspect the only reason that it's not is because the corpse is still twitching. For anyone not familiar with Australian politics, until recently, we have had three main political parties: Labor, Liberal and the Nationals. The Liberal and National parties usually form government together and are referred to as "the Coalition". Politically speaking, Labor are union-based centre-left, the Liberals have been centre-right and the Nationals are a rural-based party that are primarily right wing, but have been deeply captured by mining interests.
Labor and the Nationals are both doing fine. However, the Liberal Party is in deep trouble. The 2022 federal election wiped out the moderate wing of the party, and the conservative wing, already ascendant for the last decade, are running rampant. The problem with that is that the base of a conservative-only Liberal Party in Australia is too small to be elected in a country with compulsory voting (which doesn't favour either extreme), and the Liberals are more concerned with threats from the right (One Nation primarily, a small right wing party whose primary brand is racism and xenophobia) than recapturing more moderate voters.
The author goes into a lot of detail on this, including how Peter Dutton made things much worse over his tenure as the Liberal leader.
December 1, 2025
Fantastic book that adds incredible detail and personality to the events of the last two elections which this book covers. Exclusive interviews with the main players, like Dutton and Albanese give a very personal take on their respective experiences in the campaign and election, and Savva expertly analyses these and many other takes with a critical eye. There is just the right amount of editorialising that this book isn't just a list of facts, but a critical analysis of the good, the bad, and the ugly of the campaigns for all involved. As someone with a real interest in politics, it's always fascinating to see behind the curtain and hear the real views of people on the inside, rather than the bland talking points we, the public, are usually 'treated' to.
A fine book, mostly in the second half when it comes into its own where it transitions to a forensic look at the 2025 election, rather than the columns in part 1 that deal with the 2019 election and ensuing years. I think the decision to include the columns was probably a bit of an error, and would have been better to edit these into a comprehensive narrative in the same manner that Part 2 is written.
A fine book, mostly in the second half when it comes into its own where it transitions to a forensic look at the 2025 election, rather than the columns in part 1 that deal with the 2019 election and ensuing years. I think the decision to include the columns was probably a bit of an error, and would have been better to edit these into a comprehensive narrative in the same manner that Part 2 is written.
April 29, 2026
3.75 Stars ----
Looking through some reviews for this book, many say it's not as good as Savva's previous ones - this is my first read from her and I thought it was an interesting read, but obviously cannot pass judgment compared to her others. It's also important to know that Savva was a political advisor to the Howard admin and has many connections within the Liberal Party. I am unsure of her political bias though. She gave a pretty nice endorsement of the Labor Party in this book and was critical of the Libs/the right in general. Not sure
The first half of the book includes Savva's columns published in various newspapers, of which I do not read. I enjoyed the inclusion; it gave a nice memory jog of the Morrison government, Albanese's first term and all the chaos with other players (Tony Abbott, Josh Frydenberg, Peter Dutton). Humans really do have the memory of a goldfish because I forgot half of the absolutely deplorable shit the Liberal party did during this time. Savva is quite witty, probably the main reason I enjoyed her columns; she comes up with very subtle and creative ways to insult the Liberals, which left me giggling. I will say though, her political predictions were wayyyyy off.
The second half runs through the 2025 election campaign, mainly the thousands of mistakes Dutton made. It was genuinely a train wreck. Savva clearly doesn't have the same insider connections as she does with the Libs, as she knew nothing about the inner workings of the Labor campaign. This was disappointing, considering she often says Albo's campaign was 'flawless'. GIVE US THE TEA?!?
Overall, it was interesting, but more so because of the utter mess the Liberal party is in, not because Savva had anything super insightful to add.
Looking through some reviews for this book, many say it's not as good as Savva's previous ones - this is my first read from her and I thought it was an interesting read, but obviously cannot pass judgment compared to her others. It's also important to know that Savva was a political advisor to the Howard admin and has many connections within the Liberal Party. I am unsure of her political bias though. She gave a pretty nice endorsement of the Labor Party in this book and was critical of the Libs/the right in general. Not sure
The first half of the book includes Savva's columns published in various newspapers, of which I do not read. I enjoyed the inclusion; it gave a nice memory jog of the Morrison government, Albanese's first term and all the chaos with other players (Tony Abbott, Josh Frydenberg, Peter Dutton). Humans really do have the memory of a goldfish because I forgot half of the absolutely deplorable shit the Liberal party did during this time. Savva is quite witty, probably the main reason I enjoyed her columns; she comes up with very subtle and creative ways to insult the Liberals, which left me giggling. I will say though, her political predictions were wayyyyy off.
The second half runs through the 2025 election campaign, mainly the thousands of mistakes Dutton made. It was genuinely a train wreck. Savva clearly doesn't have the same insider connections as she does with the Libs, as she knew nothing about the inner workings of the Labor campaign. This was disappointing, considering she often says Albo's campaign was 'flawless'. GIVE US THE TEA?!?
Overall, it was interesting, but more so because of the utter mess the Liberal party is in, not because Savva had anything super insightful to add.
January 20, 2026
Earthquake does have lots of interesting titbits about internal party wrangling and the events that shaped the 2025 election result. And it's weirdly fascinating to know how much Tony Abbott sabotages his own side.
But the book has lots of problems. It feels like a chore to read the first half of the book, which is a collection of columns. These are better read one or two at a time.
The second half is written more like a book and has the extra insights from the insider interviews. However it rambles around. And I kept being distracted by the spelling errors. Did someone read it before publishing? Who is Tony Abbot?
But the book has lots of problems. It feels like a chore to read the first half of the book, which is a collection of columns. These are better read one or two at a time.
The second half is written more like a book and has the extra insights from the insider interviews. However it rambles around. And I kept being distracted by the spelling errors. Did someone read it before publishing? Who is Tony Abbot?
December 8, 2025
This was probably the hardest of Savva’s books to complete for a few reasons, but mainly for her decision to include over 200 pages of her syndicated Fairfax column, spanning several years before the events of Earthquake. It felt self-indulgent and unnecessary, and possibly an attempt to lengthen the book beyond the relatively short 200 pages of commentary about the 2025 election. As an avid reader of Australian politics, I had previously read these articles when they were published, so to have to return to them, in such detail, before beginning the actual commentary itself, was laborious and frustrating.
December 16, 2025
I should lay my cards on the table, I am very much ‘of the left’, however, that’s not to say that I am a diehard Labor person.
I see that government has two main roles. Firstly, to make citizens safe from both internal and external threats, Secondly, to provide infrastructure and services to meet the collective need of the society, with special emphasis on those in most need.
I have read Savva’s other publications; I found them very satisfactory reads and most informative. As they say, if journalism is the first rough draft of history, then Savva’s books are the second draft. As I read Earthquake much of the text brought back memories of the incidents and situations that were part of my daily news feed.
I did not find Earthquake as satisfying as her previous books. The first half were copies of her columns in the Sydney Morning Herald. The early pages were a repeat of what she wrote during Morrison’s period as prime minister.
I didn’t think the lead up to the May 2025 election was as coherent as it should have been. I would have preferred a more linear approach, exploring the important situations that occurred in the weeks of the campaign. I also would have liked some insights into particular seats that were significant in the election outcome.
