Customer Reviews

The Longest Decade

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I respect George Megalogenis as a feature writer and panellist on the wonderful ABC show Insiders. He always talks good sense and seems to be on top of the economic analyses pertinent to Australian politics.

None of that translated over into this book. It is a complete waste of time unless you are some buff of parliamentary trivia as reported by the Australian media. It is not much more than re-hash. The book largely seems to be a long winded summary of his news clippings collection for the ten years in question.

He is so cold. His take on things and the players involved almost totally devoid of personality. He never seems to mix with his subjects, has no insider mates or connections who feed him important tidbits, has no links to the leaders he places centrally in his narrative, thus gives us no frighteningly accurate and novel insights into the makeup of these powerful men and their motives. In fact his appendix of interview texts with Howard & Keating is an embarrassment. The quote blocks look like bits of answers from the one interview he did with each leader, that he didn't know what to do with in his text.

Probably the only book from Amazon over the past year or so I regret buying.

The 'longest decade' currently spans over 15 years: the combined length of the prime ministerships of Paul Keating and John Howard. George Megalogenis is a journalist with The Australian and a former member of the Canberra press gallery.

Mr Megalogenis has written a book which, while it primarily deals with economic policy, also considers native title in the aftermath of Mabo and Wik, the political rise and fall of Pauline Hansen, East Timor and the Tampa. The book begins with Paul Keating's last year as Australian treasurer, through his prime ministership and John Howard's, and ends in December 2005 with the Cronulla riots.

The similarities between Howard and Keating on matters of economic reform will be surprising to those who focus only on the apparent differences. By looking back at the work done during the 1980s, some of the potential contributers to the strengths and weaknesses of the current Australian economy seem clearer.

The strength of this book is the historical material it contains. It is not a definitive history, but it does provide a useful (and well presented) overview of some key political events, together with highlights such as John Hewson's infamous answer about how the cost of a birthday cake would be affected by the (then) proposed goods and services tax.

The book is arranged chronologically rather than by topic. While this is fine for those of us who have a reasonably clear memory of the times, it may make for a disjointed read for those seeking to follow policy development.

Recommended for those who wanting some undertanding of this period in Australian political history. Megalogenis's writing style livens up what might appear to be dry and dusty topics.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith