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QE92 - 18 March 2024On Peter Dutton and the Forgotten People
A portrait of Peter Dutton, as well as a modern interrogation of the Australian suburbs and the people who live there.
2022 saw the splintering of the Liberal Party's electoral coalition. Influential conservatives have urged Peter Dutton to forget about the seats lost to the Teal independents and instead pursue outer-suburban and regional seats held by Labor. Since then we have seen his manoeuvring on the Voice. The mortgage crunch in the outer suburbs. The rental and housing crisis, especially for millennials and under.
What does Peter Dutton know about the Australian electorate? Has he updated Menzies' Forgotten People pitch for the age of anxiety? Or will he collapse the Liberals' "broad church"?
An essential essay for 2024.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lech Blaine is the author of the memoir Car Crash. His writing has appeared in The Monthly, Guardian Australia, The Best Australian Essays, Griffith Review, Kill Your Darlings and Meanjin. He was an inaugural recipient of a Griffith Review Queensland Writing Fellowship.
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Forthcoming Issue
QE94 - 3 June 2024On climate peril and paralysis
Australia is in peril. Do we truly grasp the impact of a warming planet – in particular, what it will mean for the sunburnt country?
This searing essay by a leading climate scientist takes aim at the folly of “adaptation” rather than cutting emissions, and at government policy inertia. It shows what rising temperatures will most likely mean for the Australian continent and coastline, and outlines clearly how far Australia is from its most recent promises, let alone what is required.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joëlle Gergis is an award-winning climate scientist and writer. She served as a lead author for the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report and is the author of Humanity's Moment: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Sunburnt Country: The history and future of climate change in Australia. Joëlle also contributed chapters to The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg, and Not Too Late: Changing the climate story from despair to possibility, edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua.
