A Premier's State
BRACKS STEVE & WHINNETT ELLEN
Melbourne Up, Australian Studies
Paperback, Ed: 01, 9780522860795
AUD $31.81 ex, AUD $34.99 inc
In stock at: 18 May 2013 18:00
By the time he was forty-eight, Steve Bracks had achieved the goal he'd set himself nine years earlier. He was premier of Victoria. In A Premier's State he reflects on his ambition to make a difference, and how he reached his goal. He talks about his early childhood growing up in a conservative but impassioned family that supported the Democratic Labor Party, and about his gradual evolution from left-wing university radical to pragmatic centre-left premier. He reveals for the first time the background to his decision to take the party's leadership from his friend John Brumby in 1999 - then to hand it back to John in 2007 when he sensationally resigned from office. He gives insights into how to run a successful government and how to manage the factions, and talks about everything from the impact of public life on his family, to forming minority government with independents. This wide-ranging, thoughtful and incisive look at Steve's life and his career encompasses not only his thoughts on the Labor Party, but on the state of Australian politics generally.