Introducing IPAA Queensland’s 2022 Summer Reading List
IPAA Queensland is delighted to bring back the Summer Reading List!
With the state of Queensland about to enter a time of hot, long, summer days, with hopefully a bit of R&R on the horizon, now is a great time to take a moment and catch up on some great reads.
We have sought the best of the best reads from across our 2022 Stewards who took to the couch, and our IPAA Council. We hope you enjoy these reads as much as they did!
Title: Catalyst
Author: Louisa Clarke & David Kean
“Catalyst is contemporary guide to networking, full of illustrative anecdotes, hard-won wisdom, a step-by-step methodology and great humour in parts.”
About the Book:
A good business developer, prospector and networker knows how to create a positive connection with the people they meet. They are the catalyst that creates a chemical reaction between strangers, and they know how to convert these opportunities into new business.
Louisa Clarke and David Kean have spent their careers catalysing strangers into contacts and converting contacts into clients – and even into friends. They have built successful businesses together using the proven techniques in this book, and they have helped hundreds of companies around the world win billions in new business by applying the same methods.
Catalyst is full of illustrative anecdotes, hard-won wisdom and a step-by-step methodology. Whatever industry you work in, if you need more clients to buy your services and you’re not sure how to find them, convince them or win them, this is the book for you. Follow this approach and new business will come. You might even make some friends along the way.
Contributor: Ashley Marshall, Australia Post – IPAA Council Member
Title: The Careless State
Author: Mark Considine
“The Careless State provides a comprehensive account of contemporary approaches to social services in Australia e.g., employment services, VET, aged care, childcare, disability/NDIS. The author offers insights about the design of better policy and public administration systems – moving from `choice to voice’ where citizens and communities have greater decision-making opportunities in policy making and service design. I am sure there will be varying views about Mark’s research and conclusions, but I believe his book provides an excellent platform for constructive thinking and then debate about the design and delivery of public programs.”
About the Book:
A powerful statement of how to fix Australia’s failing social services
The lives of all Australians are profoundly affected by the quality of social services available, but a long list of royal commissions and public inquiries have revealed them to be failing. In The Careless State Mark Considine shows that the preferred model of reform has failed to adapt and improve.
In the 1980s Australian governments faced rapidly increasing demand for services in areas like employment assistance, aged care, childcare and vocational education and training; to respond to this challenge, governments led by Bob Hawke and Paul Keating pioneered the introduction of service markets, where private companies compete with public institutions and charities in newly constructed social services. This ‘choice revolution’ was embraced and extended by the Howard government. Market choice continues to drive reform across a wide spectrum of programs and social services.
Considine’s detailed investigation demonstrates conclusively that important aspects of the experiment with social service markets have failed. Weak quality control, systematic rorting and entrenched disadvantage have become the norm. Private business interests and shareholders’ interest have often displaced established charities and commitment to quality care for all. The service systems are careless, leaving clients to make choices without real information or protection.
Considine points to alternative ways that reforms could be configured to get the best from both private and public agencies, and find a new approach to save these failing services.
Contributor: Professor Tim Reddel, Institute for Social Science Research, UQ – IPAA Council Member
Title: Australia’s Boldest Experiment: War and Reconstruction in the 1940’s
Author: Stuart McIntyre
“Australia’s Boldest Experiment highlights the conjunction of leading politicians (Curtin, Chifley and Menzies) and public servants (Nugget Coombs), a government driven reform agenda and community engagement seeking to fashion a new world order that would bring peace and prosperity for Australia. The author reminds us that key components of contemporary Australian society – work, welfare, health, education, immigration, housing – are result of policy, planning, politics and popular resolve.”
About the Book:
In this landmark book, Stuart Macintyre explains how a country traumatised by World War I, hammered by the Depression and overstretched by World War II became a prosperous, successful and growing society by the 1950s. An extraordinary group of individuals, notably John Curtin, Ben Chifley, Nugget Coombs, John Dedman and Robert Menzies, re-made the country, planning its reconstruction against a background of wartime sacrifice and austerity. The other part of this triumphant story shows Australia on the world stage, seeking to fashion a new world order that would bring peace and prosperity.
This book shows the 1940s to be a pivotal decade in Australia. At the height of his powers, Macintyre reminds us that key components of the society we take for granted â” work, welfare, health, education, immigration, housing â” are not the result of military endeavour but policy, planning, politics and popular resolve.
Contributor: Professor Tim Reddel, Institute for Social Science Research, UQ – IPAA Council Member
Title: Horse
Author: Geraldine Brooks
“Combines my passion for all things equine, beautifully constructed literature and social justice.”
