Triumph & Demise: The Broken Promise of a Labor Generation

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Triumph and Demise
Triumph & Demise.jpg
First edition
Author Paul Kelly
SubjectThe Rudd-Gillard Labor Governments in Australia
Publisher Melbourne University Publishing
Publication date
2014
Media typeHard cover
ISBN 9780522862102

Triumph and Demise: The broken promise of a Labor generation is a 2014 book which chronicles the rise and fall of the Australian Labor Party governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard (2007-2013) by the Australian author and journalist Paul Kelly.

Contents

The author

Paul John Kelly is an Australian political journalist and historian and a commentator on radio and television. He is the current Editor-at-Large of The Australian newspaper, where he writes on Australian politics, public policy and international affairs. Paul appears as a commentator on Sky News and is the author of seven books: The Unmaking of Gough (1976), The Hawke Ascendancy (1984), The End of Certainty (1992), November 1975 (1995), Paradise Divided (2000), 100 Years: The Australian Story (2001) and The March of Patriots (2009). [1]

The book

Triumph and Demise was launched by the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott in Canberra in 2014. It chronicles the six years of the Rudd-Gillard Labor governments, including the Liberal opposition of the period. [2] The author conducted interviews with more than 60 of the key players of the Rudd-Gillard era, and explores the tensions at the heart of the strained relationships between the central personalities at the heart of the Labor governments. [3]

ABC TV's Tony Jones described the book as looking at the achievements and the failures of the Rudd and Gillard governments and of "a malaise that's making it near impossible for governments to do their jobs properly and implement effective reform" in Australia. Kelly told Jones that the story of Rudd and Gillard was unprecedented: "We've never seen this before. We have never seen an event like this before. Kevin Rudd was a hero in 2007. He campaigned brilliantly against John Howard. He won a great triumph for the Labor Party. It was assumed, it was assumed generally that Labor would have three terms in office - that seemed to be an expectation, a quite proper expectation - and then two and a half years later, Rudd was destroyed by his own party. [...] I argue in the book that this was the fatal move by Labor, that essentially what happened here was that Kevin Rudd's prime ministership was certainly destroyed, but Julia Gillard, the other candidate, the deputy, the successor to Kevin Rudd, was also crippled by the way she became Prime Minister. So essentially what happened that night was you had two events. There were two figures in this partnership, Rudd and Gillard; the partnership fell apart, but both those figures were fatally undermined on that night." [4]

Related Research Articles

Paul John Kelly is an Australian political journalist, author and television and radio commentator from Sydney. He has worked in a variety of roles, principally for The Australian newspaper, and is currently its editor-at-large. Kelly also appears as a commentator on Sky News and has written seven books on political events in Australia since the 1970s including on the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis. Recent works include, The March of Patriots, which chronicles the creation of a modern Australia during the 1991–2007 era of Prime Ministers, Paul Keating and John Howard, and Triumph & Demise which focuses on the leadership tensions at the heart of the Rudd-Gillard Labor Governments of 2007–2011. Kelly presented the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) TV documentary series, 100 Years – The Australian Story (2001) and wrote a book of the same title.

Kevin Rudd 26th Prime Minister of Australia

Kevin Michael Rudd is an Australian former politician and diplomat who served as the 26th prime minister of Australia, from December 2007 to June 2010 and again from June 2013 to September 2013. He held office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party.

Julia Gillard 27th prime minister of Australia from 2010 to 2013

Julia Eileen Gillard is an Australian former politician who served as the 27th prime minister of Australia from 2010 to 2013. She held office as leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). She is the first and only female prime minister in Australian history.

Tony Abbott 28th prime minister of Australia from 2013 to 2015

Anthony John Abbott is an Australian former politician. He served as the 28th prime minister of Australia from 2013 to 2015, holding office as the leader of the Liberal Party of Australia.

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Gillard government Australian government led by Julia Gillard (2010–2013)

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References