The current uncertainty concerning the continuity of Tony Abbott’s prime ministership has raised the distinct and welcome possibility of Malcolm Turnbull succeeding him to that high office. Should there be a Turnbull prime ministerial succession then hopefully the leadership uncertainty which has bedevilled Australia since the Howard government’s demise in 2007 will end.

The Australian newspaper’ editor-at-large, Paul Kelly has a deserved reputation as one of the nation’s pre-eminent journalists and authors. This has been confirmed by his latest work, Triumph and Demise The Broken Promise Of A Labor Generation (Melbourne University Press, 2014). This book carries on from other Australian political masterpieces of Kelly’s such as The Dismissal: Australia’s Most Sensational Power Struggle (1976), The End of Certainty, The Story of the 1980s (1992) and The March of Patriots, The Struggle for Modern Australia (2009).

The crisis situation in Iraq has inevitably resulted in the assertion that it was inherently wrong for the United States led coalition in 2003 to have liberated that nation from Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. This analysis has in turn led to an implicit, if not actual, opposition to the United States taking military action via air support for the Maliki government in Baghdad against the brutal fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

It is imperative in a complex world that national leaders be neo-Bonapartists, i.e. independent political actors who are not captive to vested interests. A wide range of leadership examples is analysed by Dr. David Paul Bennett to convey the contemporary importance of neo-Bonapartism.

The unfortunate fall of the Gillard government probably places Australia back on course to becoming a rentier state with the exodus of moderates from the ALP. The question therefore emerges as to whether Kevin Rudd or Malcolm Turnbull will either allow or oppose Australia succumbing to rent-seeking.