Cirrus@Austlit

‘When the facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’ Robert Manne was speaking with Geraldine Doogue, on Radio National’s Saturday Extra. Responding to a question about his political journey (and under no illusion that he was quoting Keynes, to whom the line is often misattributed), he was talking in a painful whisper, having recently undergone a laryngectomy. The voice was still recognisably his: to Manne’s relief, a silicone prosthesis has obviated the need for an electrolarynx. And the sentiment was familiar, too. Manne, after all, has always been open about his changes of political allegiance—an openness caught (or trumpeted) in the title of his 2005 collection of essays and articles, Left, Right, Left.' (Introduction)

'“Anything with blood in it can probably go bad. Like meat. And it’s the blood that makes me worry. It carries things you don’t even know you got.”

'So thinks Jaxie Clackton as he hides out in the Western Australian wheatbelt, casing a corrugated iron shack. He’s on the run, having found his father crushed to death under a Toyota HiLux - an accident he imagines will be taken as a crime, since everyone in Monkton knows how mercilessly Sid Clackton beat his teenage son and late wife. With barely two boxes of bullets left for his rifle, and no way to preserve his kills, Jaxie has left camp in search of the salt lake, and it’s here he makes his discovery - an old shepherd’s hut with a single, strange, occupant.'' (Introduction)