AustLit

'Between 2010 and 2018, four Australian prime ministers were removed from office outside of a federal election, by leadership spills initiated by their party colleagues. Each of the prime ministers—Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull—delivered a televised speech shortly after the leadership spill. The speeches provided an early opportunity, long before the preparation of any book-length political memoir, for each departing prime minister to narrate their political life and affirm their political legacy and identity. The speeches can be conceptualised as a rhetorical genre of life narrative in an Australian context. Applying Carolyn R. Miller’s theory of genre as social action (“Genre as Social Action.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 70: 151–167. 10.1080/00335638409383686.) confirms the speeches as a rhetorical genre, not because of their similarities in form and content but because they respond to the same recurring rhetorical situation—the leadership spill—and have shared social functions in their assertion of the rhetor’s (speaker’s) achievements, integrity and authenticity. All address the past, present and future; project a defining aspect of character; refer to significant others; and place life as prime minister in other contexts. In doing so, the speeches resemble but differ from some other forms of life narrative.' (Publication abstract)

'The experience of bushfire continues to challenge Australians and those responsible for leading them. Since Federation, the news media have conveyed prime ministers’ expressions of sympathy and reassurance of recovery to those Australians affected by bushfire. A study of newspaper reports of prime ministers’ responses to exceptional fires—in 1926, 1939, 1967, 1983, 2003 and 2009—reveals an increasing emphasis on prime ministers being physically and emotionally engaged with Australians in the wake of bushfire. This study identifies a turning point during the prime ministership of Harold Holt, who visited Tasmania to view the aftermath of the Black Tuesday fires in 1967. Vividly descriptive newspaper coverage of Holt's witnessing of the damage wrought by the fires is symptomatic of a shift towards journalistic norms seen today; however, it also is symptomatic of the social context in which Holt operated and his personal and political style. By presenting this argument, this article draws attention to an aspect of Holt's prime ministership neglected in popular and scholarly records while advancing an understanding of normative depictions of Australian political leadership by the news media over time.' (Publication abstract)

'By taking as its starting point the concept of magazine exceptionalism, this essay argues that popular magazines such as the Australian Women’s Weekly play an important, if not always obvious, role in influencing perceptions of the natural environment. This occurs partly through feature articles on what commonly is called natural disaster, which tell stories of human interactions with nature when it behaves in unwelcome ways. Interrogating these stories over time can inform and challenge writing practice. To illustrate, the essay examines Australian Women’s Weekly feature articles on exceptional floods from 1934 to 2011. It identifies recurring tropes, most notably metaphors of warfare as well as, in some articles, a more ecocentric perspective. Findings are aligned with a growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship concerned with the ways in which writers conceptualise non-human others. That scholarship calls for a posthumanist sensibility at a time when anthropogenic climate change will make humans’ relations to the natural environment more fraught.' (Publication abstract)