List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?

MY ‘TRILOGY’ OF BOOKS

The three books that I nominate are not a trilogy in the sense of being linked one after the other. However, they are a trilogy in the sense of importance to me for the awareness that they create and for the understanding that I need to have.



The first of these, “ The One Minute Manager”, is one of a series by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson. This was one of the earliest books that I bought, and then every other one in the series. It was from these authors that I learnt the importance of prioritisation, of using time wisely, of being effective and efficient without dillydallying and dawdling while at the same time considering the people with whom I worked, including my student cohorts, over the years.

This book helped me immensely in formulating my leadership priorities. It also taught me about perspective and life balance.



The second book is “Arnhem Land People and Places“ by Keith Cole. This is a significant text and pictorial work that shows how, back over time, there was plenty of business, industry, and progress being made by Indigenous Australians throughout the whole of Arnhemland.

Its research pre-dates 1974, when the Whitlam Government determined that self-management and self-determination were important for Aborigines because nothing much was going on anywhere in their lives that might lead to self-betterment. As Cole points out, there was so much happening before this intervention. Aborigines were participating in creating meaningful futures, which lends a lie to the superficial ‘Whitlam Discovery’ purporting that nothing was happening.

This is an eye-opening book I would recommend to anyone who wants an understanding of history and Aboriginal development in a significant part of Australia – as it happened. From personal experience (I became a teacher in remote communities in Western Australia and the Northern Territory in 1970), I can affirm what Cole has written and illustrated. It was the way it was, and the way it was, was good.

Aboriginal people were being taught and given the skills that time would have enabled them to take full responsibility for the enterprises in which they were working. The Whitlam changes demanded that Indigenous people take immediate responsibility as enterprise bosses. That led to the crash of many enterprises leadership cannot be conferred on people not yet ready to be leaders.



Professor White’s quite recent Quarterly Essay is thought provoking and should wake within us, a sense of the parlous reality of the modern world in which we exist. After reading his essay, I came to the realisation that the world is indeed on a knife edge when future peace and security are considered.

The text is very readable and Hugh White’s message is very important. What he has written cannot be ignored.