This is not just a book. This is a document nailed to the hall of Australian history.

Author Margo Kingston's 'Not Happy, John' is a snapshot of the national moment. We needed it. Our country's children will be able to look back on this moment and see whether we learned, which path we took.

For all the effort taken in writing it, and for all the damage it uncovers, there is cause for hope. We must view this work in that light.

I am hopeful in that now that we have been given this gift of knowledge, we can each in our own way take a step towards the light. That it exists is cause for hope. That it is charting is tremendous cause.

You go girl.

And thank you.

Personally, my first impression is that this book is eminently readable. That surprised me, because I held with trepidation the nature of the subject matter, and wondered silently if I could as a citizen play a role in its understanding. No problem, the book rollocks along and the complex was made easy. There is an art to that and it is appreciated in this work.

The giving of it was served in considerate courses, dressed warmly and passionately and satisfying long after. It is fare to be enjoyed with friends.

The overall power of it, and what is personally exciting, is the spirit in which it has been created. There was an absence of ego in the making of this document. So utterly rare. Remember it for that as well.

Rather, Margo Kingston has seemed to have taken stock of her professional career, stopped right there, and looked into the future. You could sense she knew the options she would be denying herself in writing this. 'Not Happy, John' is written with the tears of her own professional sacrifice, and this gift of spirit shone in her throwing open the pages and allowing the voices of the equally spirited Jack Robertson, Antony Loewenstein, Harry Heidelberg and many others to live there as well. I found the occasion of all these Webdiary writers in the work not only educational and edifying but touching and inspiring. It brought a rare quality to the project - a particularly Australian quality, also, in this embrace, in this sense of inclusivity.

That it speaks genuinely for the true Australia is evidenced by that very fact alone.

With this 300 hundred words, may I finish with a public request, and that is to not be given to seeing this as an anti-Howard document. The book is clearly not, though Howard himself has made this an easy trap. This document is far, far more than about the Howard of the day.

It is about our future.

May we pause in the future and look back on this national moment, and be thankful. And let us remember the rare courage of the author as we now take the clearer steps forward to what we each must do.