Settling the Office: The Australian Prime Ministership from Federation to Reconstruction

by Paul Strangio, Paul 't Hart, James Walter

Overview

The prime ministership is indisputably the most closely observed and keenly contested office in Australia. How did it grow to become the pivot of national political power? Settling the Office chronicles the development of the prime ministership from its rudimentary early days following Federation through to the powerful, institutionalised prime-ministerial leadership of the postwar era.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780522868739
Publisher:	Melbourne University Publishing
Publication date:	02/01/2016
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Paul Strangio is Associate Professor of Politics in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. A political historian and biographer, he has written extensively about political leadership and political parties in Australia. Before recent studies of the Australian prime ministers, his last book was Neither Power Nor Glory: 100 Years of Political Labor in Victoria, 1856–1956 (2012). Paul has also been a long-time commentator on Australian politics in the print and electronic media.

He is the co-author of Understanding Prime-Ministerial Performance: Comparative Perspectives (2013), Settling the Office: The Australian Prime Ministership from Federation to Reconstruction (2016) and The Pivot of Power: Australian Prime Ministers and Political Leadership, 1949-2016 (2017).

Table of Contents

Prime Ministers of Australia: Federation to Reconstruction vi

Introduction: Inventing the Prime Ministership 1

1 The Colonial Inheritance 7

2 Ringmaster of the Early Commonwealth Alfred Deakin 32

3 Prime-ministerial Polarities Andrew Fisher Billy Hughes 70

4 Thwarted Ambition Stanley Bruce James Scullin 122

5 Popularity versus Leadership Joseph Lyons Robert Menzies 169

6 A Nation-building Tandem John Curtin Ben Chifley 201

7 Settling the Prime Ministership 238

Notes 255

Acknowledgements 293

Index 295