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Revealed: our federal politicians’ favourite books

Stephen Romei

by Stephen Romei

02 Mar 05:25am

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Filed under: Books, Politicians, Reading

33 comments

We all know the Prime Minister writes books but does he read them? We are left wondering because the author of Jasper and Abby and the Great Australia Day Kerfuffle did not take part in a landmark survey of federal politicians’ reading habits, to be published this Wednesday in The Australian Literary Review. 

Rudd's masterwork Jasper and Abby was cruelly edged out by Leo Tolstoy and Jane Austen.

Tony Abbott was not so shy, revealing his favourite novel to be J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings. 

Julia Gillard played it safe with Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet, Joe Hockey showed his SNAG side with Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Peter Garrett was immersed in a Bunnings catalogue (he also mentioned March, the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by the one-time Fairfax reporter Geraldine Brooks).

The survey was conducted by ANU academic Andrew Leigh and Australian businessman Macgregor Duncan, who got the idea while drinking beers in a New York bar during the US presidential campaign. Their reasoning, though, was sober enough: is it important, they wondered, for our political leaders to be readers? Or can non-readers become great leaders?

In search of answers they contacted every federal MP and asked them to name their all-time favourite works of fiction and non-fiction, and also the most recent books they had read.

The results throw up some surprises, not least in the books that unite MPs from opposite sides of the fence. It’s a fair bet, for example, that Leo Tolstoy never thought he’d be the one to get Lindsay Tanner and Nick Minchin to agree on something.

Full details will be in the ALR on Wednesday but in the meantime you can read more on the ALR blog here.

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33 comments

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    • acker says:

      06:16am | 02/03/10

      Kevins dog looks like it is about to scratch a flea, I suggest some treatment.

      Reply

    • Robert Smissen says:

      02:21pm | 02/03/10

      For Little Kevvy or the dog? ?

    • Eric says:

      08:34am | 02/03/10

      Kevin’s cat looks like it’s about to poop on his paper. Now we know where his policies come from. :D

      Reply

    • Zeta says:

      09:48am | 02/03/10

      Could they be any bigger bores? Julia Gillard, I’mma let you finish, but Cloudstreet is the worst novel of all time. Of. All. Time. That book was written to get on the HSC list. It’s like Winton’s retirement fund. Oh wait, he’ll never retire, he’ll keep subjecting us to the same cloying, boring novels about Australian suburbia until he dies. Because he’s so boring no one would ever kill him. It’s not like he’s going to write a ripping critique of Islam and have himself the subject of a Jihad anytime soon is it. It’s not like he’s going to move to Berlin and go on a four year long introspective nightmare under the influence of copious amounts of smack and come out the other side with an avant garde transgressive masterpiece about male prostitution and AIDS as a metaphor for the global, souless malaise humanity finds itself in.

      Literature is about danger and dangerous ideas. But instead of exposing English students to those ideas we give them Tim Winton. Julia Gillard, gives them Tim Winton. Here kids, read this and become fat happy consumers. Congratulations, you’re dux of your meaningless class, take this Dymocks voucher and enjoy the new nine story supernatural romance section. 

      Cloudstreet. What a joke. Guess what Punch,  **spoiler aler**  the whole thing takes place in the three seconds or so of brain death in the mind of a time traveling foetus. Hence the 2nd person perspective. That’s why the narration has that all knowing, indigo child tone. It’s a gimmick. It’s the literary equivalent of a pop up book. It might as well have a sound chip in inside the binding that says ‘I’m Tim Winton and I’m very, very smart. So smart, you won’t understand just how deep my book is. I’m very, very smart.’

      Why did you betray Australia Julia Gillard? Remember when you were young and hip and up and coming and you dug socialism and anarchism? And the Right maligned you for having that empty, austere house full of white furniture? I bet you were reading The Heart is Decitful Above All Things and pondering the difference between a ‘Veil’ and a ‘Hoax’ as described by JT LeRoy / Laura Albert.

