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In Open Australia, Labor's Lindsay Tanner argues that this simple question underpins virtually all major issues in contemporary Australia. Our actions now will determine whether we go forward in the 21st century as a prosperous, creative and generous nation or decline into a mean and insular backwater.

Tanner describes the new economy based on information and services, and argues that Australia's future lies in content creation. He puts the case for sweeping media deregulation and investment in innovation and skills formation to ensure Australia's prosperous future as a major player in the global information economy.

Open Australia calls for a new role for government, facilitating rather than commanding change, and suggests a more direct government role in tackling widespread loneliness and alienation. Tanner proposes a radical overhaul of our system of representation, and challenges many of the assumptions beneath past and present Labor thinking.

Lindsay Tanner is a key figure in the policy renewal debate now engulfing the Australian Labor Party. Federal MP for Melbourne since 1993 and now Minister for Finance, Tanner is one of the leading generators of new ideas in Australian politics.

"Lindsay Tanner's Open Australia is a wise, wide ranging, compassionate and thoughtful analysis of the problems facing not only Australia, but the Western social democratic tradition. He has made a major contribution to opening up the argument which will go on well into the 21st century. Tanner is already an important thinker. His book deserves close study." Barry Jones

ISBN: 1864030526