Like Savva and most others I did not predict the result. In many ways I had hoped for a Labor minority government with the Teals holding the balance of power. I thought greater reform would have taken place than what has eventuated with Labor holding the massive majority that it now has.
On the night of the election and the immediate days after I watched with interest as Liberal seat after Liberal seat fell to the ALP juggernaut. I was particularly pleased when Dutton lost his seat of Dickson to Ali France. I had watched and hoped for this result for several elections. In several portfolios, especially immigration I found him to be an odious character.
There are probably tens of reasons the Liberal Party lost so badly. Her comments about this occurrence got me thinking about reasons for this result. She mentions and discusses several.
• Australia has changed since 2019. Women and migrants are playing a greater role in society and in politics. They can no longer be ignored and given a stereotypical classification.
• The cliché old white stale men is being noticed.
• The country/city divide is becoming more observable and comments by National Party politicians like Barnaby Joyce and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price might appeal to the National Party base but they put offside many voters in city-based electorates.
• The LNP has a women problem. With women like Nampijinpa (Indian migrants and support of Trump) Michaelia Cash (End of tradie weekend) and Jane Hume (Chinese spies) as party members how do they expect to attract Allegra Spender and Kate Chaney type women to the party?
• Failure to consider quotas to increase women participation in the Liberal Party.
• Let the Sky News After Dark be their spokesmen and spokeswomen.
• Failure to embrace environmental policies, especially climate change.
• Refuses to acknowledge the present taxation system favours older Australians and disadvantages younger Australians.
• Virtually no policies on housing.
• Willingness to put cultural wars (transgender, Welcome to Country, Woolworths not selling Australia Day paraphernalia, The Aboriginal flag) to the forefront rather than economic issues.
• Hypocrisy of COVID payments to large companies and robodebt.
• Support of Trump.
Savva goes onto write that it appears that the Liberal Party is unable to acknowledge the insurmountable problems it faces to regain the government benches.
She briefly discusses Labor’s willingness (or lack of) to introduce a reform agenda and the future for Albanese. Although the remnants of the Liberal Party appear to have failed to understand their loss the Labor Party needs to realise their victory was like an outback flood, wide but shallow. Its primary vote is still low and a minor shift in electoral support could see it lose its majority. Its post election opaque response to transparency and accountability is troubling. The future of Albanese is worth noting. He lead the ALP to an amazing victory but he is not another Bob Hawke. He does not have an abundance of charisma & one misstep could see his popularity plummet. We live in a time of turmoil and the political scene can change rapidly.
So, if you have an interest in reflecting on the recent federal election and the future of both Labor and Liberal the second half of Earthquake should interest you.
I see that government has two main roles. Firstly, to make citizens safe from both internal and external threats, Secondly, to provide infrastructure and services to meet the collective need of the society, with special emphasis on those in most need.
I have read Savva’s other publications; I found them very satisfactory reads and most informative. As they say, if journalism is the first rough draft of history, then Savva’s books are the second draft. As I read Earthquake much of the text brought back memories of the incidents and situations that were part of my daily news feed.
I did not find Earthquake as satisfying as her previous books. The first half were copies of her columns in the Sydney Morning Herald. The early pages were a repeat of what she wrote during Morrison’s period as prime minister.
I didn’t think the lead up to the May 2025 election was as coherent as it should have been. I would have preferred a more linear approach, exploring the important situations that occurred in the weeks of the campaign. I also would have liked some insights into particular seats that were significant in the election outcome.
Like Savva and most others I did not predict the result. In many ways I had hoped for a Labor minority government with the Teals holding the balance of power. I thought greater reform would have taken place than what has eventuated with Labor holding the massive majority that it now has.
On the night of the election and the immediate days after I watched with interest as Liberal seat after Liberal seat fell to the ALP juggernaut. I was particularly pleased when Dutton lost his seat of Dickson to Ali France. I had watched and hoped for this result for several elections. In several portfolios, especially immigration I found him to be an odious character.
There are probably tens of reasons the Liberal Party lost so badly. Her comments about this occurrence got me thinking about reasons for this result. She mentions and discusses several.
• Australia has changed since 2019. Women and migrants are playing a greater role in society and in politics. They can no longer be ignored and given a stereotypical classification.
• The cliché old white stale men is being noticed.
• The country/city divide is becoming more observable and comments by National Party politicians like Barnaby Joyce and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price might appeal to the National Party base but they put offside many voters in city-based electorates.
• The LNP has a women problem. With women like Nampijinpa (Indian migrants and support of Trump) Michaelia Cash (End of tradie weekend) and Jane Hume (Chinese spies) as party members how do they expect to attract Allegra Spender and Kate Chaney type women to the party?
• Failure to consider quotas to increase women participation in the Liberal Party.
• Let the Sky News After Dark be their spokesmen and spokeswomen.
• Failure to embrace environmental policies, especially climate change.
• Refuses to acknowledge the present taxation system favours older Australians and disadvantages younger Australians.
• Virtually no policies on housing.
• Willingness to put cultural wars (transgender, Welcome to Country, Woolworths not selling Australia Day paraphernalia, The Aboriginal flag) to the forefront rather than economic issues.
• Hypocrisy of COVID payments to large companies and robodebt.
• Support of Trump.
Savva goes onto write that it appears that the Liberal Party is unable to acknowledge the insurmountable problems it faces to regain the government benches.
She briefly discusses Labor’s willingness (or lack of) to introduce a reform agenda and the future for Albanese. Although the remnants of the Liberal Party appear to have failed to understand their loss the Labor Party needs to realise their victory was like an outback flood, wide but shallow. Its primary vote is still low and a minor shift in electoral support could see it lose its majority. Its post election opaque response to transparency and accountability is troubling. The future of Albanese is worth noting. He lead the ALP to an amazing victory but he is not another Bob Hawke. He does not have an abundance of charisma & one misstep could see his popularity plummet. We live in a time of turmoil and the political scene can change rapidly.
So, if you have an interest in reflecting on the recent federal election and the future of both Labor and Liberal the second half of Earthquake should interest you.
December 18, 2025
Not as thorough as Bulldozer, the early columns don't add much but the back half mostly shines. Savva at times doesn't dig far enough and glosses over some big moments of the election, parroting some media lines and misattributing the 'Dutton dressed as lamb' line which has been around from as earlier as 2018. It's still worth a read but you can skip past the Scomo columns which were covered much better in her previous work.
December 4, 2025
Too disjointed and much of it too distant from the election. Very few insights that show a connection to the people involved.
March 7, 2026
Savva's Earthquake is a supremely disappointing successor to Bulldozed.
It isn't hard to reach the assessment that the inclusion of more than 200 pages worth of columns with no additional commentary looks like a barefaced attempt to up the page count. This, combined with the multiple spelling and punctuation mistakes after the columns only reinforces my view that Savva had a strict deadline, and the publisher wanted it on shelves as soon as physically possible.
Savva's view of the Liberal election performance can be summed up in a few (non-exhaustive) key points. The Liberal Party largely ignored women (particularly with their WFH stance and subsequent backflip), struggled with their economic messaging (the fuel excise response to Labor's tax cut positioning), directly offended key minorities (the Price comments on Indian-Australians, and Hume's Chinese Spies comment), and ran a campaign from a paranoid and unprepared leader's office, during the instability of a Trump presidency. Beyond this, Savva is merely a sounding board for disgruntled Liberal members who were all complacent and complicit in the downfall of the election and decline of the party.