      Children of Australia - take your taxpayer funded copies of Cloudstreet and burn them before the damage to Australian literature becomes to great to ever reverse.

      Reply

    • 6clegs says:

      12:31pm | 02/03/10

      Hey Zets, why don’t ya tell us what ya really think about Winton?

    • zoe says:

      12:35pm | 02/03/10

      thankyou, thankyou Zeta, everything I thought about Cloudstreet that I have not been able to articulate.  I could also never quite understand why I don’t like Julia Gillard and here it is, she likes this book says it all.

    • Mambo Bananapatch says:

      12:36am | 03/03/10

      > ...he’s so boring no one would ever kill him.

      Gold! Bet your ass I’m going to use that.

    • patrick says:

      09:30am | 03/03/10

      Sure you enjoyed the love in on The First Tuesday Bookclub on ABC last night. The entire panel were pushing over each other to gush about Cloudstreets and its fantasticness (hmm…is that a real word)

    • Clear thinking. Where is it? says:

      11:57am | 03/03/10

      Oh Zeta! My bookgroup is full of fans of Cloudstreet. I could not read past page 10. I’m taking a laminated copy of this to pass around at the next meeting. Fantastic critique. I really, really hope you are teaching literature somewhere.

    • Bob H says:

      04:28pm | 03/03/10

      Here here, I can only guess that Mr WInton has a lot of relatives, friends and people he has caught in bed with someone other than their spouse, to spruik up his work

    • Yas says:

      10:54am | 02/03/10

      just got a mental image of “the Simpsons movie ” where the president says “i was elected to lead, not to read!”

      Pride and Prejudice, really Joe? sure…

      Reply

    • Saskia says:

      11:14am | 02/03/10

      Disappointed with Abbott’s choice of LoTR.  What a load of cobblers.

      Gillard’s choice is typically shocking. 

      Rudd would still be having his staff work out with book would be the most popular in the electorate to like.

      Reply

    • Fleeced says:

      12:48pm | 02/03/10

      Why is LotR a “disappointing” choice?  Given how popular the books were (even before the movies), I’m surprised more of them didn’t pick it.

      It wouldn’t be my favourite pick, though I know people who read it and re-read it a ridiculous number of times.  Maybe Abbott is a fantasy geek - hehe, I can just picture him playing WoW or LOTRO.

    • PeterB says:

      04:55pm | 03/03/10

      Yeah Fleeced, but Alliance or Horde?

    • stephen says:

      11:52am | 02/03/10

      And Barnaby Joyce is in the corner with his knees under his chin copying space cadet figurines into a tatty-covered-colour-in-book.
      And he’d better get good at it cause after the next election he’ll be doin’ it for a living.

      Reply

    • steve parker says:

      12:09pm | 02/03/10

      I like picking the novels that have influenced them the most - plus the first lines from each!

      Kevin Rudd
      Call me Ishmael - Moby Dick

      Peter Garrett
      It was a pleasure to burn -Fahrenheit 451

      Kate Ellis
      All children, except one, grow up - Peter Pan

      Lindsay Tanner
      All this happened, more or less - Slaughterhouse-Five

      Julia Gillard
      I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story - Ethan Frome

      Chris Evans
      You better not never tell nobody but God - The Color Purple

      Greg Combet
      He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull.
      Lord Jim

      Kevin Rudd [again]
      I am an invisible man - Invisible Man

      Martin Ferguson
      The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938

      Simon Crean
      Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show -  David Copperfield

      Reply

    • Shama says:

      12:41pm | 02/03/10

      Sorry about this Stephen Romei but can we replace your post with Steve Parker’s observations?!

      Reply

    • stevie says:

      01:09pm | 02/03/10

      I agree - the guys brilliant!

    • Fleeced says:

      12:44pm | 02/03/10

      From The Australian article: “Tony Abbott, who had yet to assume the Liberal leadership at the time of the survey, said his favourite fiction was The Lord of the Rings, by the devoutly Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkein”

      Seriously - they just couldn’t resist mentioning the Catholic thing again, could they?

