Katharine Murphy

A prime minister in the making, and a nation on the move. In Lone Wolf, Katharine Murphy offers a new portrait of Anthony Albanese. She reveals a leader who has always had to think three steps ahead, who was an insurgent for much of his professional life, but had to learn to listen and devise "strategies of inclusivity" to win the 2022 election. Following that victory, Greens leader Adam Bandt voiced hopes for "a great era of progressive reform," but it is Albanese and Labor who will ultimately decide whether that potential is reached or not. Drawing on interviews with Albanese, Bandt, Penny Wong, Jim Chalmers, Mark Butler, Katy Gallagher, Simon Holmes à Court, Zoe Daniel and more, Murphy's brilliant essay draws out the meaning of an eventful political year. She offers a telling character study of the prime minister, investigates the success of the teals and the Greens, and looks to the challenges of the future. "Taking the party leadership was both a beginning and an ending. Insurgency was done. New skills were required ... Albanese knew how to recruit people to a cause and to get them to a similar place. He'd been doing that since his teens. But to win, he had to learn to listen, to trust his team and to lead, understanding that sometimes leadership involves holding back rather than imagining it's all on you." Katharine Murphy, Lone Wolf

Albanese and the New Politics: Quarterly Essay 88

Quarterly Essay 88 Lone Wolf

The internet has shaken the foundations of life: public and private lives are wrought by the 24-hour, seven-day-a-week news cycle that means no one is ever off duty. On Disruption is a report from the coalface of that change: what has happened, will it keep happening, and is there any way out of the chaos?

On Disruption

Lone Wolf

Epidemics are mirrors. What has COVID-19 revealed about Australia, and about Scott Morrison and his government? In this gripping essay, Katharine Murphy goes behind the scenes to tell the story of the response to the crisis. Drawing on interviews with Morrison, Brendan Murphy, Josh Frydenberg, Sally McManus and other players, she traces how the key health and economic decisions were taken. Her account is twinned with a portrait of the prime minister. She explores his blend of pragmatism and faith, and shows how a leader characterised by secrecy and fierce certainty learnt to compromise and reach out - with notable exceptions. Now, as the nation turns inwards and unemployment rises, our faith in government is about to be tested anew. What does 'We're all in this together' truly mean? Will Morrison snap back to Liberal hard-man, or will he redefine centre-right politics in this country? 'Morrison's a partisan, blue team to the core, but his political philosophy is hard to pin down, because it is predominantly trouble-shooting. By instinct, Morrison is a power player and a populist, not a philosopher; a repairer of walls, not a writer of manifestos... his conservatism is extreme pragmatism in defence of what he regards as the core of the nation.' Katharine Murphy, The End of Certainty

Quarterly Essay 79: Scott Morrison and Pandemic Politics

The End of Certainty

In this perceptive, compelling essay, Katharine Murphy offers a profile of Anthony Albanese in motion - a piece about character, the balance of forces, and the mood of the nation. Are Albanese and his party up for change? Are Australians up for it? What does the new prime minister embody, if anything? Has the centre of the polity shifted, with the success of the Teals and the Greens? Where could - and should - the new government be ambitious? This is an essay that draws out the meaning of an eventful political year, offers a telling portrait of the new prime minister, and looks to the challenges of the future.

On Albanese and the New Politics: Quarterly Essay 88

Discourses of degeneration (social, political, medical) peaked in the 1890s across Europe, and posited the moral and biological decline, even sterility, of European nations. In early twentieth-century Spain, the novels of Pío Baroja and Vicente Blasco Ibáñez both assimilated and subverted the cultural myths of degeneration that were fuelled by influential European theorists such as Bénédict Morel, Cesare Lombroso and Max Nordau. In the light of widespread anxieties about reproduction and national decadence, this interdisciplinary book traces the creative tension between each author's literary representations of the degenerate female body and the consumer agency of women readers. Through its alignment of gender paradigms and degenerationism in Baroja and Blasco Ibáñez, Bodies of Disorder offers a challenge to established hierarchies of canonical and popular fiction. Countering Baroja's resounding public disdain for his Valencian contemporary, Katharine Murphy repositions Blasco as markedly closer to the so-called 'Generation of 1898' than hitherto acknowledged. Dr Katharine Murphy is Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Exeter. Author of Re-reading Pío Baroja and English Literature (2004), she has published widely on Comparative Literature and Spanish Modernism.

Gender and Degeneration in Baroja and Blasco Ibáñez

Bodies of Disorder

What has the coronavirus pandemic revealed about Scott Morrison, and where is he taking Australia? Epidemics are mirrors. What has COVID-19 revealed about Australia, and about Scott Morrison and his government? In this gripping essay, Katharine Murphy goes behind the scenes to tell the story of the response to the crisis. Drawing on interviews with Morrison, Brendan Murphy, Josh Frydenberg, Sally McManus and other players, she traces how the key health and economic decisions were taken. Her account is twinned with a portrait of the prime minister. She explores his blend of pragmatism and faith, and shows how a leader characterised by secrecy and fierce certainty learnt to compromise and reach out – with notable exceptions. Now, as the nation turns inwards and unemployment rises, our faith in government is about to be tested anew. What does “We’re all in this together” truly mean? Will Morrison snap back to Liberal hardman, or will he redefine centre-right politics in this country? “Morrison’s a partisan, blue team to the core, but his political philosophy is hard to pin down, because it is predominantly trouble-shooting. By instinct, Morrison is a power player and a populist, not a philosopher; a repairer of walls, not a writer of manifestos ... [his] conservatism is extreme pragmatism in defence of what he regards as the core of the nation.” —Katharine Murphy, The End of Certainty

Scott Morrison and Pandemic Politics

Quarterly Essay 79 The End of Certainty

This volume investigates a broad range of structural connections between PThis volume investigates a broad range of structural connections between Pío Baroja's early fiction and the novels of his contemporaries in England and Ireland, with prominence given to Joseph Conrad, Thomas Hardy, E. M. Forster and James Joyce. Starting from the premise that Spain has been neglected in studies which assess the evolution of the European novel at the turn of the twentieth century, and challenging the insular concept of the 'Generation of 1898', the author reassesses the relationship between Baroja and English literature. Particular emphasis is given to renderings of consciousness, the role and identity of the artist, European landscapes, and questions of form, genre and representation in the novels under scrutiny. The book produces new readings of Baroja in the context of early twentieth-century English fiction.

Katharine Murphy

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