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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Australia's Second Chance by George Megalogenis Australia's Second Chance by George Megalogenis. Are you teaching Civics and Citizenship in a secondary classroom? We have the perfect book for you. George Megalogenis , bestselling author of The Australian Moment , delivers a brand new book that covers almost every content description area in the Year 9 and 10 Australian Curriculum. Most nations don’t get a first chance to prosper. Australia is on its second. For the best part of the nineteenth century, Australia was the world’s richest country, a pioneer for democracy and a magnet for migrants. Yet our last big boom was followed by a fifty-year bust as we lost our luck, our riches and our nerve, and shut our doors on the world. Now we’re back on top, in the position where history tells us we made our biggest mistakes. Can we learn from our past and cement our place as one of the world’s great nations? Showing that our future is in our foundation, Australia’s Second Chance goes back to 1788, the first contact between locals and migrants, to bring us a unique and fascinating view of the key events of our past right through to the present day. With newly available economic data and fresh interviews with former leaders (including the last major interview with Malcolm Fraser), George Megalogenis crunches the numbers and weaves our history into a riveting argument, brilliantly chronicling our dialogue with the world and bringing welcome insight into the urgent question of who we are, and what we can become. Australia's Second Chance review: George Megalogenis' plea for more people. Australian politics can be confusing. We'd probably all agree on that. But it has been this way for a long time. In fact in 1913 even the Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin found it so. After federal Labor's narrow defeat by the Liberal Party's Joseph Cook, Lenin, watching from afar, was baffled. "What sort of peculiar capitalist country is this, in which the workers' representatives predominate in the Upper House and, till recently, did so in the Lower House as well, and yet the capitalist system is in no danger?" Lenin asked. "The Australian Labor Party does not even call itself a socialist party … Actually [Labor] is a liberal-bourgeois party, while the so-called Liberals in Australia are really Conservatives." Australia's Second Chance by George Megalogenis. From the point of view of a detached observer, there is much to be said for Lenin's proposition that, except on rare occasions, both of our major political groupings have much more in common with each other than they imagine. They agree on matters of defence and immigration, where there remains considerable unanimity about policy deemed to be in the national interest. Their bipartisanship has historical precedents. After Britain declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914, in the middle of an Australian election campaign, our major political parties immediately engaged in a duel of unswerving loyalty to the British Empire. Ironically, this worked best in Labor's favour. Andrew Fisher pledged that Australia would defend Britain "to our last man and our last shilling". This claim so resonated with voters that the ALP easily won the election with a primary vote of 50.9 per cent – still Labor's highest ever. As the intellectually adroit George Megalogenis aptly puts it: "Here was an egalitarian nation, ready to fight for the empire under the banner of Labor." In Australia's Second Chance Megalogenis analyses key demographic, economic, and political trends apparent in historical and current-day Australia. As the title suggests, the gist of its narrative is how to extricate ourselves from deep economic downturns and especially how to be, and remain, prosperous again. Throughout the book Megalogenis argues it has only been when we encouraged large-scale immigration and a policy of openness that we have been an economically successful nation. Hence he claims that, for much of the 19th century, "Australia was the world's richest country, a pioneer for democracy and a magnet for migrants". In order to be prosperous and remain so, Megalogenis argues that we need to emulate our most successful examples of political bipartisanship. Perhaps the clearest indication of the fundamental agreement of the national parties is when Bob Hawke returned federal Labor to office in 1983, after a mere seven years in opposition. But, Megalogenis writes, "this was like no previous Labor government … as it sought to promote the interests of workers by favouring business". Indeed, over 13 crucial years, from April 1983 to March 1996, the federal Labor governments of Hawke and Paul Keating, supported by the economic and fiscal policies (if not always the electoral rhetoric) of the federal opposition, succeeded in legislating key policies that had widespread support. As Megalogenis explains, it was the Labor governments of Hawke and Keating that "successfully floated the dollar, opened the financial sector, pulled down the tariff wall, and allowed workers and employers to negotiate wages at the enterprise level, without officials looking over their shoulder". Since the Hawke-Keating years, the major political groupings have been in fundamental agreement about other key issues of economics, finance, defence, and of matters concerning population. The only potential dissenters in Australia in 2016 are those from the right wing of the Liberal and National parties, who may well successfully argue the need for a split away from both major groupings to form a genuinely conservative political party. The reality is that the parties supposedly representing the forces of capital and those of labour both strongly support a unified approach to Australia's defence capabilities and fiscal and monetary policy. In particular, large-scale immigration is presented by both of our major groupings as the key to Australia's economic and political future. To someone like me, who strongly argues that one of Australia's and the world's major problems is overpopulation, this is a contentious claim. Yet to my mind the only observable major weakness in this weighty book is that, fact-studded and fascinating as it is, Australia's Second Chance contains no maps or other useful graphics that would have made the task of understanding Megalogenis' major thesis considerably easier. Nevertheless the ever-resourceful Megalogenis has clearly put on record, for public debate, his crucial notion that Australia's prosperity is contingent upon the continued arrival of immigrants from overseas. Ross Fitzgerald is Emeritus Professor of Politics and History at Griffith University. Australia's Second Chance : What our history tells us about our future. Available. Expected delivery to Germany in 14-18 business days. Description. In his new must-read blockbuster, George Megalogenis (The Australian Moment) reads the nation's numbers to show how our whole history points out the path we must take in the future. We've been here before. What did we get wrong, and how can we get it right this time? The bestselling author of The Australian Moment asks the most important question confronting the country right now - how do we maintain our winning streak? Most nations don't get a first chance to prosper. Australia is on its second. For the best part of the nineteenth century, Australia was the world's richest country, a pioneer for democracy and a magnet for migrants. Yet our last big boom was followed by a fifty-year bust as we lost our luck, our riches and our nerve, and shut our doors on the world. Now we're back on top, in the position where history tells us we made our biggest mistakes. Can we learn from our past and cement our place as one of the world's great nations? Showing that our future is in our foundation, Australia's Second Chance goes back to 1788, the first contact between locals and migrants, to bring us a unique and fascinating view of the key events of our past right through to the present day. With newly available economic data and fresh interviews with former leaders (including the last major interview with Malcolm Fraser), George Megalogenis crunches the numbers and weaves our history into a riveting argument, brilliantly chronicling our dialogue with the world and bringing welcome insight into the urgent question of who we are, and what we can become. 'Megalogenis has emerged as something of a polymath. He slaps history and politics and culture like mortar in and around his knowledge of economics and numbers to build compelling, even thrilling, theses about the country of his birth and where it stands in the world.' Tony Wright, Saturday Age show more. Remarks at the launch Australia’s Second Chance by George Megalogenis. Well thank you very much and it is great to be here with George – a writer who has informed and inspired us for so long. Indeed George I was quoting from your previous book The Longest Decade in the House only yesterday it’s a very apt remarks Paul Keating made to you – which seem to apply very accurately to the Opposition at the moment. Can I welcome here as well George’s family. I have to check, my Greek is very rusty and ancient in every respect, but I have to check whether in fact this – Megalogenis – means great family or big beards. George assures me that Niki Savva, another great Hellenistic writer, says it means big beards. Yet of course you have no beard at all… but I will stick with great families. George, as you said, writes with a crisp, spare style. I say this to some of the lawyers here, who will know what I mean, that he writes with the crispness of one of the great English judges, Lord Denning.

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