I did appreciate the unique observations were a result of her strong Liberal connections. The walled-garden of Dutton's office spearheaded by his chief of staff, and Dutton's trashing of the bipartisan oversight of the AUKUS deal (that Hastie was involved in) were revelatory. Some of her inside looks at the Labor campaign were also interesting (the no-grog rule, team meetings), but weren't anything particularly radical.
Savva is quite lukewarm on the future of the Liberal party, refusing to provide any further solutions or commentary beyond the mainstream problem identification and leadership speculation. Similarly, Savva cannot resist indulging in scrying Albanese's future beyond the 2025 election, withstanding being personally humbled for her erroneous pre-election position advising him to resign.
If you want a more complete autopsy of the Liberal election performance, your time would be better spent reading the leaked 2025 Liberal Party Election Review. If you want a critique of Labor's current performance in government, you'd best look elsewhere.
It isn't hard to reach the assessment that the inclusion of more than 200 pages worth of columns with no additional commentary looks like a barefaced attempt to up the page count. This, combined with the multiple spelling and punctuation mistakes after the columns only reinforces my view that Savva had a strict deadline, and the publisher wanted it on shelves as soon as physically possible.
Savva's view of the Liberal election performance can be summed up in a few (non-exhaustive) key points. The Liberal Party largely ignored women (particularly with their WFH stance and subsequent backflip), struggled with their economic messaging (the fuel excise response to Labor's tax cut positioning), directly offended key minorities (the Price comments on Indian-Australians, and Hume's Chinese Spies comment), and ran a campaign from a paranoid and unprepared leader's office, during the instability of a Trump presidency. Beyond this, Savva is merely a sounding board for disgruntled Liberal members who were all complacent and complicit in the downfall of the election and decline of the party.
I did appreciate the unique observations were a result of her strong Liberal connections. The walled-garden of Dutton's office spearheaded by his chief of staff, and Dutton's trashing of the bipartisan oversight of the AUKUS deal (that Hastie was involved in) were revelatory. Some of her inside looks at the Labor campaign were also interesting (the no-grog rule, team meetings), but weren't anything particularly radical.
Savva is quite lukewarm on the future of the Liberal party, refusing to provide any further solutions or commentary beyond the mainstream problem identification and leadership speculation. Similarly, Savva cannot resist indulging in scrying Albanese's future beyond the 2025 election, withstanding being personally humbled for her erroneous pre-election position advising him to resign.
If you want a more complete autopsy of the Liberal election performance, your time would be better spent reading the leaked 2025 Liberal Party Election Review. If you want a critique of Labor's current performance in government, you'd best look elsewhere.
April 24, 2026
The first thing to say is that I am glad that I borrowed this from the library rather than buying it, as the first half is merely a reprint of Savva’s column in The Age. I completely understand the reason to set up a potted history of going into the 2025 election, but surely there was time for an original narrative.
I have enjoyed Savva’s previous books and I am a fan of her astute assessments, but this is not her best work. There is a lot of repeat information and observations and I’m not convinced by the structure either.
The other problem is that there had been so much reporting on this book, and Savva did so much radio and press, that there was really nothing new to discover. To be fair though, if I had read it when it first appeared I may feel differently.
I have enjoyed Savva’s previous books and I am a fan of her astute assessments, but this is not her best work. There is a lot of repeat information and observations and I’m not convinced by the structure either.
The other problem is that there had been so much reporting on this book, and Savva did so much radio and press, that there was really nothing new to discover. To be fair though, if I had read it when it first appeared I may feel differently.
February 12, 2026
I was looking forward to reading this book as a big fan of Niki’s previous books. The first 215 pages wasted my time and weren’t about the book title. Filling half a book with her previous newspaper columns with no additional commentary was wasting her readers time. I thought of skipping to Part II but I ploughed on through Part I anyway. As a standalone book I would have given Part II a 4 but as a whole I could only rate the whole book a 2 which is my lowest rating on Goodreads
March 18, 2026
I feel bad saying this because I have really really enjoyed all of her previous works but this was a little bit disappointing. It felt rushed, there were some extremely basic typos that make it look like it hadn’t been reviewed at all before publishing and some of the storyline’s were overly repetitive. There’s still a lot of classic Savva in here, but it made me wistful for what might have been.
February 21, 2026
Nikki Savva doesn't pull any punches in her reporting, reflections and analysis of politics of the day. She must be trusted by many politicians because they are willing to be interviewed and be put on the record.
A must read for anyone who follows Australian politics.
A must read for anyone who follows Australian politics.
December 27, 2025
As always, Niki Savva writes in an accessible way about the behind the scenes of Australia's political arena before, during and after the May 2025 election, providing fascinating insight into the movers and shakers of politicians, staffers and the extended circle involved in politics. However it is a bit repetitive between the columns in the first half and the observations on the second half.
January 3, 2026
Liked the actual substance of the book, didn’t love the inclusion of the columns (it felt lazy, and I reckon could have been better done if accompanied by sone analysis).
January 24, 2026
I love anything Niki writes. The second half of the book was very informative. The LNP are a disaster and now we more of an insiders look as to why this is so!
December 24, 2025
First half is just columns, and the rest felt a bit flat…. Maybe bulldozed set the bar too high (it’s a fave)
March 7, 2026
Wowie! A scathing post-mortem of where it all went wrong for the Libs…. The book remains spookily relevant in foreshadowing Ley’s inevitable demise and Taylor’s ambitions
January 3, 2026
Lenin says somewhere that although practice is the highest criterion of truth, it is never sufficiently robust to disprove any theory – perhaps something the Marxist that came after him might have tried to remember. If there was ever proof of this maxim, what is happening to the Liberal Party in Australia since the last two elections comes pretty close. This book started in a way I wasn’t really expecting it to. The book says it is about the election that shook Australia, but it starts with the election before the last one. The first part of the book is a series of articles Savva wrote from the defeat of the Morrison government through to the defeat of Peter Dutton in the last Australian election.
I guess it is important to remember that prior to the last election there was speculation that the best the Labor Party could do – given the cost of living crisis and a one term government that seemed to be afraid of its own shadow – was to be able to form a minority government. This was a result I was basically hoping for. I certainly didn’t want the Liberals to win – but I also wasn’t particularly hoping for the ALP to win either. It felt like the only result that might spur the ALP into action, in much the same way that it was under Gillard, was for it to have to negotiate with a crossbench to retain power. This wasn’t the outcome that happened, even if it was the most predicted one. Rather, the ALP won a massive victory – 94 seats to the opposition’s 42. But, as people have constantly said, one the basis of the ALP only winning under 35% of the primary vote, so wide, but shallow. Yet another reason why the ALP are unlikely to be adventurous in their second term.
