AustLit

'The global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 in which we write was preceded in Australia by a shock election result in May 2019 and the worst bushfire crisis the nation has known over the summer of 2019-20. The Labor opposition had been expected to easily take power in the federal election and end six years of the centre-right Coalition government. Those years had been marked by leadership instability, inaction on climate change and cuts to the public sector. Yet in a minor echo of the Brexit result and Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the polls were wrong by a wide margin, and prime minister Scott Morrison’s government was returned with a small majority. In Prosperity Gospel biographer Erik Jensen contrasts the confidence and certainty of Morrison – a Pentecostal Christian presenting as the “Daggy Dad” of the nation – and the personal uncertainty of opposition leader Bill Shorten, whose party brought a comprehensive suite of social democratic policies to the election (see Non-Fiction). It was but one of a number of explanations for a result which baffled many.' (Introduction)