Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History

The Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History was created by the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard following the Australian History Summit held in Canberra on 17 August 2006. The Summit looked at how the Australian government could strengthen Australian history in the school curriculum. ^[1] The winner (or winners) receive a gold medallion and a grant worth A$100,000. ^[2]

The prize is awarded to an individual or a group, for an outstanding publication or body of work that contributes significantly to an understanding of Australian history. The subject of works submitted can include, but are not limited to:

• historical events;
• historical figures (including biographies) and
• work covering a relevant subject. ^[2]

In 2012, the prize was incorporated into the Prime Minister's Literary Awards. ^[3]

Honorees

Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History winners and shortlists

Year	Author(s)	Title	Result	Ref.
2007	Les Carlyon	The Great War	Winner
	Peter Cochrane	Colonial Ambition: Foundations of Australian Democracy	Winner
	David Branagan	TW Edgeworth David: A Life	Shortlist
	Josephine Flood	The Original Australians: Story of the Aboriginal People	Shortlist
2008	Tom Griffiths	Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica	Winner	[4]
	Robert Kenny	The Lamb Enters the Dreaming: Nathanael Pepper and the Ruptured World	Winner	[4]
	John Fitzgerald	Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia	Shortlist
	Philip Jones	Ochre and Rust: Artefacts and Encounters on Australian Frontiers	Shortlist
	Paul Rudd, Stephen Amezdroz, Tony Wright, Wain Fimeri, and Matthew Thomason	Captain Cook: Obsession and Discovery	Shortlist
2009	Martin Butler and Bentley Dean	Contact (a documentary film)	Winner	[5]
	Various	First Australians	Shortlist
	Robin Gerster	Travels in Atomic Sunshine: Australia and the Occupation of Japan	Shortlist
	Grace Karskens	The Colony: A History of Early Sydney	Shortlist
	Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds	Drawing the Global Colour Line	Shortlist
2010 / 2011	Jim Davidson	A Three-Cornered Life: The Historian W K Hancock	Winner	[6]
	Peter Stanley	Bad Characters: Sex, Crime, Mutiny and Murder in the Great War	Winner	[6]
	James Curran and Stuart Ward	The Unknown Nation; Australia After Empire	Shortlist
	Paul Daley	Beersheba: A Journey through Australia’s Forgotten War	Shortlist
	Kirsten McKenzie	A Swindler's Progress: Nobles and Convicts in the Age of Liberty	Shortlist
	Penny Russell	Savage or Civilised? Manners in Colonial Australia	Shortlist
2012	Bill Gammage	The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aboriginies Made Australia	Winner	[7] [8]
	James Boyce	1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia	Shortlist	[9]
	Charles Massey	Breaking the Sheep’s Back	Shortlist	[9]
	Russell McGregor	Indifferent Inclusion: Aboriginal people and the Australian Nation	Shortlist	[9]
	Renegade Films Australia Pty Ltd	Immigration Nation: The Secret History of Us	Shortlist	[9]
2013	Ross McMullin	Farewell, Dear People	Winner	[10]
	Frank Bongiorno	The Sex Lives of Australians: A History	Shortlist
	Paul Ham	Sandakan	Shortlist
	Jenny Hocking	Gough Whitlam	Shortlist
	Nicole Moore	The Censor's Library	Shortlist
2014	Joan Beaumont	Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War	Winner	[11] [12]
	Hal G. P. Colebatch	Australia's Secret War: How Unionists Sabotaged our Troops in World War II	Winner	[11] [12]
	Mike Carlton	First Victory: 1914	Shortlist	[13]
	Michael Pembroke	Arthur Phillip: Sailor, Mercenary, Governor, Spy	Shortlist	[13]
	Clare Wright	The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka	Shortlist	[13]
2015	Ross Coulthart	Charles Bean	Winner
	David Horner	The Spy Catchers, Volume 1 of The Official History of ASIO	Winner
	Alan Atkinson	The Europeans in Australia, Volume 3: Nation	Shortlist
	Peter Brune	Descent into Hell	Shortlist
	Anne Henderson	Menzies at War	Shortlist
2016	Geoffrey Blainey	The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia	Winner	[14]
	Sam Lipski and Suzanne D. Rutland	Let My People Go: The Untold Story of Australia and the Soviet Jews, 1959–89	Winner	[14]
	Peter Monteath and Valerie Munt	Red Professor: The Cold War Life of Fred Rose	Shortlist	[15]
	Doug Morrissey	Ned Kelly: A Lawless Life	Shortlist	[15]
	Robert Stevenson	The War with Germany, Volume III of the Centenary History of Australia and the Great War	Shortlist	[15]
2017	Elizabeth Tynan	Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga Story	Winner
	Josephine Bastian	A Passion for Exploring New Countries: Matthew Flinders and George Bass	Shortlist
	Neil McDonald	Valiant Truth: The Life of Chester Wilmot, War Correspondent	Shortlist
	John Murphy	Evatt: A Life	Shortlist
	Charlie Ward	A Handful of Sand: The Gurindji Struggle, After the Walk-Off	Shortlist
2018	John Edwards	John Curtin's War: The Coming of War in The Pacific, and Reinventing Australia, Volume 1	Winner	[16] [17] [18] [19]
	Judith Brett	The Enigmatic Mr Deakin	Shortlist	[20]
	Paul Irish	Hidden in Plain View: The Aboriginal People of Coastal Sydney	Shortlist	[20]
	Jayne Persian	Beautiful Balts: From Displaced Persons to New Australians	Shortlist	[20]
	Tim Rowse	Indigenous and Other Australians Since 1901	Shortlist	[20]
2019	Meredith Lake	The Bible in Australia	Winner	[21] [22]
	Billy Griffiths	Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia	Shortlist	[22]
	Anna Haebich	Dancing in Shadows: Histories of Nyungar Performance	Shortlist	[22]
	David Kemp	The Land of Dreams: How Australians Won Their Freedom, 1788–1860	Shortlist	[22]
	Clare Wright	You Daughters of Freedom: The Australians Who Won the Vote and Inspired the World	Shortlist	[22] [23]
2020	Tiffany Shellam	Meeting the Waylo: Aboriginal Encounters in the Archipelago	Winner	[24] [25] [26]
	Judith Brett	From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia got compulsory voting	Shortlist	[24]
	Marilyn Lake	Progressive New World: How Settler Colonialism and Transpacific Exchange Shaped American Reform	Shortlist	[24]
	Susan Lawrence and Peter Davies	Sludge: Disaster on Victoria’s Goldfields	Shortlist	[24]
	Scott Patterson	The Oarsmen: The Remarkable Story of the Men Who Rowed from the Great War to Peace	Shortlist	[24]
2021	Grace Karskens	People of the River: Lost worlds of early Australia	Winner	[27] [28] [29]
	Michael Bennett	Pathfinders: A history of Aboriginal trackers in NSW	Shortlist	[30]
	Mark Dunn	The Convict Valley: The Bloody Struggle on Australia's Early Frontier	Shortlist	[30]
	Jason M. Gibson	Ceremony Men: Making Ethnography and the Return of the Strehlow Collection	Shortlist	[30]
	Amanda Harris	Representing Australian Aboriginal Music and Dance 1930-1970	Shortlist	[30]
2022	Christine Helliwell	Semut: The Untold Story of a Secret Australian Operation in WWII Borneo	Winner	[31] [32]
	Sheila Fitzpatrick	White Russians, Red Peril: A Cold War History of Migration to Australia	Shortlist	[33]
	Mark McKenna	Return to Uluru	Shortlist	[33]
	Deirdre O'Connell	Harlem Nights: The Secret History of Australia's Jazz Age	Shortlist	[33]
	Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe	Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate	Shortlist	[33]

