The Crikey Read series

In Gen F’d? economist Alison Pennington shows how the most educated generation in Australia’s history stands to be the first generation worse off than their parents, and gives young people the tools to create the change we need. This is the fifth book in The Crikey Read series from Crikey and Hardie Grant Books.

Young people today are digital natives, encouraged to market their own uniqueness and success online, amid outdated advice from parents and politicians: work hard and you’ll get ahead. But Australia’s celebrated “fair go” has disintegrated, with millions of young people stuck on the rat-wheel of insecure work and crammed into share houses paying off boomers’ mortgages.

Against the backdrop of global warming and pandemic, young people have inherited a dysfunctional economy that consumes their futures. Gen F’d? plots a path forward for Australians to reactivate our democracy and create a new economy that provides hope and opportunity for all.

From Crikey and Hardie Grant Books, The Crikey Read is a series that brings an unflinching and truly independent eye to the issues of the day in Australia and the world.

The Teal Revolution is essential reading on the unprecedented teal wave of the 2022 election, a movement with the potential to change Australian politics. From experienced political journalist Margot Saville, this is the fourth book in The Crikey Read series by Crikey and Hardie Grant Books.

In the 2022 election a group of independent female candidates, driven largely by grassroots campaigns, spectacularly ousted Liberal Party stalwarts from supposedly safe, blue-ribbon seats. They are the teals: from Allegra Spender in the seat of Wentworth (Malcolm Turnbull’s old seat), to Monique Ryan in the seat of Kooyong (unseating the treasurer Josh Frydenberg), to Zoe Daniel in the seat of Goldstein, and more. Who are these women, and why have they succeeded in these previously untouchable seats? What does their ascension tell us about those electorates, and the mood for change within the broader Australian community?

The Teal Revolution explores the antecedents of the teals — independents like Cathy McGowan, Zali Steggall, and even Bob Katter — while examining the bigger macropolitical trends in play over the past decade. With a unique ability to place us in the moment, Saville brings us an insider’s view of the 2022 election campaign in Wentworth and other key teal seats. What was it actually like to be part of these campaigns, and at what point did victory become possible? Crucially, Saville also asks where the teals might go next, and how they might continue to reshape Australian politics.

In Leaning Out, respected journalist Kristine Ziwica maps a decade of stasis on the gender equality front in Australia, and why the pandemic has led to a breakthrough. As the historic 2020 Women’s March attests, a generation of younger women are speaking truth to power and changing the way we think of women in the workplace. This is the third book in The Crikey Read series from Crikey and Hardie Grant Books.

For ten years Australian women have been sold a dazzling promise: through sheer “will” and individual self-empowerment they could overcome decades of gender inequality in the workplace. The hard, structural work didn’t need to be done; all the solutions could be individual. Yet leaning in, power-posing and speaking up (and being spoken over) at the boardroom table have made very little difference for the great majority of women, still underpaid and overworked compared to their male colleagues.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shockingly revealed the fragile foundations of women’s working lives. It’s also given us a rare opportunity for a reimagining. But Australian women are still being told to “Lean In” at precisely the moment when so many are “leaning out”. With the majority of all jobs lost in the pandemic being held by women, and successive governments unable or unwilling to address the “gender issue”, we are at crisis point. Leaning Out is a manifesto for what we can — and should — do with this moment.

Unvaxxed is a nuanced, timely look at vaccine hesitancy and how uncertainty and misinformation have influenced the Australian experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. Written by award-winning science journalist Dyani Lewis, this is the second book in The Crikey Read series by Crikey and Hardie Grant Books.

Anti-vax protests, the “scamdemic”, disproven home remedies: how did we get here? The realities of lockdowns and the erosion of trust in government and authority have fed into a small but significant history of anti-vaxxing in Australia that has found unlikely bedfellows in the QAnon conspiracy cult, white supremacy movements and the wellness community. The genie is out of the bottle – what do we do now? Do vaccine mandates work, or do they simply hasten the erosion of trust and the spread of different kinds of “truth” on the subject of vaccines? And what is the actual first-hand human fallout from vaccine refusal for families split over the issue?

Interweaving personal experience and first-hand narratives from those on the frontlines alongside smart, perceptive and compassionate commentary on the scientific and sociocultural effects of vaccine misinformation, Unvaxxed plots a sorely needed way forward for Australia in 2022.

Lies and Falsehoods: The Morrison Government and The New Culture of Deceit by well-known political journalist Bernard Keane combines Crikey’s eye-opening dossier of Scott Morrison’s documented lies with Keane’s insightful take on why deceivers dominate in the new era of politics. This book is the first in The Crikey Read series by Crikey and Hardie Grant Books.

All politicians lie. They twist the truth, exaggerate and spin. But blatant lying has now become a standard part of political discourse, led by Donald Trump and carried on by Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison. Combine this with an all-out assault on the truth in public debate along with the biggest communications revolution since the printing press, and you have a disaster in real time: a sea of fake news, hyper-partisanship and polarisation.

No society or democracy can function without trust, and the consequences of this profound shift are clear. The first step to a remedy is in understanding both the liars and the environments in which they lie. Lies and Falsehoods does exactly that, in this highly readable and incisive account of how we found ourselves in this fractured post-truth world, and how we might get out.