About the Book:
From the Pulitzer Prize winning author of March and People of the Book comes a vivid and unique new novel for lovers of sweeping historical fiction and books about iconic racehorses like Seabiscuit and Secretariat
‘He tilted his desk lamp so that the light fell on the image. The head of a bright bay colt gazed out of the canvas, the expression in the eyes unusual and haunting.’
A discarded painting in a roadside clean-up, forgotten bones in a research archive, and Lexington, the greatest racehorse in US history. From these strands of fact, Geraldine Brooks weaves a sweeping story of spirit, obsession and injustice across American history.
Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South, even as the nation reels towards war. An itinerant young artist who makes his name from paintings of the horse takes up arms for the Union and reconnects with the stallion and his groom on a perilous night far from the glamour of any racetrack.
New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.
Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse – one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.
With the moral complexity of March and a multi-stranded narrative reminiscent of People of the Book, this enthralling novel is a gripping reckoning with the legacy of enslavement and racism in America. Horse is the latest masterpiece from a writer with a prodigious talent for bringing the past to life.
Contributor: Rachel Hunter, Department of Premier & Cabinet – IPAA Council Member
Title: No Words
Author: Maryam Master
“I read this book with my 11 year old daughter. This book is one of my ‘Hero’ reads this year. We loved it because it is filled with hope, compassion and wit. It tackles challenging topics like bullying, experiences children face as refugees, mental health, friendship, communication and the power of words. It delivers great lessons and reminders about the power of kindness and the importance of supporting and caring for those around you. Bonus – we found ourselves laughing out loud together. A great together-read for those with young people in their lives.”
About the Book:
Hero doesn’t feel like a hero, but sometimes she feels as if the universe is asking her to be one.
When Aria, a mysterious boy who never EVER speaks, starts at school and is picked on by His Royal Thug-ness Doofus (Rufus), Hero and her bestie Jaz feel compelled to help. But they’re far too chicken to actually do anything heroic, so they befriend Aria and try to uncover the truth about him.
This is the story of a 12-year-old refugee who’s trying to establish a new life in Australia, grapple with his past and, most importantly, find his voice.
‘Cos, boy, does he have a story to tell.
Contributor: Tanya Hornick, Australian Bureau of Statistics – IPAA Council Member
Title: Not Now, Not Ever
Author: Julia Gillard
“Opening with the Julia Gillard’s Misogyny Speech – it took me straight back to those feelings I had then watching her deliver the speech on TV ten years ago. I enjoyed the recollections and anecdotes from various contributors, as well as Julia’s, which provides unique insights. It was useful to reflect on the of progress that has been made since the speech. I like that she provides a roadmap for the future. I found it engaging, funny and motivating.”
About the Book:
Ten years on from the speech that stopped us all in our tracks – Julia Gillard’s Misogyny Speech. Where were you then? And where are we now?
Then it was done. After staying silent, I’d had my say. At no time did I feel worked up or hotly angry. I felt strong, measured, controlled. Yet emotion did play its role in the energy of the speech. The frustration that sexism and misogyny could still be so bad in the twenty-first century. The toll of not pointing it out.
On 9 October 2012, Prime Minister Julia Gillard stood up and proceeded to make all present in Parliament House that day pay attention – and left many of them squirming in their seats. The incisive ‘misogyny speech’, as her words came to be known, challenged not only Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, on his words and actions but, over time, all of us. How had we come to condone the public and private behaviours of some very public men?
With contributions from Mary Beard, Jess Hill, Jennifer Palmieri, Katharine Murphy and members of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, Julia Gillard explores the history and culture of misogyny, tools in the patriarchy’s toolbox, intersectionality, and gender and misogyny in the media and politics.
Kathy Lette looks at how the speech has gained a new life on TikTok, as well as inspiring other tributes and hand-made products, and we hear recollections from Wayne Swan, Anne Summers, Deborah Mailman, Cate Blanchett, Brittany Higgins and more on where they were, and how they first encountered the speech.
While behaviours may have improved since the misogyny speech, there remains a way to go and Julia Gillard explores the roadmap for the future with next-generation feminists Sally Scales, Chanel Contos and Caitlin Figueiredo to motivate us with that rallying cry: Not now, not ever!
Contributor: Tanya Hornick, Australian Bureau of Statistics – IPAA Council Member
Title: Stolen Focus
Author: Johann Fari
“While my family will joke that I can be easily distracted by shiny things, this is a really interesting insight into the impacts information technology is having on our ability to take time to think and deeply focus. His other book Lost Connections is an ideal pairing and really makes you think about what the impacts of the last two years or so have had on our ability to focus and also connect.”
About the Book:
Why have we lost our ability to focus? What are the causes? And, most importantly, how do we get it back?
