Australia Could Use a Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli’s name is mud. Any scribbler vilifying a dodgy politician or lying lobbyist will reach for the poisoned descriptor Machiavellian. It suggests everything devious and cynical.

When I bought a copy of The Prince—Machiavelli’s most famous work—I braced myself, anticipating counsels of devilish sophistry on every page. But The Prince is far better than I imagined. Perhaps I was fortunate to read the Penguin Classics translation by Tim Parks with his illuminating introduction. Parks explores The Prince and Machiavelli’s scandalous reputation. Published in Italy in 1532 after Machiavelli’s death, it was placed on Pope Paul IV’s Index of Prohibited Books in 1559. Then time and chance intervened; they, Machiavelli had understood, multiplied the unpredictable. The Protestant Reformation and Catholicism’s Counter-Reformation were splintering Europe. Religious propaganda abounded, helped by that useful invention, the printing press. And Machiavelli…