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Peter John Perry deserves some commendation for writing 'Political Corruption in Australia: A Very Wicked Place?' (PCA) It takes persistence and courage to author a book concerning a topic about which so much is suspected and so little is known. Mr. Perry solves the dilemma of what to report about this opaque subject by saying the same thing, including that there are inevitable difficulties in finding facts posed by the surreptitious nature of corruption, over and over again.The book is organised around geographic and spatial descriptions. The tracings of contemporary Australia from the colonial era and the earlier convict roots are its strength. As might be expected, the states that received convicts through transportation typically experienced more corruption than those that did not. Ironically, rather than the convicts, the violators seemed to be the bureaucratic elite who managed the states. Similarly, the treatments of each state as an independent entity, yet sharing a broad national structure, are informative. Perry is sensitive to cultural idiosyncrasies that distinguish each state and, consequently, provide the underlying factors for the levels and types of political corruption in each. His summary of the emergence and evolution of corruption in each state is succinct and clear. Western Australia and Queensland become his objectifications of corruption. South Australia and modern Tasmania become the carriers of his notion of the grail. |
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