Table Of ContentAustralian Political Lives
Chronicling political careers
and administrative histories
Australian Political Lives
Chronicling political careers
and administrative histories
Tracey Arklay, John Nethercote
and John Wanna, editors
Published by ANU E Press
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
Email:
John Wanna, Series Editor
Professor John Wanna is the Sir John Bunting Chair of Public Administration
at the Research School of Social Sciences at The Australian National University.
He is the director of research for the Australian and New Zealand School of
Government (ANZSOG). He is also a joint appointment with the Department
of Politics and Public Policy at Grifth University and a principal researcher
with two research centres: the Governance and Public Policy Research Centre
and the nationally-funded Key Centre in Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance
at Grifth University. Professor Wanna has produced around 17 books
including two national text books on policy and public management. He has
produced a number of research-based studies on budgeting and fnancial
management including: Budgetary Management and Control (1990); Managing
Public Expenditure (2000), From Accounting to Accountability (2001) and, most
recently, Controlling Public Expenditure (2003). He has just completed a study
of state level leadership covering all the state and territory leaders — entitled
Yes Premier: Labor leadership in Australia’s states and territories — and has
edited a book on Westminster Legacies in Asia and the Pacifc — Westminster
Legacies: Democracy and responsible government in Asia and the Pacifc. He
was a chief investigator in a major Australian Research Council funded study
of the Future of Governance in Australia (1999-2001) involving Grifth and
the ANU. His research interests include Australian and comparative politics,
public expenditure and budgeting, and government-business relations. He also
writes on Australian politics in newspapers such as The Australian, Courier-
Mail and Canberra Times and has been a regular state political commentator
on ABC radio and TV.
Table of Contents
List of Contributors ix
Preface xi
The Art of Australian Political Biography Geoffrey Bolton 1
Political Biography: Its Contribution to Political Science Tracey Arklay 13
Recording Non-Labor Politics Through Biography Judith Brett 25
The ‘Life Myth’, ‘Short Lives’ and Dealing with Live Subjects in Political
Biography James Walter 29
Public Lives, Private Lives: the Fundamental Dilemma in Political
Biography Nicholas Brown 35
Expanding The Repertoire: Theory, Method and Language in Political
Biography R. A. W. Rhodes 43
John Curtin: Taking his Childhood Seriously David Day 51
Ministers, Prime Ministers, Mandarins: Politics as a Job Patrick Weller 55
Biography and the Rehabilitation of the Subject: The Case of John
Gorton Ian Hancock 61
Aboriginality and Impersonality: Three Australian Indigenous
Administrative Memoirs Tim Rowse 65
Writing Political Biography Rae Wear 73
Jessie Street and the New Political Biography Lenore Coltheart 77
Conjuring Fascinating Stories: the Case of Sir Arthur
Tange Peter Edwards 81
Anonymous in Life, Anonymous in Death: Memoirs and Biographies of
Administrators John Nethercote 87
The Personal Writings of Politicians Neal Blewett 91
Writing Political Autobiographies John Button 97
Political Biographies and Administrative Memoirs: Some Concluding
Comments Philip A. Selth 101
References 115
Index 129
vii
List of Contributors
Tracey Arklay is a doctoral student at Griffith University, Queensland, and is
writing a biography of Sir Arthur Fadden. She recently worked as a research
assistant on the History of the Queensland Parliament 1957-89 project.
Neal Blewett, AC, was Professor of Political Theory, Flinders University, South
Australia from 1974-77, member of the House of Representatives from 1977-94,
minister in the Hawke-Keating governments from1983-93, and Australian High
Commissioner in London from 1994-98. He is the author of A Cabinet Diary
(1999).
Geoffrey Bolton, AO, Chancellor, Murdoch University, WA, has held chairs in
history at Murdoch, London, Queensland and Edith Cowan universities. Author
of biographies of Sir Richard Boyer (1967) and Sir Edmund Barton (2000), he is
now writing a biography of Sir Paul Hasluck.
Judith Brett, Professor of Politics, Latrobe University, Victoria. She is the author
of Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class: From Alfred Deakin to John
Howard (2003) and Robert Menzies' Forgotten People (2002). Her edited book,
Political Lives, was published in 1997.
Nicholas Brown is Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Dictionary of
Biography, located in the Research School of Social Sciences at The Australian
National University. He is the author of Richard Downing: Economics, advocacy
and social reform in Australia (2001).
John Button was Labor Senator for Victoria from1974-93, Leader of the
Government in the Senate from 1983-93 and Minister for Industry from 1983-93.
He is the author of As It Happened (1998).
Lenore Coltheart taught political history in Australian universities for 25 years
before retiring to Canberra in 1997. She prepared a revised edition of Jessie
Street’s autobiography, Jessie Street: A revised autobiography (2004) and is
currently writing a biography of Jesse Street.
David Day is a Research Fellow in the School of Historical and European Studies
at Latrobe University, Victoria. He has written biographies of Curtin, John Curtin:
A life (1999) and Chifley (2002).
Peter Edwards, AM, is a Visiting Professor at the University of New South Wales,
Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra. His biography of Sir Arthur Tange,
Arthur Tange: Last of the mandarins, was published in 2006.
Ian Hancock is a Visiting Fellow at the Australian Dictionary of Biography, at
The Australian National University. His book, John Gorton: He did it his way,
was published in 2002.
ix
Australian Political Lives
John Nethercote is the Consulting Editor of the Australian Journal of Public
Administration. He has written obituaries of several senior Commonwealth
officials, including Sir Frederick Wheeler, Dr H. C. Coombs, Dr Peter Wilenski,
Sir John Bunting and Sir Allen Brown.
Rod (R.A.W.) Rhodes is Professor of Political Science and Head of Program in
the Political Science Program, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian
National University. He is author, with Mark Bevir, of Governance Stories (2005)
and Interpreting British Governance (2003). And, with Patrick Weller, The
Changing World of Top Officials: Mandarins or valets? (2001).
Tim Rowse is Professor of History in the Research School of Social Sciences, The
Australian National University. He wrote Obliged to be Difficult (2000) and Nugget
Coombs: A reforming life (2002).
Philip Selth is Executive Director of the New South Wales Bar Association. He
was formerly a senior executive in the Commonwealth, State and Territory
sectors, and is an avid reader of political biographies.
James Walter is Professor of Political Science in the School of Political and Social
Inquiry at Monash University, Victoria. He has published widely on Australian
politics, history, biography and culture. Among his books are The Leader: A
political biography of Gough Whitlam (1980) and The Ministers’ Minders: Personal
advisers in national government (1986).
Rae Wear is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Queensland.
She wrote Johannes Bjelke-Petersen: the Lord’s Premier, published in 2002. She
is Associate Editor of the Australian Journal of Politics and History and previously
taught at the University of Southern Queensland.
Patrick Weller, AO, is Professor and Director of the Centre for Governance and
Public Policy at Griffith University, Queensland. He is the author of Don't Tell
the Prime Minister (2002), Australia's Mandarins: The frank and the fearless (2001),
Malcolm Fraser PM (1989) and Dodging Raindrops (1999).
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