Well it’s barely in the future, so it’s not as if we’re talking science fiction here. I pretty much just stuck to the present world, with a few political and social trends taken to even nastier extremes. Which is not to say I’m making predictions about what will actually happen. This is mostly just taking the piss, a romp through a worst-case scenario. After all, we live in an age where the worst case scenario is king—the government, for instance, justifies most of its security policies on worst-case scenarios about terrorist attacks or weapons of mass destruction or refugee invasions. So for balance’s sake, why not present a worst-case scenario about the excesses of the government itself?

This book appears to be less character-driven than your others. What do you think?

That sounds fair enough. Politics aside, I was keen throughout to keep the book short and sharp and fun to read—in other words, very event-driven—and so the characters tend to get swept along by those events without much time for inner development. Besides which, Australia itself was the character I really wanted to explore.

Kate Grenville has said that The Secret River is her contribution to the debate about Australia’s Aboriginal history. Is Underground your contribution to current debates about the Australian political scene?

As much a scream of frustration as a reasoned contribution, I think. But better, from a personal point of view, than merely banging my head in despair against the TV screen every time the news comes on, or hoping vaguely that one day John Howard’s head will explode from a pomposity overload. But seriously, Australia is heading down some terrifically dangerous paths and it feels impossible to stand by and say nothing.

Do you think Underground will have appeal beyond those who are already disillusioned by Australian politics?

Probably not ... but that’s a huge chunk of the population. Then again, it can be read purely as a convoluted conspiracy-theory thriller—as utterly ludicrous, in its own way, as say The Da Vinci Code—so who knows.

What do you hope readers will take away from Underground?

You mean apart from a conviction to vote this government the hell out, come the next election? Well, as always, I hope that people enjoy the book primarily as a story. But if it jolts someone who is otherwise blasé about politics into thinking about the dangers of not keeping governments accountable and the dangers of being ruled by fear and a morbid desire for security, all well and good.