See also

• List of history awards

References

1. Australian History Summit 2006 Archived 3 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine
2. Australian History Prize Archived 27 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine
3. "Poets and Historians to be Honoured in Literary Awards" Archived 18 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine , Prime Minister of Australia, 1 December 2011
4. "The 2008 Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History" Archived 27 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine , Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations
5. "2009 Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History" Archived 27 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine , Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations
6. "2010/2011 Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History" Archived 22 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine , Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations
7. "Mears win's PM's literary award for Foal's Bread". Archived from the original on 23 July 2012. Retrieved 23 July 2012.
8. "RiP Gillian Mears". Books+Publishing . 25 May 2016. Archived from the original on 10 March 2023. Retrieved 10 March 2023.
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21. "Winners announced for PM's Literary Awards 2019". Books+Publishing . 23 October 2019. Archived from the original on 23 October 2019. Retrieved 23 October 2019.
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23. "'Too Much Lip' shortlisted for PM and Qld literary awards". Books+Publishing . 10 October 2019. Archived from the original on 28 March 2022. Retrieved 10 March 2023.
24. "Prime Minister's Literary Awards 2020 winners announced". Books+Publishing . 10 December 2020. Archived from the original on 9 December 2020. Retrieved 10 February 2021.
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26. Harmon, Steph (9 December 2020). "Prime Minister's Literary awards: Tara June Winch wins in record-breaking year for Indigenous work". The Guardian . ISSN   0261-3077. Archived from the original on 5 December 2022. Retrieved 10 March 2023.
27. "PMLA 2021 winners announced". Books+Publishing . 15 December 2021. Archived from the original on 14 December 2021. Retrieved 15 December 2021.
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