For Stolen Focus , internationally bestselling author Johann Hari went on a three-year journey to uncover the reasons why our teenagers now focus on one task for only 65 seconds, and why office workers on average manage only three minutes. He interviewed the leading experts in the world on attention, and learned that everything we think about this subject is wrong.
We think our inability to focus is a personal failing – a flaw in each one of us. It is not. This has been done to all of us by powerful external forces.
Our focus has been stolen. Johann discovered there are twelve deep cases of this crisis, all of which have robbed some of our attention. He shows us how in a thrilling journey that ranges from Silicon Valley dissidents, to a favela in Rio where attention vanished, to an office in New Zealand that found a remarkable way to restore our attention.
Crucially, he learned how – as individuals, and as a society – we can get our focus back, if we are determined to fight for it.
Contributor: Mark le Dieu, Department of Social Services – IPAA Council Member
Title: James Cook: The Story Behind the Man who Mapped the World
Author: Peter Fitzsimons
“It’s been around for a few years but it’s a great insight to one of Australia’s iconic historical figures and an enjoyable read. Cook has been a controversial figure, particularly in recent times, and this biography provide insights to the character and personality within. It also adds to our understanding of the past that hopefully underpins better decisions for the future.”
About the Book:
The name Captain James Cook is one of the most recognisable in Australian history – an almost mythic figure who is often discussed, celebrated, reviled and debated.
But who was the real James Cook?
This Yorkshire farm boy would go on to become the foremost mariner, navigator and cartographer of his era, and to personally map a third of the globe. His great voyages of discovery were incredible feats of seamanship and navigation. Leading a crew of men into uncharted territories, Cook would face the best and worst of humanity as he took himself and his crew to the edge of the known world – and beyond.
With his masterful storytelling talent, Peter FitzSimons brings James Cook to life. Focusing on his most iconic expedition, the voyage of the Endeavour, where Cook first set foot on Australian and New Zealand soil, FitzSimons contrasts Cook against another figure who looms large in Australasian history: Joseph Banks, the aristocratic botanist. As they left England, Banks, a rich, famous playboy, was everything that Cook was not. The voyage tested Cook’s character and would help define his legacy.
Now, 240 years after James Cook’s death, FitzSimons reveals what kind of man James was at heart. His strengths, his weaknesses, his passions and pursuits, failures and successes.
James Cook reveals the man behind the myth.
Contributor: Ian Stewart – IPAA Council President
Title: Nine Lies About Work
Author: Marcus Buckingham · Ashley Goodall
About the Book:
How do you get to what’s real?
Your organisation’s culture is the key to its success. Strategic planning is essential. People’s competencies should be measured and their weaknesses shored up. People crave feedback. These may sound like basic truths of our work lives today. But actually, they’re lies. As strengths guru and bestselling author Marcus Buckingham and Cisco Leadership and Team Intelligence head Ashley Goodall show in this provocative, inspiring book, there are some big lies — distortions, faulty assumptions, wrong thinking — running through our organisational lives. Nine lies, to be exact. They cause dysfunction and frustration and ultimately result in a strange feeling of unreality that pervades our workplaces.
But there are those who can get past the lies and discover what’s real. These are freethinking leaders who recognise the power and beauty of our individual uniqueness, who know that emergent patterns are more valuable than received wisdom, and that evidence is more powerful than dogma. With engaging stories and incisive analysis, the authors reveal the essential truths that such freethinking leaders will recognise immediately: that it is the strength and cohesiveness of your team, not your company’s culture, that matters most; that we need less focus on top-down planning and more on giving our people reliable, real-time intelligence; that rather than trying to align people’s goals we should strive to align people’s sense of purpose and meaning; that people don’t want constant feedback, they want helpful attention. This is the real world of work.
If you embrace each person’s uniqueness and see this as key for all healthy organisations; if you reject dogma and engage with the real world; if you seek out emergent patterns and put your faith in evidence, not philosophy; if you thrill to the power of teams — if you do all of these, then you are a freethinking leader, and this book is for you.
Contributor: Mike Kaiser, Department of State Development, Infrastructure, Local Government and Planning – 2022 Steward on the Couch
Title: Revisionist History
Speakers: Series 3 Episode 4, “Free Brian Williams”
About the Podcast:
Malcolm Gladwell devoted part of Series 3 of his podcast to the nature of human memory – and particularly how the inherently fallible and subjective nature of memory plays out in a context where we all think memories are time stamped, unchangeable, polaroids.
This dilemma is played out in the case of war correspondent Brian Williams…it also reminds me why the study of eyewitness testimony is so fascinating, and is a reminder about ‘seeking to understand’ before drawing a conclusion about the behaviour and motivation of others…
Contributor: Graham Fraine, Department of Regional Development, Manufacturing and Water – 2022 Steward on the Couch
Title: Empire of Pain
Author: Patrick Radden Keefe
“It is the shocking story of 3 generations of the Sackler family and their roles in the opioid crisis. It is enough to make your blood boil.”
