GETTING THE BLUES: THE FUTURE OF AUSTRALIAN LABOR
Nick Dyrenfurth
200 pages, $29.95
ISBN: 9781925826678
Getting the Blues is an unsparing take on
what many are calling Labor’s unlosable election and presents a bold,
passionate blueprint for renewal. Nick
Dyrenfurth takes stock of the
turbulent last decade of Australian politics and identifies what is really
roiling our polity – economic insecurity, seismic cultural change and a
shattering of faith in our democratic institutions. In Dyrenfurth’s candid account
of the Rudd-Gillard years, the Shorten-era and 2019 federal election, Getting
the Blues provides answers to the big questions confronting modern Labor:
is it fundamentally broken? Or does the 128-year-old party have the willingness
to change and renew itself?
About the author
Nick Dyrenfurth is the Executive Director
of the John Curtin Research Centre. A former academic, Labor speechwriter and
advisor, Nick is the author or editor of seven previous books, including A Little History of the Australian Labor
Party (2011, with Frank Bongiorno), Mateship:
A Very Australian History (2015) and ‘A
powerful influence on Australian affairs’: A new history of the AWU (2017).
He is also a leading commentator, having written for The Age, The Saturday Paper, The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald,
Australian Financial Review, Daily
Telegraph, and The Monthly.