Quarterly Essay 74: The Prosperity Gospel cover art

Quarterly Essay 74: The Prosperity Gospel

How Scott Morrison Won and Bill Shorten Lost

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Quarterly Essay 74: The Prosperity Gospel

By: Erik Jensen
Narrated by: Erik Jensen
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About this listen

What went wrong for Labor and how did Scott Morrison achieve his remarkable victory?

In this dazzling report from the campaign trail, Erik Jensen homes in on the insecurities that drive Bill Shorten and the certainties that helped Scott Morrison win. He considers how each man reflects, challenges and comforts the national character.

Who are Morrison’s 'quiet Australians'? What did Shorten Labor fail to see? And will fear always trump hope in politics? The Prosperity Gospel sheds new light on the politics of a divided nation.

©2019 Erik Jensen (P)2019 Audible, Ltd Australia & Oceania Elections & Political Process Oceania Politics & Government World
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First and foremost, Erik speaks slow, sounds like he's struggling to breathe while narrating and will often leave seconds of silence or "dead air" between sentences. I found putting the speed on 1.15x helps with the slow talking but the breathing and even the silence, are still heard. The entire quarterly to me sounds like he wrote up sentences in bullet point on word and then just "cut and pasted" them into paragraphs that just don't go well together.

The editing and better structuring of his chapters could have made this quarterly less confusing and more enjoyable. Perhaps if the chapters were structured to only have Morrison, or Shorten, then the constant jumping between them wouldn't have been leaving me wondering, "who said what..."

And the swearing. Now I'll admit, I cuss myself; but when you're listening to an audio book from Quarterly Essay, you don't think it's something you can't listen to in the car while taking the kids to school. A forewarning (even just in the description) would've been nice.

Overall, the poor editing and narrating made it hard for me to take much from this essay. The facts spoken were things publicly known and the author/narrator comments on people were judgemental and sometimes cruel. This was a difficult essay to finish and personally not one I'd have been sad to miss out on.

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