What has been particularly interesting has been the shift away from the Liberal Party in what had once been its heartland, within the affluent, inner city seats, which have now mostly been taken from them by the TEALS – women who might once have been members of the Liberal Party, but who have become so disaffected by the shift to the right of the Liberal Party, their denial of climate change (reflected in the name they’ve been assigned, where teal is a mixture of blue and green) and the suicidal war on women that has become a reason for being of the party, that what had once been a party that referred to itself as a broad church, with conservative and moderate wings, is now dominated by conservatives. There has been talk of the moderates splitting from the party – but, as the author makes clear, this could only happen if there were some left. I’m old enough to remember Christopher Pyne getting drunk and boasting that the moderates controlled the party – no one would claim such a thing today.
Morrison had hoped that he could abandon the inner-city electorates and still win on the back of outer suburb disaffected tradies. But this imagined shift never quite eventuated. But rather than learn the lesson of the loss in the 2022, the Liberal Party decided to double down on culture wars. One of these was the loss of the referendum on an Aboriginal voice to parliament. This will go down in history as one of the great lost opportunities in the path to reconciliation. For a while it had massive support – something like 70% of the population was in favour of providing Aboriginal and Torres Strait peoples a voice to parliament on matters that directly impacted them. But when the Liberal Party decided there might be an advantage to them in defeating it with a scare campaign (I was told by a person advocating a no vote that Aboriginals would take my backyard if they won…) the Liberals thought they were onto a good thing. Instead, they had won a battle that would then ensure they lost the war. They decided that punching down was the surest way to win the election.
And look, it seemed like this was going to be successful. They were riding high in the polls. A large part of the problem was that they had Dutton as a leader. Dutton is an incredibly nasty man. His main achievements in politics had been things like imprisoning asylum seekers – saying things like if we show even a little compassion it will come back to bite us. He never struck me as someone people would want to elect as Prime Minister – but after them having elected Tony Abbott and John Howard, I couldn’t rely on that. His main problem was that he held ‘the enemy’ in such contempt that he never spoke to media that might challenge is world view. He spent his time as leader of the party talking within the Murdoch echo chamber. As the author points out – he never once made an appearance at the National Press Club – and so, when the election was under way, he had no experience in how to deal with journalists asking challenging questions. Worse, but related, was the fact that he believed his own bullshit. Part of this was that the Labor government was so bad that people would recognise the mistake they’d made in electing them and vote him in. This lead to complacency, and to the party going to the election essentially without any policies. Then to them announcing policies, only to remove them a couple of weeks later. A case in point was Jane Hume announcing that she wanted public servants (who the Liberals had already said there were too many of and would be facing mass job cuts once the election was over) to stop working from home. This sent a shiver down the spine of not only public servants, but everyone who now relied on being able to work from home to have any sort of work/life balance at all.
Jane doesn’t come out of this at all well. A couple of days before the election she also said that the ALP was using Chinese spies to hand out how to vote cards. You need to remember that John Howard lost his seat on the basis of a backlash from people of Chinese ancestry. Worse still, that Jane had been one half of the two person team that reviewed the previous election loss, and found that the gratuitous insults to Chinese Australians had been part of the reason they had lost. You couldn’t make this stuff up. The fact that the people most likely to benefit from working from home are women – another group her review said the party needed to attract – also makes you wonder what she was thinking.
Since the defeat, the Liberal Party has decided that the best way forward is to shift further to the right. They have abandoned a target for green house gas reductions and look like they are going to seek to drastically reduce migration as the supposed panacea for all of our problems. This isn’t really helping. If it was meant to reassure their base, this seems to be stripping away to One Nation – a far right party that is now polling as Australia’s third party. Whether they will be able to sustain this will be interesting to see, I suspect not, given the party’s leader makes Nigel Farage look sensible, but again, that would require more faith in the electorate than I can muster. Given there is no path to victory for the Liberal Party that doesn’t involve recapturing metropolitan seats, a shift to the right seems destined to end the party. Particularly since its main support base is among people my age and older – people rushing towards death.
You might think that two drubbings in two elections would be enough to convince the party that it was time to try something new – but as Lenin said, no amount of practice is enough to disprove a strongly enough held theory – and when you’ve been told all your life that you were born to rule, the evidence of your eyes is never going to be nearly enough.
That said, the one rule with politics is that it always provides surprises. Some of the people in the party said that it was a pity they won the 2019 election – there is probably some truth to that.
I guess it is important to remember that prior to the last election there was speculation that the best the Labor Party could do – given the cost of living crisis and a one term government that seemed to be afraid of its own shadow – was to be able to form a minority government. This was a result I was basically hoping for. I certainly didn’t want the Liberals to win – but I also wasn’t particularly hoping for the ALP to win either. It felt like the only result that might spur the ALP into action, in much the same way that it was under Gillard, was for it to have to negotiate with a crossbench to retain power. This wasn’t the outcome that happened, even if it was the most predicted one. Rather, the ALP won a massive victory – 94 seats to the opposition’s 42. But, as people have constantly said, one the basis of the ALP only winning under 35% of the primary vote, so wide, but shallow. Yet another reason why the ALP are unlikely to be adventurous in their second term.
What has been particularly interesting has been the shift away from the Liberal Party in what had once been its heartland, within the affluent, inner city seats, which have now mostly been taken from them by the TEALS – women who might once have been members of the Liberal Party, but who have become so disaffected by the shift to the right of the Liberal Party, their denial of climate change (reflected in the name they’ve been assigned, where teal is a mixture of blue and green) and the suicidal war on women that has become a reason for being of the party, that what had once been a party that referred to itself as a broad church, with conservative and moderate wings, is now dominated by conservatives. There has been talk of the moderates splitting from the party – but, as the author makes clear, this could only happen if there were some left. I’m old enough to remember Christopher Pyne getting drunk and boasting that the moderates controlled the party – no one would claim such a thing today.
Morrison had hoped that he could abandon the inner-city electorates and still win on the back of outer suburb disaffected tradies. But this imagined shift never quite eventuated. But rather than learn the lesson of the loss in the 2022, the Liberal Party decided to double down on culture wars. One of these was the loss of the referendum on an Aboriginal voice to parliament. This will go down in history as one of the great lost opportunities in the path to reconciliation. For a while it had massive support – something like 70% of the population was in favour of providing Aboriginal and Torres Strait peoples a voice to parliament on matters that directly impacted them. But when the Liberal Party decided there might be an advantage to them in defeating it with a scare campaign (I was told by a person advocating a no vote that Aboriginals would take my backyard if they won…) the Liberals thought they were onto a good thing. Instead, they had won a battle that would then ensure they lost the war. They decided that punching down was the surest way to win the election.
And look, it seemed like this was going to be successful. They were riding high in the polls. A large part of the problem was that they had Dutton as a leader. Dutton is an incredibly nasty man. His main achievements in politics had been things like imprisoning asylum seekers – saying things like if we show even a little compassion it will come back to bite us. He never struck me as someone people would want to elect as Prime Minister – but after them having elected Tony Abbott and John Howard, I couldn’t rely on that. His main problem was that he held ‘the enemy’ in such contempt that he never spoke to media that might challenge is world view. He spent his time as leader of the party talking within the Murdoch echo chamber. As the author points out – he never once made an appearance at the National Press Club – and so, when the election was under way, he had no experience in how to deal with journalists asking challenging questions. Worse, but related, was the fact that he believed his own bullshit. Part of this was that the Labor government was so bad that people would recognise the mistake they’d made in electing them and vote him in. This lead to complacency, and to the party going to the election essentially without any policies. Then to them announcing policies, only to remove them a couple of weeks later. A case in point was Jane Hume announcing that she wanted public servants (who the Liberals had already said there were too many of and would be facing mass job cuts once the election was over) to stop working from home. This sent a shiver down the spine of not only public servants, but everyone who now relied on being able to work from home to have any sort of work/life balance at all.
