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

Judges report

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.