What Were They Thinking: 150 Years of Political Thinking in Australia

Paul Keating's sharpest attack on John Howard concerned the way he thought: 'he thinks that if he puts a few baubles in the right places ... government will just fall into his lap. I believe that there's always got to be a road map for Australia, there's always got to be belief ...' Howard himself concluded that 'ultimately politics is a battle of ideas. Those who triumph politically are those who have not only superior arguments but also the capacity to present those arguments in a compelling fashion'. Kevin Rudd's reaction when facing the global financial crisis was to write an essay. Tony Abbott's tilt for Liberal Party leadership was presaged by a book, and when he won he rewrote the opening section in three days for a second edition.

Ideas are at the heart of out politics.

They are the means by which people are influenced and inspired. Australian politics has been shaped by distinctive patterns of political thought, from the colonial period to the Rudd Government. But how have these patterns arisen? And what have been their effects on shaping what we think is politically possible or desirable?

This book is an invigorating history of people trying to make sense of their world, fighting to establish the principles governing the way politics is pursued and justifying their own perspectives. It asks: who runs with particular ideas and why, and what do they do with them? Ambitious in its aims and sweeping in its scope, What Were They Thinking? is a compelling story of winners and losers, of individuals trying to influence their times, and of how ideas and power are linked.