Jane doesn’t come out of this at all well. A couple of days before the election she also said that the ALP was using Chinese spies to hand out how to vote cards. You need to remember that John Howard lost his seat on the basis of a backlash from people of Chinese ancestry. Worse still, that Jane had been one half of the two person team that reviewed the previous election loss, and found that the gratuitous insults to Chinese Australians had been part of the reason they had lost. You couldn’t make this stuff up. The fact that the people most likely to benefit from working from home are women – another group her review said the party needed to attract – also makes you wonder what she was thinking.
Since the defeat, the Liberal Party has decided that the best way forward is to shift further to the right. They have abandoned a target for green house gas reductions and look like they are going to seek to drastically reduce migration as the supposed panacea for all of our problems. This isn’t really helping. If it was meant to reassure their base, this seems to be stripping away to One Nation – a far right party that is now polling as Australia’s third party. Whether they will be able to sustain this will be interesting to see, I suspect not, given the party’s leader makes Nigel Farage look sensible, but again, that would require more faith in the electorate than I can muster. Given there is no path to victory for the Liberal Party that doesn’t involve recapturing metropolitan seats, a shift to the right seems destined to end the party. Particularly since its main support base is among people my age and older – people rushing towards death.
You might think that two drubbings in two elections would be enough to convince the party that it was time to try something new – but as Lenin said, no amount of practice is enough to disprove a strongly enough held theory – and when you’ve been told all your life that you were born to rule, the evidence of your eyes is never going to be nearly enough.
That said, the one rule with politics is that it always provides surprises. Some of the people in the party said that it was a pity they won the 2019 election – there is probably some truth to that.
January 12, 2026
Earthquake: the election that shook Australia is political journalist Niki Savva's analysis and commentary on the May 2025 election and relevant events preceding it.
The book provides a comprehensive summary of the relentless litany of errors that ruined the conservative Coalition's campaign and delivered the centre-left Albanese-led Australian Labor Party a substantial and record breaking victory.
The issues on which Labor seemed vulnerable, and the Coalition failed to capitalize, is extraordinary: high cost of living, reduced housing affordability, excessive power bills, impractical and environmentally damaging net zero climate emission targets, migration pressures, and taxation inequities, to list the most obvious.
The Coalition also completely misread voter support for the working from home practices entrenched since the Covid years. A presumption that most regarded WFH as a free ride for public sector workers proved wrong. The Coalition's antipathy alienated substantial blocks of electors who benefited from this technologically enabled restructure of office work.
The Coalition was also in retrospect quite naive on one matter. It had campaigned successfully against Labor's proposed Constitutional amendment to empower an indigenous advisory 'Voice' on matters of national governance.
The Coalition trusted a substantial block of voter support remained with it after the national referendum on this matter failed in October 2023. However, the electorate proved to be very capable of discriminating between the relatively narrow Voice issue, and broader questions of government policy and capability. It judged the Coalition deficient on both criteria.
Savva's own political profile is interesting. Her journalistic work since the 1970s was mainly for reputable conservative newspapers. She also served a few years as a staffer for the Treasurer and Prime Minister in previous Coalition governments at the turn of the century. Her Coalition informants are thus relatively well placed and reliable The book benefits from many insights gleaned from Coalition participants in the 2025 election.
Savva describes herself as a 'conservative leftie', presumably meaning a mix of economic rationalism and social liberalism. She has been distancing herself from the Coalition increasingly over the last decade, mainly since the conservative Abbott premiership of 2013-15, which she seems to regard as moving further to the right, and away from the centre, where traditionally Australian elections are decided. Consequently, she has a benign view of the Albanese government, and was able to also access commentary and insights from well placed Labor people for the book.
Savva's limited respect for the Coalition seems justified, given its poor record in Opposition since losing government in 2022. Apart from the successful campaign against the Voice, it has seemed relatively rudderless. Its directionless drift partly reflects internal divisions between traditional conservatives and an increasing number of social progressives who seem indistinguishable from comparable elements of the ALP.
Her book was published in November 2025, when multiple future terms for the Labor government seemed likely. It would be interesting to learn if her expectations have altered following the horrific Bondi attack of 14 December 2025.
Bondi was the worst terrorist attack in Australia's history, one which highlights dramatic changes in Australian culture and immigration policies. It raises questions about the nature and future of Australia, with the previously unthinkable eruption of local manifestations of highly divisive and extremist Middle East politics. It suggested also a troubling failure of national government, given that Albanese and a cabal of senior Ministers seemed to largely ignore a sustained rise in anti-Semitism from recent immigrants in Australia, and were willing to voice casual anti Israel sentiments in apparent attempts to increase sectional electoral support.
Albanese's response to the attack was almost callously indifferent and politically cynical: he tried to suggest the principal cause was insufficiently restrictive generic gun laws, not the specific and brutal outbreak of radical Islamist terrorism. His reluctance to name Islamic terror reflects Australia's lax immigration policies, which have delivered considerable ALP voting blocks in several metropolitan electorates with substantial Muslim populations.
The bland response reflects also Albanese's personal history of youthful, juvenile attachment to far left ideologies, including antipathy to Israel, and support for Yasser Arafat's Palestinian National Authority and its successors. His government's response to the savage and barbaric Hamas attacks on Israeli citizens of 7 October 2023 was equivocal, urging restraint despite the obvious existential risks and dangers for Israel.
Broader voter repulsion for Albanese's inadequate, insensitive, and politically utilitarian reaction to the Bondi attack has reduced his electoral standing in recent opinion polls taken after Bondi.
The Bondi terror would seem to have prematurely dated Savva's book. The next election is scheduled for 2028. Savva's expectations of a long electoral life for the Albanese government may prove to be redundant, if voter repulsion over Bondi is sustained, and if the Coalition can both regain a sense of unity, and capitalize on voter aversion to Albanese's uncompassionate and poorly managed response to the Bondi attack.
Savva has had a long and successful career, and Earthquake is the fifth of politically themed books she has published in the last 15 years. The 2025 election may have seemed a major development in Australia's political history, ending generations of relative success for the conservative Coalition.
The Bondi attack now looks to be the more significant inflection point in Australian society and politics. Bondi seems the genuine earthquake, with the 2025 election receding quickly in the rear view mirror as more a passing tremor.
Savva had sworn that Earthquake would be her last book. Bondi has made a strong case for a further volume on Australia's now rapidly evolving social and political development, and its uncertain future stability.
The book provides a comprehensive summary of the relentless litany of errors that ruined the conservative Coalition's campaign and delivered the centre-left Albanese-led Australian Labor Party a substantial and record breaking victory.
The issues on which Labor seemed vulnerable, and the Coalition failed to capitalize, is extraordinary: high cost of living, reduced housing affordability, excessive power bills, impractical and environmentally damaging net zero climate emission targets, migration pressures, and taxation inequities, to list the most obvious.
