Showing results by author "Rick Morton" in All Categories

Robodebt was a new debt-creation system that was used to illegally pursue close to half a million Australian welfare recipients for fake debts generated by the thousands. It was described by the Royal Commission's report as a 'massive failure of public administration' caused by 'venality, incompetence and cowardice'. Essentially, Australians were gaslit by their own government, which doggedly and knowingly concocted a program that was both mathematically wrong and illegal, just to shake down innocent people for money, then lied about it for four and a half years.

In early 2019, Rick Morton, author of acclaimed, best-selling memoir One Hundred Years of Dirt, was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder - which, as he says, is just a fancy way of saying that one of the people who should have loved him the most during childhood didn't. So, over the course of 12 months, he went on a journey to rediscover love. To get better. Not cured, not fixed. Just, better. This is a book about his journey to betterness, his year of living vulnerably.

Social mobility is not a train you get to board after you've scraped together enough for the ticket. You have to build the whole bloody engine, with nothing but a spoon and hand-me-down psychological distress. Violence, treachery and cruelty run through the generational veins of Rick Morton's family. A horrific accident thrusts his mother and siblings into a world impossible for them to navigate, a life of poverty and drug addiction.

Growing Up in Country Australia is a fresh, modern look at country Australia. There are stories of joy, adventure, nostalgia, connection to nature and freedom, but also more grim tales - of drought, fires, mouse plagues and isolation. From the politics of the country school bus to the class divides between locals, from shooting foxes with Dad to giving up meat as an adult, from working on the family farm to selling up and moving to the city, the picture painted is diverse and unexpected. This is country Australia as you've never seen it before.