In 2008 Clive Hamilton was at Parliament House in Canberra when the Beijing Olympic torch relay passed through. He watched in bewilderment as a small pro-Tibet protest was overrun by thousands of angry Chinese students. Where did they come from? Why were they so aggressive? And what gave them the right to shut down others exercising their democratic right to protest? The authorities did nothing about it, and what he saw stayed with him.In 2016 it was revealed that wealthy Chinese b...

'Right on target, and badly needed' - Noam Chomsky'Every now and then a book that is perfect in timing and tone hits my desk. Growth Fetish is that book. It is powerful and potentially transformative.' - Rev. Tim Costello'This book reveals the undelivered reality of economic growth and the hollow mantras of the Third Way. Growth Fetish provides a much needed road map to a new politics in a post-growth world.' - Senator Natasha Stott DespojaFor deca...

Clive Hamilton has spent a life asking why. In his unique memoir, Provocateur, he shows us why questioning the status quo matters, how powerful arguments can change the country, and how the life of ideas in action actually works.From why climate change matters to how we understand ourselves as Australians and the dangers to us of the new authoritarianism – all this and more has been shaped, for better or worse, by public researchers and writers like Hamilton. His w...

Why is it so many of us lack contentment, despite all the wealth and freedoms we enjoy?The past two centuries delivered individual and political freedoms that promised unprecedented opportunities for personal fulfilment. Yet citizens of affluent countries are encouraged to pursue lives of consumerism, endless choice and the pleasures of the body.Clive Hamilton argues that the paradox of modern consumer life is that we are deprived of our inner freedom by our very pursuit of...

In the first Quarterly Essay of 2006, Clive Hamilton throws out a challenge to Australia’s party of social democracy – to both its true believers and right-wing machine men. Will it be business-as-usual and creeping atrophy, or will the Labor Party find a new way of talking to individualistic, affluent Australia?According to Hamilton, Labor and the Left must acknowledge that the social democracy of old – with its strong unions, public ownership of assets and distinct social classes...

Sometimes facing up to the truth is just too hard. There have been any number of urgent scientific reports in recent years emphasising just how dire the future looks and how little time we have left to act. But around the world only a few have truly faced up to the facts about global warming.This book is about why we have ignored those warnings, so that now it is too late. It is a book about the frailties of the human species: our strange obsessions, our hubris, and our pe...

Humans have become so powerful that we have disrupted the functioning of the Earth System as a whole, bringing on a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – one in which the serene and clement conditions that allowed civilisation to flourish are disappearing and we quail before 'the wakened giant'.The emergence of a conscious creature capable of using technology to bring about a rupture in the Earth's geochronology is an event of monumental significance, on a par with the arrival ...

4.8 Stars out of 5A must-read by anyone interested in national security in Canada or the world....."National PostHidden Hand is heavily sourced, crisply written, and deeply alarming. - The TimesRevelatory ... A partisan, detailed and necessary examination. - Sunday TimesHidden Hand should be required reading for our diplomats, intelligence analysts, military officers and businesspeople. - The AustralianA remarkable book with a chilling messag...

In this landmark follow-up to the bestselling Silent Invasion, Hidden Hand exposes the Chinese Communist Party’s global program of influence and subversion, and the threat it poses to democracy.With its enormous economic power, China is now a global political and military force engaged in an ideological struggle with the West. Combining a mass of evidence with unique insights, Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg lay bare the nature and extent of the Chinese...

Male and white privilege are on the decline, yet elite privilege has gone from strength to strength. The privileges enjoyed by the rich and powerful are not only unfair but cause widespread harm, from the everyday slights and humiliations visited on those lower down the scale to the distortions in the labour market when elites use their networks to secure plum jobs, not least in new domains such as professional sports.In this book, Clive Hamilton and Myra Hamilton show that elite p...

The Western world is in the grip of a consumerism that is unique in human history. We overwork, we spend huge amounts on things we never use, then we chuck them out. The author of the bestselling Growth Fetish pries into our wardrobes, kitchens and backyards, and shows us what choice really means.Our houses are bigger than ever, but our families are smaller. Our kids go to the best schools we can afford, but we hardly see them. We've got more money to spen...

Living Hot tells the blunt truth about our current climate change predicament: it's time to get cracking on making Australia resilient to intensifying climate extremes. If we prepare well, we can give ourselves a fighting chance to preserve some of the best of what we have, build stronger and fairer communities, find a path through the escalating pressures of a warming world – and even find new ways to flourish.To get there, we must leave behind both the d...