Abstract:
Tony Abbott’s twenty-first-century Australia could be an updated incarnation of the film ‘Pleasantville’. Instead of 1950s America, Abbottville is a sanitised, stable suburban and rural world based upon existing forms and levels of consumption and production. It is free of climate-change concerns, ‘boat people’, political dissidents and unassimilated Indigenous Australians. Yet, unlike Pleasantville, Abbottville can’t always be pleasant. Sacrifices must be made by society, especially by workers and welfare recipients if the loyal business defenders of the realm are not to be undermined. Is Abbottville new or merely an extension of previous forms of socio-economic policy in Australia?
Details / PDF:
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