Quarterly Essay 74 The Prosperity Gospel

What went wrong for Labor and how did Scott Morrison achieve his remarkable victory? In this dazzling report from the campaign trail, Erik Jensen homes in on the insecurities that drive Bill Shorten and the certainties that helped Scott Morrison win. He considers how each man reflects, challenges and comforts the national character. Who are Morrison’s “quiet Australians”? What did Shorten Labor fail to see? And will fear always trump hope in politics? The Prosperity Gospel sheds new light on the politics of a divided nation. “Arthur Sinodinos says the election is a crapshoot. He’s in a car park in Nowra, waiting for Morrison. ‘The momentum has been with us at different times, especially in Queensland,’ he says. ‘Central Queensland, even the outer suburbs of Brisbane. It’s a narrow pathway to victory, with the odds going the other way. But it ain’t over until it’s over.’ Despite everything, Arthur Sinodinos has an honest face. He does not look confident.” —Erik Jensen, The Prosperity Gospel

This book, the 17th in the federal election series and the ninth sponsored by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, provides a comprehensive account of the 2019 Australian election, which resulted in the surprise victory of the Coalition under Scott Morrison. It brings together 36 contributors who analyse voter behaviour, campaign strategies, regional variations, polling, ideology, media and the new importance of memes and digital campaigning. Morrison’s victory underlined the continuing trend toward the personalisation of politics and the loss of trust in political institutions, both in Australia and across western democracies. Morrison’s Miracle is indispensable for understanding the May 2019 Coalition victory, which surprised many observers and confounded pollsters and political pundits.

Some of Australia's best political writing: a dazzling chronicle from the editor of The Saturday Paper Drawn from the first ten years of The Saturday Paper, these editorials tell the story of a country in trouble. They are a penetrating account of the people who have led Australia, fusing character studies with political insights and unvarnished rage. Taken together, they form a sparkling portrait of a lost decade. This is writing that is witty, curious and sharp-eyed. 'These editorials are my guiding light in these terrible times.' —Marcia Langton AO

What happens when the prime minister views politics only as a game? Australia wanted Scott Morrison. In a time of uncertainty, the country chose in 2019 to turn to a man with no obvious beliefs, no clear purpose and no famous talents. That we wanted Scott Morrison was the secret we did not know about ourselves. What precisely that secret is forms the subject of this book. In The Game, Sean Kelly gives us a portrait of a man, the shallow political culture that allowed him to succeed and the country that crowned him. Morrison understands – in a way that no other recent politician has – how politics has become a game. He also understands something essential about Australia – something many of us are unwilling to admit, even to ourselves. But there are things Scott Morrison does not understand. This is the story of those failures, too – and the way that, as his prime ministership continues, Morrison’s failure to think about politics as anything other than a game has become a dangerous liability, both to him and to us.

“When you change the government, you change the country,” Paul Keating declared. It reminds us that the outlook and actions of the government of the day have widespread ramifications in the lives of people “on the ground.” Within the extraordinary complexity that a government must be, the leading indication of its values and of the strategic thrust of its actions is the behaviour of its leading official, the prime minister. He or she is the clearest and most observed example of what a government can or cannot, will or will not do. Its particular interest is in speeches. These set pieces of talk have conventionally been regarded as each prime minister’s opportunity to entrench a legacy. A growing weight of evidence over the years since Keating’s term in office has turned the tables, though, so that we now need to see the speech itself as a “legacy medium”—like vinyl records. Talking up a Legacy does not specifically offer an insider or partisan account, but it aims to cast light on some of the most difficult challenges of political communication, using language and concepts that speak to non-specialist readers. The author has been an insider and partisan himself (as a speechwriter for premiers in Victoria and NSW).

In 2008, the artist Adam Cullen invited journalist Erik Jensen to stay in his spare room and write his biography. What followed were four years of intense honesty and a relationship that became increasingly claustrophobic. At one point Cullen shot Jensen, in part to see how committed he was to the book. At another, he threw Jensen from a speeding motorbike. The book contract Cullen used to convince Jensen to stay with him never existed. Acute Misfortune is a riveting account of the life and death of one of Australia’s most celebrated artists, the man behind the Archibald Prize–winning portrait of David Wenham. Jensen follows Cullen through drug deals and periods of deep self-reflection, onwards into his court appearance for weapons possession and finally his death in 2012 at the age of forty-six. After much critical acclaim, Acute Misfortune was developed into a feature film, winning The Age Critics Award at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2018. The story is by turns tender and horrifying: a spare tale of art, sex, drugs and childhood, told at close quarters and without judgement. Winner of the 2015 Nib Waverley Library Award for Literature Shortlisted in the 2015 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and for the 2015 Walkley Book Award ‘Erik Jensen is a Boswell or Vasari for our baffled, fractured, fucked-up times. Acute Misfortune is the most intimate, revealing, and original take on an artist’s life I know of.’ —Sebastian Smee ‘Erik Jensen gives us that ingenious place where biography is also art.’ —Jennifer Clement ‘This is supposed to be about an artist, a wild man, his lifetime, and it is; but Jensen has written such a beautiful window that all art and life is shining through. I'm supposed to be an artist but I cannot put this down.’ —DBC Pierre

Some of Australia's best political writing: a dazzling chronicle from the editor of The Saturday Paper Drawn from the first ten years of The Saturday Paper, these editorials tell the story of a country in trouble. They are a penetrating account of the people who have led Australia, fusing character studies with political insights and unvarnished rage. Taken together, they form a sparkling portrait of a lost decade. This is writing that is witty, curious and sharp-eyed. 'These editorials are my guiding light in these terrible times.' -Marcia Langton AO