The Coalition also completely misread voter support for the working from home practices entrenched since the Covid years. A presumption that most regarded WFH as a free ride for public sector workers proved wrong. The Coalition's antipathy alienated substantial blocks of electors who benefited from this technologically enabled restructure of office work.
The Coalition was also in retrospect quite naive on one matter. It had campaigned successfully against Labor's proposed Constitutional amendment to empower an indigenous advisory 'Voice' on matters of national governance.
The Coalition trusted a substantial block of voter support remained with it after the national referendum on this matter failed in October 2023. However, the electorate proved to be very capable of discriminating between the relatively narrow Voice issue, and broader questions of government policy and capability. It judged the Coalition deficient on both criteria.
Savva's own political profile is interesting. Her journalistic work since the 1970s was mainly for reputable conservative newspapers. She also served a few years as a staffer for the Treasurer and Prime Minister in previous Coalition governments at the turn of the century. Her Coalition informants are thus relatively well placed and reliable The book benefits from many insights gleaned from Coalition participants in the 2025 election.
Savva describes herself as a 'conservative leftie', presumably meaning a mix of economic rationalism and social liberalism. She has been distancing herself from the Coalition increasingly over the last decade, mainly since the conservative Abbott premiership of 2013-15, which she seems to regard as moving further to the right, and away from the centre, where traditionally Australian elections are decided. Consequently, she has a benign view of the Albanese government, and was able to also access commentary and insights from well placed Labor people for the book.
Savva's limited respect for the Coalition seems justified, given its poor record in Opposition since losing government in 2022. Apart from the successful campaign against the Voice, it has seemed relatively rudderless. Its directionless drift partly reflects internal divisions between traditional conservatives and an increasing number of social progressives who seem indistinguishable from comparable elements of the ALP.
Her book was published in November 2025, when multiple future terms for the Labor government seemed likely. It would be interesting to learn if her expectations have altered following the horrific Bondi attack of 14 December 2025.
Bondi was the worst terrorist attack in Australia's history, one which highlights dramatic changes in Australian culture and immigration policies. It raises questions about the nature and future of Australia, with the previously unthinkable eruption of local manifestations of highly divisive and extremist Middle East politics. It suggested also a troubling failure of national government, given that Albanese and a cabal of senior Ministers seemed to largely ignore a sustained rise in anti-Semitism from recent immigrants in Australia, and were willing to voice casual anti Israel sentiments in apparent attempts to increase sectional electoral support.
Albanese's response to the attack was almost callously indifferent and politically cynical: he tried to suggest the principal cause was insufficiently restrictive generic gun laws, not the specific and brutal outbreak of radical Islamist terrorism. His reluctance to name Islamic terror reflects Australia's lax immigration policies, which have delivered considerable ALP voting blocks in several metropolitan electorates with substantial Muslim populations.
The bland response reflects also Albanese's personal history of youthful, juvenile attachment to far left ideologies, including antipathy to Israel, and support for Yasser Arafat's Palestinian National Authority and its successors. His government's response to the savage and barbaric Hamas attacks on Israeli citizens of 7 October 2023 was equivocal, urging restraint despite the obvious existential risks and dangers for Israel.
Broader voter repulsion for Albanese's inadequate, insensitive, and politically utilitarian reaction to the Bondi attack has reduced his electoral standing in recent opinion polls taken after Bondi.
The Bondi terror would seem to have prematurely dated Savva's book. The next election is scheduled for 2028. Savva's expectations of a long electoral life for the Albanese government may prove to be redundant, if voter repulsion over Bondi is sustained, and if the Coalition can both regain a sense of unity, and capitalize on voter aversion to Albanese's uncompassionate and poorly managed response to the Bondi attack.
Savva has had a long and successful career, and Earthquake is the fifth of politically themed books she has published in the last 15 years. The 2025 election may have seemed a major development in Australia's political history, ending generations of relative success for the conservative Coalition.
The Bondi attack now looks to be the more significant inflection point in Australian society and politics. Bondi seems the genuine earthquake, with the 2025 election receding quickly in the rear view mirror as more a passing tremor.
Savva had sworn that Earthquake would be her last book. Bondi has made a strong case for a further volume on Australia's now rapidly evolving social and political development, and its uncertain future stability.
January 27, 2026
2.5 ⭐️
Finished reading ... Earthquake: the election that shook Australia / Niki Savva ... 23 January, 2026
ISBN: 9781761381898 .... 416 pp.
This volume, Savva's fourth following the election fortunes of recent Australian Prime Ministers, wasn't as good as the previous three. I found it superficial, probably because I was so closely involved as a volunteer for my local MP who won by a squeak.
It covers the machinations at federal and to a lesser extent at state level yet barely touches on what was happening in electorates beyond rating the parties' chances. I shouldn't have been surprised. I got a signed copy of the book and as the author was writing I said I'd been part of the sh!t show in my electorate. She looked at me blankly. Savva simply didn't cover electorate level campaigning in this election where it has been generally acknowledged that the lies were significantly worse than usual and the abuse at electorate level was brutal to the extent that armed police were in attendance, something I had never seen before in over 50 years of voting. I shouldn't have expected it, I guess. Her earlier books didn't go down to electorate level either.
If Savva, a journalist who has covered Canberra for what seems like centuries, had gone out into the electorates and got a feel for what was going on there, I wonder if the election result would have been less earthquake, more predictable. We'll never know.
Another book remains to be written, not by Savva though. For a writer who is interested in analysing politics on the ground, across the country, there's plenty of starting point material from the hearings of and written submissions to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters on the committee's web site.
Not as good as her previous volumes. Yes, I was hoping for more but ... half the book is previous newspaper columns and the nitty-gritty of the 2025 election and its aftermath is less detailed than the earlier volumes.
February 10, 2026
I enjoyed this book, for the most part. I worked for a Labor politician for the 2022 election, so part of this book felt like a trip down memory lane. I did think that Savva’s columns were going to be interspersed throughout the book, and not just make up the first half-ish of the book. That was a bit of a slog. I at least hadn’t read them before, so there’s that.
Savva is a former Liberal staffer, and that becomes very clear throughout the book. Savva is very clearly a Moderate, but early on she expresses great hope that Peter Dutton (a noted member of the right wing faction of the Libs) will do the right thing and “bring the party towards the centre”. He, of course, does not do this. This decision seems to surprise her a bit? But clearly not enough, as she says the exact same thing about “knowing to bring the party towards the centre” when she floats the idea of Andrew Hastie as Liberal party leader (Hastie is ALSO a member of the right wing faction). She also clearly has far more inroads with the Libs than with Labor, as far more of her sources come from that side of the chamber (though I wouldn’t be surprised if one of her Labor sources was Mark Dreyfus, or a disgruntled staffer of his, as him losing his cabinet position gets a lot of air time). I also thought it was a bit odd that she kept suggesting when Albo should retire? She herself notes that no one has willingly left office mid-term since Menzies, and it seems odd to repeatedly (and to his face) be suggesting that Albo should step down midway through his second term.
There are some fun anecdotes in here though. Who knew that Peter Dutton meditates? I laughed at James Marape calling to congratulate Albo before the result had even been called. And I liked the little moments cross party friendships/kindness; Michael McCormack and Milton Dick being good friends, Dutton asking Albo for Ali France’s number so he could call her and congratulate her on winning his seat, and the only other Liberal that Albo called after their loss being Bridget Archer.
