Nine books and counting from the ALP
AT least NINE books from Labor MPs and staffers involved in the last government have been launched. Are readers really that interested?
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IT’S already the most documented slice of our recent political history and Labor participants in the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd period are still producing books.
The sizeable literary collection raises a question: Less than a year after the ALP’s election loss, are readers really that interested?
Publishers clearly think so as they are stacking bookshop shelves with the highly self-endorsing reflections of current and past Labor MPs involved in the period from 2007 to the 2013 elections.
Next month former Governor-General Quentin Bryce will formally launch My Story, the memoir of former Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
That will bring to nine — by one calculation — the number of books from her and former colleagues on roughly the same subject.
Plus, there are books by former cross bench MPs Tony Windsor (House of Windsor) and Rob Oakeshott (The Independent Member for Lyne).
None will have the weight or influence of journalist Paul Kelly’s epic-sized Triumph and Demise which no doubt will become the definitive account of the period.
And there is one player missing from the potential complete set of Labor records, the big K-for-Kevin kahuna.
Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has given no indication he wants to write a book but so many people are commenting on him — and often critically — he might understandably feel he should write his own side of the story.
But that might be some time off. Like former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans who this week — 15 years after he left Parliament - will launch his diary from the Hawke/Keating days, Mr Rudd might wait a while longer.
Others, however, seem to have started dictating their first chapters on Sunday September 8, 2013 ... hours after the election.
The nine books by Labor figures, from 2012 to the present are:
• My Story, by Julia Gillard;
• The Good Fight, Wayne Swan;
• Power with Purpose, Lindsay Tanner (2012);
• Hearts and Minds, Chris Bowen;
• Diary of a Foreign Minister, Bob Carr;
• The Fights of My Life, Greg Combet;
• A Letter to Generation Next, Kim Carr;
• Tales from the Political Trenches, Maxine McKew (updated 2013);
• Glory Daze, Jim Chalmers (former Swan adviser now an MP)
Originally published as Nine books and counting from the ALP