John Button

John Button reviews 'Peter Costello: The new Liberal' by Shaun Carney

September 2001, no. 234 • 16 September 2022

Selling books is a difficult business. Publishing, too. Booksellers and publishers need courage and imagination. A book about a contemporary Federal politician with the adjective ‘new’ in the title displays both these qualities. Tony Blair may have got away with ‘New Labour’ in Britain. In Australia, a large part of the disenchantment with politics and politicians stems from the feeling th ... (read more)

John Button reviews 'The Victorian Premiers 1856–2006' edited by Paul Strangio and Brian Costar

February 2007, no. 288 • 01 February 2007

Gough Whitlam was sometimes naughty. Descending in a crowded lift from a conference attended by a number of state parliamentary delegates, he looked down on his fellow passengers and growled ‘pissant state politicians’. It was the sort of remark he liked to get off his chest. In a more deliberative mood, Whitlam, in his 1957 Chifley Memorial Lecture, wrote of state parliamentarians in the foll ... (read more)

John Button reviews 'Courage: Eight portraits' by Gordon Brown

November 2007, no. 296 • 01 December 2007

It is usually sports fans and politicians who are uncharitably accused of being biased. The new British prime minister, Gordon Brown, is literally one-eyed. He was blinded in both eyes in his youth as a result of an accident playing rugby. Part of the treatment for his blindness required him to lie still in a darkened room for six months. It half worked, and he recovered his sight in one eye. Aske ... (read more)

John Button reviews 'A Witness to History: The life and times of Robert Arthur Broinowski' by Richard Broinowski

April 2001, no. 229 • 01 April 2001

Since the Federal Parliament moved to the house on the hill, the rose garden on the Senate side of the Old Parliament House has been neglected and uncared for. Escapism, from parliament, from Canberra, from the intensity and claustrophobia of being locked up in a remote building, has always been a secret ambition of most politicians during parliamentary sittings. The rose garden used to be a beaut ... (read more)

John Button reviews 'Peter Costello: The new liberal' by Shaun Carney

September 2001, no. 234 • 01 September 2001

Selling books is a difficult business. Publishing, too. Booksellers and publishers need courage and imagination. A book about a contemporary Federal politician with the adjective ‘new’ in the title displays both these qualities. Tony Blair may have got away with ‘New Labour’ in Britain. In Australia, a large part of the disenchantment with politics and politicians stems from the feeling th ... (read more)