Savva is a former Liberal staffer, and that becomes very clear throughout the book. Savva is very clearly a Moderate, but early on she expresses great hope that Peter Dutton (a noted member of the right wing faction of the Libs) will do the right thing and “bring the party towards the centre”. He, of course, does not do this. This decision seems to surprise her a bit? But clearly not enough, as she says the exact same thing about “knowing to bring the party towards the centre” when she floats the idea of Andrew Hastie as Liberal party leader (Hastie is ALSO a member of the right wing faction). She also clearly has far more inroads with the Libs than with Labor, as far more of her sources come from that side of the chamber (though I wouldn’t be surprised if one of her Labor sources was Mark Dreyfus, or a disgruntled staffer of his, as him losing his cabinet position gets a lot of air time). I also thought it was a bit odd that she kept suggesting when Albo should retire? She herself notes that no one has willingly left office mid-term since Menzies, and it seems odd to repeatedly (and to his face) be suggesting that Albo should step down midway through his second term.
There are some fun anecdotes in here though. Who knew that Peter Dutton meditates? I laughed at James Marape calling to congratulate Albo before the result had even been called. And I liked the little moments cross party friendships/kindness; Michael McCormack and Milton Dick being good friends, Dutton asking Albo for Ali France’s number so he could call her and congratulate her on winning his seat, and the only other Liberal that Albo called after their loss being Bridget Archer.
January 7, 2026
The book must be considered at what it is interdependent to be: a summarisation of the recent political situation. With this there comes all the normal problems of writing so soon after the events. Even setting those issues aside, there are a number of issues.
Firstly, the columns are rather ineffective. Indeed, they seem to be a way to fill out the books. Savva herself seems to admit in the conclusion that she was not enthusiastic about writing another book.
Secondly, the book invariably covers the same content over and over again - when should Albanese retire, the cultural failings of the Liberals, the character of both leaders. Repetition of the same them is necessary within a book but there does not seems to be any development in the analysis.
Beyond the structural problems of the book, there are some interestering information.
I felt schadenfreude when reading the sections on Morrison. The quick news cycle meant I forgot some of Morrison's great shortcomings. Reading them again was great. Some of the high lights include the disparaging comments by Berejiklian and Joyce, the list of stupid but catchy phrases and the never ending contempt for the intelligence of the Australian people.
I enjoy the discussion in page 132 and 133 about how the Conservatives Liberals thought they had hit rock bottom at the 2022 election. The Conservatives believed they had hit rock bottom and there was no where else to head but up. This could explain their embarrassing and existensial defeat in 2025.
Finally, there was some funny anecdotes scattered throughout the book. For instance, the PNG Prime Minister rang Albanese to congratulate him on the win only 1 hour and 45 minutes after voting stopped in the eastern states. Moreover, Barnaby Joyce thought he would be boring if he gave up the grog.
Firstly, the columns are rather ineffective. Indeed, they seem to be a way to fill out the books. Savva herself seems to admit in the conclusion that she was not enthusiastic about writing another book.
Secondly, the book invariably covers the same content over and over again - when should Albanese retire, the cultural failings of the Liberals, the character of both leaders. Repetition of the same them is necessary within a book but there does not seems to be any development in the analysis.
Beyond the structural problems of the book, there are some interestering information.
I felt schadenfreude when reading the sections on Morrison. The quick news cycle meant I forgot some of Morrison's great shortcomings. Reading them again was great. Some of the high lights include the disparaging comments by Berejiklian and Joyce, the list of stupid but catchy phrases and the never ending contempt for the intelligence of the Australian people.
I enjoy the discussion in page 132 and 133 about how the Conservatives Liberals thought they had hit rock bottom at the 2022 election. The Conservatives believed they had hit rock bottom and there was no where else to head but up. This could explain their embarrassing and existensial defeat in 2025.
Finally, there was some funny anecdotes scattered throughout the book. For instance, the PNG Prime Minister rang Albanese to congratulate him on the win only 1 hour and 45 minutes after voting stopped in the eastern states. Moreover, Barnaby Joyce thought he would be boring if he gave up the grog.
May 3, 2026
“It never ceases to amaze me that different people continue to make the same mistakes , and always with such disastrous results”. Nikki Savva, author of Earthquake.
Succinctly titled, competently written and a book for the future to understand the past( our present)
I have an interest in my country, I have an interest in our politics. In my youth I fringed to the Australia Party and in my adult life I understood our democracy has 2 major parties and they met their use by dates to hand reform to an opposition that had to change to get back into Government.
Australia and the world in which it operates sits on the plate that creates earthquakes.
Nikki Savva makes mention of maintaining rage and anger in the sophisticated sense of Aussie politics.
Both major parties in our democracy have , in their political existence, taken themselves to the edge of extinction.
This book ( and the authors last book) centre on the Liberal Party and its trip to the abyss.
If I were a true blue liberal I would be livid however I am an Aussie wanting a democracy to underpin our society and am ok with the ragged edges of our social existence that comes with structured less than perfect democracy.
This book explains how one main party devoured itself from the tail to the throat.
For me it is a very good read. It took me while because in the middle of it I needed respite in my crime genre where crimes get solved even though there is a dysfunctional detective , stumbling though competent , to get the job done.
I await for the new age democracy , 2 major parties or at a minimum I party and a coalition of parties , stumbling though competent and making decisions about my life.
Enjoy the read, it’s a good book.
Succinctly titled, competently written and a book for the future to understand the past( our present)
I have an interest in my country, I have an interest in our politics. In my youth I fringed to the Australia Party and in my adult life I understood our democracy has 2 major parties and they met their use by dates to hand reform to an opposition that had to change to get back into Government.
Australia and the world in which it operates sits on the plate that creates earthquakes.
Nikki Savva makes mention of maintaining rage and anger in the sophisticated sense of Aussie politics.
Both major parties in our democracy have , in their political existence, taken themselves to the edge of extinction.
This book ( and the authors last book) centre on the Liberal Party and its trip to the abyss.
If I were a true blue liberal I would be livid however I am an Aussie wanting a democracy to underpin our society and am ok with the ragged edges of our social existence that comes with structured less than perfect democracy.
This book explains how one main party devoured itself from the tail to the throat.
For me it is a very good read. It took me while because in the middle of it I needed respite in my crime genre where crimes get solved even though there is a dysfunctional detective , stumbling though competent , to get the job done.
I await for the new age democracy , 2 major parties or at a minimum I party and a coalition of parties , stumbling though competent and making decisions about my life.
Enjoy the read, it’s a good book.
April 14, 2026
"There are plenty of witnesses to my vow after Bulldozed came out that I would never write another book. I believed there would not be much of a story in the 2025 election."
I disagree - in my opinion, there is a good story in the 2025 election - but I don't think Savva is the one to tell it. Bulldozed really engaged me, but Earthquake didn't have the same hook. This seemed to be a bit more distant - most of the details here were reported in the media. It's apparent that Savva doesn't have the same inroads on the Labor side than she did on the Coalition side for her previous outing.
