Sideb00b Reading Club. Bulldozed by Niki Savva.

An absolute arsehole. A horrible, horrible person, a psycho. A hypocrite and a liar. An autocrat, a bully who has no moral compass. Not fit to be prime minister.

A fuckwit.

You already know who I'm talking about, don't you?

But that’s not me talking. It’s Scott Morrison’s colleagues.

Not his enemies or his victims.

His own side.

Niki Savva has done yeoman’s work in Bulldozed. Or Yo’Grrl, I suppose, which sounds way cooler, honestly. I bought it as soon as it came out, but it took me six months and one missing copy of Stanley Tucci’s Italian food and travel tome to crack it open.

I’m so glad I did.

You didn't just remind me of the post-election stoner-high I experienced for at least two or three weeks after we kicked his worthless arse to the kerb; it put me right back there.

Sure, sure, sure, it’s meticulously researched and sourced, voluminously detailed, and will surely be a valuable text for researchers a hundred years from now writing masters theses on ‘what the fuck were they thinking’.

But that’s not what Reading Club is about.

This book made me feel better, and that makes it a good book.

There’s some weirdness to that because part of the goodness involved in letting this massive fuckwit re-traumatise me all over again. It was disturbing to remember all I’d forgotten about him. Turning the pages of the first few chapters, I felt like a recovering alcoholic suddenly suffering through years of recovered memories in just a few hours.

I’d forgotten entirely that Craig Kelly existed.

Now I must live with the knowledge that he did and possibly still does.

On the upside, I also got to fondly recall this precious memory.

Not every moment of recall was so agreeable. Sava reminds us of just how completely the so-called Liberal moderates failed and how successful the cud-chewing moron wing of the National Party (the faction also known as ‘the National Party’) was at capturing not just Morrison’s allegiance but billions of dollars in funding for the pet projects such as setting the world on fire. I enjoyed reliving the waning days of the previous parliament in which the mods finally found their voice to prevent the passage of Morrison's Religious Discrimination Bill, but I enjoyed even more reliving the election in which the Teals swept in and kicked them to actual pieces anyway because everyone had long ago woken up to their collaborationist bullshit.

Savva, who has some impeccable small-L liberal credentials on her CV, including a previous gig as a senior media adviser to Peter Costello, paints Morrison as a duplicitous, deeply flawed personality with limited horizons and appalling judgment. She hates him almost as much as everyone else who ever met the man hated him, but she took notes, allowing her to write pars like this one:

Gladys Berejiklian loathed Scott Morrison. Dominic Perrottet never trusted him or his close allies, because he believed they tried at every point to wreck his career. Politics demanded that Berejiklian and Perrottet put on a show in public that they got along well with the Prime Minister. Few were fooled. Morrison called them his friends. They weren't.

This isn’t opinion writing. It’s pure reportage.

She’s easier on the Teals and the ALP but doesn’t spend a lot of time on alternate indies like Dai Le, who saw off Kristina Keneally’s attempt to parachute into Sydney’s inner west. Occasionally Bulldozed drops a whole chapter of narrative gold nuggets, such as the reconstruction of Albanese’s preparation for debating Scott Morrison, after having comprehensively fucked up the first day of the campaign. You get a real sense of how badly unbalanced Labor’s campaign team and Albo himself were by the sudden realisation that they could still lose it all. Albanese is portrayed as a man in shock for at least a week, shuffling through each day, muttering to himself about letting everyone down. More interesting, though, was the use of debate prep techniques imported from the US presidential campaign, with Jim Chalmer’s playing the role of Morrison with Brando-like affect and technique.

Still, as much as I came for the revelations—like the Governor General’s wife bullying visitors to Yarralumla into cringe-making singalongs around a piano—I stayed for Savva’s bile and loathing. She was always one of the most enjoyable columnists during those long, dark years, and Bulldozed was an enjoyable dip back into the madhouse.

I’m happy to recommend it to anyone with nothing better to do.

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As always, feel free to comment below about this book or anything else you’ve read recently. It’s reading club, not book club. And comments are open for all.