The Longest Decade

Paul Keating and John Howard altered the nation’s body-clock. Between them, they dominated 30 years of power, as both treasurers and prime ministers. Typically, they have been seen only as antagonists with competing visions of Australia and its place in the world. In The Longest Decade, however, George Megalogenis argues that they also deserve to be seen as the twin architects of the political, economic, and social revolution that took Australia through a period of trauma and recovery, and then on to an era of unprecedented affluence. Strangely, both men also had the opportunity to retire on top — Keating in 1994 and Howard in 2006 — yet both stayed too long.

Based on exclusive interviews with both Keating and Howard, and on Megalogenis’s many years experience as a member of the Canberra press gallery, The Longest Decade is a brilliant, non-partisan analysis of the forces that shape Australia today — from the rise of working women to the triumph of the McMansion.

This is the story of how an era came to be defined by Keating and Howard, but it is also the bigger story of how Australia became a more complex society, and forced each leader to adapt before dismissing them both. This substantially revised and updated edition includes several additional chapters dealing with the termination of the Keating–Howard era.