And, burying the lede potentially, the first half of the book is reprinted columns, dating back to before the 2022 election. They're not edited or provided with much context, and there's one about Bill Hayden which baffled me in its inclusion because it doesn't even talk about the election that is the subject of the book.
It was a real slog to get through that first half, and the second half was easy and breezy due to the lack of substance.
January 1, 2026
A Christmas gift highly desired and consumed in a few days...thanks Niki {& Santa}.
While I agree with other reviewers that this does not quite reach the heights of 'Bulldozed' {agree that was definitely her best}, I disagree with the discontent expressed about the inclusion of her political editorials for the first half of 'Earthquake'. These contextualize the political dramas of the day and, given that 95% of Niki's forecasting is entirely accurate, I feel she has the right to re-publish it.
I had initially been disappointed that this was included but actually found it to be the stronger half of the work. The second half, which was the political analysis that I so voraciously desired, I found to be a bit bogged down in repetition of the many Liberal ineptitudes. At times I almost thought this was deliberate though, a sort of pathetic fallacy of Dutton's intransigence, risk avoidance and lack of policy vision?
That said, Niki makes enough predictions that make you love her boldness, and which will only be tested with time: Albo's various vulnerabilities {highlighted since publication with the Bondi Massacre}- leading her to suggest he should retire prior to a third term, Sussan Ley's vacuous insincerity during the election campaign and since- leading to the inevitable leadership challenge, and the possible fracturing of the Liberal Party as a whole entity, with left-wingers shifting to Teals and right-wingers to One Nation {already proven since publication with Barnaby's treachery}.
To me, she seems to be on-the-ball again?! {4.5 stars}
While I agree with other reviewers that this does not quite reach the heights of 'Bulldozed' {agree that was definitely her best}, I disagree with the discontent expressed about the inclusion of her political editorials for the first half of 'Earthquake'. These contextualize the political dramas of the day and, given that 95% of Niki's forecasting is entirely accurate, I feel she has the right to re-publish it.
I had initially been disappointed that this was included but actually found it to be the stronger half of the work. The second half, which was the political analysis that I so voraciously desired, I found to be a bit bogged down in repetition of the many Liberal ineptitudes. At times I almost thought this was deliberate though, a sort of pathetic fallacy of Dutton's intransigence, risk avoidance and lack of policy vision?
That said, Niki makes enough predictions that make you love her boldness, and which will only be tested with time: Albo's various vulnerabilities {highlighted since publication with the Bondi Massacre}- leading her to suggest he should retire prior to a third term, Sussan Ley's vacuous insincerity during the election campaign and since- leading to the inevitable leadership challenge, and the possible fracturing of the Liberal Party as a whole entity, with left-wingers shifting to Teals and right-wingers to One Nation {already proven since publication with Barnaby's treachery}.
To me, she seems to be on-the-ball again?! {4.5 stars}
January 30, 2026
Niki, please don't write another book. You are past it.
If you regularly read The Age or SMH, there is not need to read Earthquake. For all of the allusion of the title and byline, there is nothing shocking, vindicating or tantalising about this book. And it is a sluggish and procrastinating 416 pages.
Two thirds of the book are simply Savva's columns. Unabridged. Relentless. Simply a summary of the 24/7 news cycle. The columns go back as far as 2021. Her readership no doubt read Bulldozed: Scott Morrison’s Fall and Anthony Albanese’s Rise. There was no need to go back there and it did not contextualise the decline of the Liberal Party. I was offended and bored that I was having so much re-explained to me.
Not until page 264 is Dutton's Chief of Staff mentioned. For a book that labours on Dutton's deficiencies as a leader, campaigner, policy nut and general human being, failure to attribute any of it to his seemingly mistrusting, juvenile and (WIP)
(Albanese on how he debated and rebutted Coalition policies) "So how do we turn their roads into cut-de-sacs?" (p. 321)
(Jane Hume on who the Liberal party should be positioning themselves towards) 'Suburban mums don't vote for submarines." (p. 323)
(Jane Buncle on the progressive failings of the Liberal party to their base) "Become dogmatic about issues that don't appeal to a wide cross-section of Australians." (p. 396)
If you regularly read The Age or SMH, there is not need to read Earthquake. For all of the allusion of the title and byline, there is nothing shocking, vindicating or tantalising about this book. And it is a sluggish and procrastinating 416 pages.
Two thirds of the book are simply Savva's columns. Unabridged. Relentless. Simply a summary of the 24/7 news cycle. The columns go back as far as 2021. Her readership no doubt read Bulldozed: Scott Morrison’s Fall and Anthony Albanese’s Rise. There was no need to go back there and it did not contextualise the decline of the Liberal Party. I was offended and bored that I was having so much re-explained to me.
Not until page 264 is Dutton's Chief of Staff mentioned. For a book that labours on Dutton's deficiencies as a leader, campaigner, policy nut and general human being, failure to attribute any of it to his seemingly mistrusting, juvenile and (WIP)
(Albanese on how he debated and rebutted Coalition policies) "So how do we turn their roads into cut-de-sacs?" (p. 321)
(Jane Hume on who the Liberal party should be positioning themselves towards) 'Suburban mums don't vote for submarines." (p. 323)
(Jane Buncle on the progressive failings of the Liberal party to their base) "Become dogmatic about issues that don't appeal to a wide cross-section of Australians." (p. 396)
February 19, 2026
By necessity Earthquake concentrates on the macro political issues that defined the 2025 Federal Election. Savva's narrative effectively looks at the qualities and deficiencies of the leaders, of their key policies and importantly, how they were able to present their messages through the media filter.
There was a lot of media discussion in the election lead up addressing such issues as taxation, nuclear energy and working from home dynamics that reflected community interest but my own experience of that election was one of micro issues. When door knocking was done, when public meetings and polls were held and people asked what their issues were they were almost always highly localised matters specific to their own communities. A poorly maintained road, the absence of a public school, the lack of public toilets in their town. There were really 150 separate elections all predicated on different issues and ideas.
Invariably a book like Savva's could not engage in the intricate seat by seat analysis needed to truly understand the results and tectonic shifts and instead must look at the big picture. The concentration of the author is on the personalities involved and I did feel I understood the two leaders far better at the end of the narrative. That said Australia does not really do charisma or personality based electoring - it is about the policies.
I consider therefore that Savva has commendably addressed some key issues of the election whilst racing headlong across the splitting perma-crust without seeing what lies beneath.
There was a lot of media discussion in the election lead up addressing such issues as taxation, nuclear energy and working from home dynamics that reflected community interest but my own experience of that election was one of micro issues. When door knocking was done, when public meetings and polls were held and people asked what their issues were they were almost always highly localised matters specific to their own communities. A poorly maintained road, the absence of a public school, the lack of public toilets in their town. There were really 150 separate elections all predicated on different issues and ideas.
Invariably a book like Savva's could not engage in the intricate seat by seat analysis needed to truly understand the results and tectonic shifts and instead must look at the big picture. The concentration of the author is on the personalities involved and I did feel I understood the two leaders far better at the end of the narrative. That said Australia does not really do charisma or personality based electoring - it is about the policies.
I consider therefore that Savva has commendably addressed some key issues of the election whilst racing headlong across the splitting perma-crust without seeing what lies beneath.
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