Don Dunstan: The visionary politician who changed Australia

(Paperback)

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Don Dunstan was one of the most significant political figures of twentieth-century Australia. As Premier of South Australia, he blazed a trail of reform. But his influence reached far beyond his home state. He was seen as the architect of a new kind of Australian society, and his decade in office marked a golden age.

This is the first comprehensive biography of a larger than life figure. Angela Woollacott recounts how he battled Adelaide's conservative establishment to win office for Labor, and then pioneered Aboriginal land rights, abolished the death penalty, supported women's rights, relaxed censorship and drinking laws and decriminalised homosexuality. He worked against the White Australia Policy, and was an ardent supporter of the arts and food. Although he was much loved by the public, Dunstan's career was marked by controversy and vilification, with scandal surrounding his personal relationships.

Dunstan's life story helps us to appreciate just what a watershed era the 1960s and 1970s were in Australia, and to see how one small state could, for a time, lead a nation.

'A fitting tribute' - Penny Wong

'Whitlam and Dunstan were the Washington and Jefferson of modern Australian Labor politics.' - Mike Rann

'Angela Woollacott's biography captures what was so special about him.' - Maggie Beer

Reviews

'At last we have a comprehensive, balanced and well-judged treatment of Dunstan's life in all its dimensions' - Associate Professor Lionel Orchard, Flinders University

'One of the best biographies of an Australian politician that has been written' - Carol Johnson, Journal of Labour History

'[Woollacott] tells [Dunstan's story] with authority and warmth. She is equally fluent at explaining the complexities of Dunstan's political world and painting colourful portraits of the man himself and the people who surrounded him.' The Saturday Paper

'Woollacott brings back into view the joy, the ambition, the derring-do of politics... May this book be read widely to show how it was done, against very high odds, and that done once, there is no reason why it cannot be done again.' Sydney Morning Herald

Author Bio

Angela Woollacott is the Manning Clark Professor of History at the Australian National University and an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, and the Australian Academy of the Humanities.