The Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate: Shortlist 2003

Judges Report

The judges were faced with a difficult decision. After much discussion of the various merits of the many strong nominations, we believe that the final shortlist of three essays comprises works that reflect the dual purpose of the Alfred Deakin Prize. They are all finely argued and well written essays. Furthermore, each makes an important contribution to the advancement of the debate about an issue of significance in the public domain. It is this particular combination of factors that is reflected in the choice of essays by John Button, Richard Flanagan and Tim Flannery.

Beyond Belief: What Future for Labor? by John Button (Black Inc/Schwartz Publishing)
John Button makes exemplary use of the essay form to advance a significant issue for public debate: the organisational decline and political vulnerability of the Australian Labor Party. This is an essay of passion, wit and rare insight.

Public debate is an essential element of a robust democracy - as a robust Opposition is essential to accountable government. Much debate and soul searching surround the ALP's current difficulties in gaining policy and political traction in Australia. John Button offers a forensic analysis of a party whose core values and passions he fervently embraces, but whose current decline he fears may be terminal. Unless and until the factions are tamed, in Button's hard-hitting analysis, there is little prospect of positive change. With a sharp intellect and the benefit of long political experience, Button is able to combine the insight of the insider and the detachment of one who has nothing to prove or to lose. Through this courageous exposition, Button provides us with a powerful contribution to the public debate that is at once passionately partisan and yet fiercely independent. This is essay writing at its eloquent best.

From Here to Uncertainty by Richard Flanagan (The Age)
Richard Flanagan's essay is a powerful lament for an Australia that no longer seems to uphold a spirit of equality and concern for the vulnerable and dispossessed. His focus is on refugees and our recent attitudes to them. He argues that most of the current debates about refugees are expressed in terms that begin with fear, fear of others, fear of ideas, fear of a future different from the past. Suggesting that this has not always been so, Flanagan invokes a wartime tradition of mateship generous and open, blind to the appeals of race, and deaf to the voices of hate to assert the virtues of a distinctive Australian identity that is both authentic and enlarging. This is a sharp essay on the battle for the Australian soul, and Flanagan has provided a stirring call to arms.

Beautiful Lies: Population and Environment in Australia by Tim Flannery (Black Inc/Schwartz Publishing)
Tim Flannery's eloquent essay contains much that is known. His achievement is to engage in a discourse about the state of the environment in terms that resonate within a distinctly Australian vernacular. By presenting a number of all too familiar attitudes such as 'She'll be right' and applying them to some basic environmental facts, Dr Flannery suggests that the opposite is the case. His essay sets a fundamental challenge to the pernicious complacency of many of our most cherished values. This is a compelling and confronting discussion. It sets a deep challenge to an understanding of our sense of ourselves.