Dark Dark Policing compels the reader's concentration as it documents a nation polarised between the working poor and the uber rich at a time when ultranationalist groups are on the rise.
Written with hallucinatory intensity by one of Australia's most experienced journalists, author John Stapleton, it uses novelistic techniques to depict Australia during the early millennial period, a pivotal point in its history.
Dark Dark Policing is seen through the eyes of a crumpled old newspaper reporter whose visionary imagination drives him from the arid lands of the interior to confront the nation's plethora of ultra-secret security agencies.
He speaks with an incandescent rage of the destruction of his beloved country.
Driven by the unalloyed greed of the nation's oligarchy, indifference to the working poor and shocking levels of government incompetence, Australia is a polarised country where revolutionary sentiment and totalitarian impulses now thrive.
With incendiary intent and urgent flights of fantasy, entwined with extensive reportage, Stapleton responds savagely to a conservative government's destruction of free speech and the surveillance of journalists.
It's 2020, and Australians have endured extremely poor governance at federal, state and local levels for decades, and must live with the consequences. A dishonest government is a paranoid government, and intrusive surveillance of everyone from nationalist groups to the Muslim minority fires indignation at home and abroad.
The Australian government had one operating principle: plunder the poor, give to the rich. Overtaxed and over regulated, when the coronavirus hit much of the population did not have the resources to cope. A million workers joined the dole queues within days. This is the story of a once optimistic country.
Dark Dark Policing is a must read for anyone interested in the failure of democracies worldwide. It is the final volume in the trilogy which began with Terror in Australia: Workers' Paradise Lost and was followed by Hideout in the Apocalypse. The books can be read separately or together.