      Reply

    • Stephen Romei says:

      05:11pm | 02/03/10

      Well, if by “they” you mean me, then, no, I couldn’t resist mentioning it because I thought it was relevant.  Do you think it’s irrelevant that his favourite book is by a devout Catholic?

    • Griffin says:

      08:35am | 03/03/10

      Yes, Stephen Romei, it is irrelevant.  Who cares what religion the person who wrote the book was?  If religion is relevant to you, then please go ahead and rewrite the article, stating the religions of every other person mentioned, plus the religions of the authors of their books.  Especially Kevin Rudd’s favourite book.  He’s at Church every Sunday, I bet his favourite book would be interesting to know.  Considering his office could not get you that information at the time you put the article together, do you think they may have found out by now?  Thank you.

    • Peter Blake says:

      11:18am | 03/03/10

      I look forward to Steve Romei breathless reporting on Tony Abbott’s next visit to a McDonald’s drive thru -

      “Mr Abbott visited Stanmore McDonalds today, where he was served by staunch Catholic Peter Blake, 18. Peter is a member of the subversive group Opus Dei and regularly attends meetings when not working. You can read more about Opus Dei in The Da Vinci Code.”

    • Poseidon says:

      02:04pm | 02/03/10

      What people say is their favourites and what they actually enjoyed reading are different things. Its the same with their fav music - surely this is highly contrived and designed to portray them favourably or at least not to look wrong.

      If we were to assume they are spinning their literary loves what does that spin say about what they are trying to communicate.

      Abbots LOTR - classic evil baddies from the east versus innocents from the shire - he says he knows his good versus evil your basic christian plot maybe

      Hockeys Pride and Prejudice - bright but modestly endowed single woman finds happiness and riches - Australia as a the land of opportunity or does Joe want the chick vote and markets himself as a snag?

      Dont know the cloudstreet story what is Julia trying to say assuming its a contrivance?

      Reply

    • Zeta says:

      04:38pm | 02/03/10

      Nah, I think you can look deeper into Abbott / LOTR:

      The battle between good and evil in LOTR is only superficial. It’s the battle between industry and agriculture that keeps the novels ticking along.

      It’s really the ultimate in conservative cautionary tales. The Enemy, Mordor, creates soldiers akin to a factory line. The Alliance of Elves, Dwarves and Humans must rely on farmers pressed into service. It’s the battle between the rustic, agrarian civilisations vs an encroaching industrial revolution. Sauron’s superficial motive for waging war in the past might be said to be revenge, but in the book’s ‘present’, Sauron is an invisible force, which could be said to be the ideology to which the Fellowship’s enemies proscribe.

      Coupled with the decadence of long lived Elves, you have a picture of modern society striving to return to it’s roots.

      That’s why conservatives love it.

    • Willmott Fribbish says:

      05:32am | 03/03/10

      It’s not conservatives that love LOTR, it’s old hippies. Hmm! Was Tony Abbot ever ...

    • Robert Smissen says:

      02:27pm | 02/03/10

      I bet they couldn’t do a test on what they read, mind you I’m sure Zeta could do a ripper on “Cloud Street”. Actually Gillard sounds like my ex wife, she studied Youth Lit. & knew what the books were about but hadn’t actually read any.

      Reply

    • Robert Smissen says:

      08:56pm | 02/03/10

      Interesting Zeta, you’re not just a pretty face are you.

      Reply

    • goldstein says:

      08:23am | 03/03/10

      We all know Kevin Rudd’s favourite book is 1984, it’s just that he doesn’t realize it’s a critique. He thinks it’s more like “Prime Ministering for Dummies”...

      Reply

    • Robert Smissen says:

      12:49pm | 03/03/10

      SOOOOOOO FUNNY! ! !  & so right.

    • Vaemar says:

      10:42pm | 03/03/10

      I’ve not read Tim Winton and know nothing for or against him, but do I detect the tinyist smidgin of jealousy here?

      Reply
 
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