Making Trouble : Essays Against the New Australian Complacency

As this eloquent and important book shows, no one in Australia makes a better argument than Robert Manne. In Making Trouble , Australia's leading public intellectual takes aim at the 'new Australian complacency'. This is a book that will enlighten and provoke. It covers much ground from Howard to Gillard by way of Rudd, from Victoria's bushfires to the Apology, from Wilfred Burchett to Primo Levi. Making Trouble includes an essay on the new Australian complacency, as well an exchange of letters with Tony Abbott, an appreciation of W.E.H. Stanner, a reflection on ways of remembering the Holocaust and an incisive analysis of the asylum-seeker issue, among others.

Robert Manne is professor of politics at La Trobe University and a regular commentator with The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and ABC radio and television.