About the Book:
The highly-anticipated portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, by the prize-winning, bestselling author of Say Nothing.
The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions – Harvard; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Oxford; the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations in the arts and the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing Oxycontin, a blockbuster painkiller that was a catalyst for the opioid crisis-an international epidemic of drug addiction which has killed nearly half a million people.
In this masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, Patrick Radden Keefe exhaustively documents the jaw-dropping and ferociously compelling reality. Empire of Pain is the story of a dynasty: a parable of 21st century greed.
Contributor: Deidre Mulkerin, Department of Children, Youth Justice and Multicultural Affairs – IPAA Council Member
Title: Ologies
Episode: “Zymology”
About the Podcast:
This wonderful podcast introduces the listener to a panoply of areas of human study/endeavour that either I never thought was a thing or that I never thought would be interesting (e.g., 2022 episodes on dipterology, diplopodology, and urology are particularly interesting).
In the spirit of the festive season, I would encourage people to tune into the episode on the making of beer – zymology – a fascinating episode that helped me for the first time to actually understand the process of fermentation and how it works!
Contributor: Graham Fraine, Department of Regional Development, Manufacturing and Water – 2022 Steward on the Couch
Title: Aftermath: Germany 1945-1955
Author: Harald Jahner
About the Book:
This recently translated book describes how Germany, in particular West Germany, in the decade after the end of WW2 (1945) rebuilt itself physically, morally and politically. Anyone seeking to understand the extent of destruction in Germany and the challenges it confronted and overcame, should read this book. Other countries like the Soviet Union and Poland also suffered greatly, but as one reviewer of this book said, in terms of both the destruction and the nature of the revival, “The German experience will always stand apart”.
By way of background, Germany was completely devastated by the war it had started. Many of its cities were rubble. It suffered from 4-5 million military losses and millions of its military personnel were POWs – a further million died in captivity. Civilian deaths were high too. Post-War Germany suffered from starvation, disease, corruption, and 40 million displaced persons. There was a loss of territory and sub-division into West and East. Germans were weighed down not just by defeat and devastation, but also by guilt for their nation’s atrocities. Germany was rebuilt becoming what it is today – a modern, democratic, and economically successful country able to absorb reunification. Certainly, the Western Allies helped a lot for both altruistic and political reasons, and the American Marshall Plan injected $1.4 billion to rebuild the county – however, Germany was the only Western country required to pay back the funds.
Contributor: Dr Scott Prasser – IPAA Council Member
Title: Bulldozed
Author: Nikki Savva
“Calls it as she sees it!”
About the Book:
‘I don’t hold a hose, mate.’ Scott Morrison, 20 December 2019, on the Black Summer bushfires ‘It’s not a race.’ Scott Morrison, 10 March 2021, on the COVID-19 vaccine rollout
Between 2013 and 2022, Tony Abbott begat Malcolm Turnbull, who begat Scott Morrison. For nine long years, Australia was governed by a succession of Coalition governments rocked by instability and bloodletting, and consumed with prosecuting climate and culture wars while neglecting policy.
By the end, among his detractors – and there were plenty – Morrison was seen as the worst prime minister since Billy McMahon. Worse even than Tony Abbott, who lasted a scant two years in the job, whose main legacy was that he destroyed Julia Gillard, then himself, and then Turnbull.
Morrison failed to accept the mantle of national leadership, or to deal adequately with the challenges of natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic. He thought reform was a vanity project. He said he never wanted to leave a legacy. He got his wish.
Niki Savva, Australia’s renowned political commentator, author, and columnist, was there for all of it. In The Road to Ruin, she revealed the ruinous behaviour of former prime minister Abbott and his chief of staff, Peta Credlin, that led to the ascension of Turnbull. In Plots and Prayers, she told the inside story of the coup that overthrew Turnbull and installed his conniving successor, Morrison.
Now she lays out the final unravelling of the Coalition at the hands of a resurgent Labor and the so-called teal independents that culminated in the historic 2022 election. With her typical access to key players, and her riveting accounts of what went on behind the scenes, Bulldozed is the unique final volume of an unputdownable and impeccably sourced political trilogy.
Contributor: Rob Setter, Queensland Public Service Commission – IPAA Council Member
ABOUT IPAA QUEENSLAND:
Like these insights? Join as an individual member to enjoy these insights and more.
IPAA Queensland advances the professionalism, capability and integrity of public administration and public purpose work and promotes pride in service.
If you’re a public servant or engaged in public purpose work, we encourage you to get to know and connect with IPAA Queensland. Find out more about us by reading more on our site or through joining as a member here.