SUNDAY 5 MAY 2024 | INSTORE EVENT
3.00pm for a 3.30pm start | 60 mins
Join us to hear Frank Bongiorno and Nick Dyrenfurth discuss A Little History of the Australian Labor Party.
Former Deputy Prime Minister, Treasurer and ALP National President Wayne Swan will be launching the book.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Acclaimed historians Nick Dyrenfurth and Frank Bongiorno tell the story of the Australian Labor Party’s rich history of more than 130 years and examine its central role in modern Australia.
The Australian Labor Party is one of the oldest labour parties in the world and the first to form a government. From the prime ministerships of Watson and Fisher to the tragedies of Hughes and Scullin, through the 1940s legends Curtin and Chifley to governments of Whitlam, Hawke, Keating, Rudd and Gillard, A Little History of the Australian Labor Party recounts times of triumph and failure, as well as resilience.
This updated edition examines Labor’s recent performance in state and territory politics and takes the national story up to the Albanese government.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
NICK DYRENFURTH is Executive Director of the social democratic think tank the John Curtin Research Centre. He is the author or editor of twelve books, including Getting the Blues: The future of Australian Labor, Mateship: A very Australian history, Heroes and Villains: The rise and fall of the early Australian Labor Party, The Write Stuff: Voices of unity on Labor’s future (co-edited with Misha Zelinsky), All That’s Left: What Labor should stand for (co-edited with Tim Soutphommasane) and Confusion: The making of the Australian two-party system (co-edited with Paul Strangio).
Nick is a leading media commentator and Adjunct Research Fellow in the School of Historical Studies at Monash University, where he received his PhD and lectured for several years. He was a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney and secretary of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History. Nick has also worked as a Labor Party advisor and speechwriter and secretary of the ALP’s National Policy Forum.
FRANK BONGIORNO is Professor of History at the Australian National University and Distinguished Fellow of the Whitlam Institute, Western Sydney University. He has written widely on Australian politics and especially the Australian Labor Party. His books also include The Sex Lives of Australians: a history and The Eighties: The decade that transformed Australia, which both won ACT Book of the Year. His Dreamers and Schemers: a political history of Australia also won ACT Book of the Year and the Australian Political Studies Association’s Henry Mayer Book Prize.
Frank recently collaborated in an updated edition of the late Mungo MacCallum’s The Good, the Bad and the Unlikely: Australia’s Prime Ministers: From Barton to Albanese and he is a regular contributor to media on Australian history and politics. Frank is President of the Australian Historical Association and the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and the Australian Academy of Humanities.
