This book told the story of two leaders, Paul Keating and John Howard, and the struggle over the nature of modern Australia. Kelly argued that Keating and Howard were “declared rivals yet undeclared collaborators” in this national project. He based this conclusion on policy evidence – while aware of the intense and entrenched differences between Keating and Howard as political warriors.
This was a contentious interpretation that cut against the grain of contemporary political history as told from partisan Labor or Liberal perspective. But national history is a much larger story. It does not belong to any party or tribe and the national direction is shaped by patriots coming from both sides of the political divide. Genuine understanding of the Australian national project demands a bigger vision and broader synthesis than the beloved accounts from political parties endlessly spinning their own exclusive triumphs.
Kelly’s theme aroused emotional and partisan resistance that spilled into the open at the book’s 2009 launch by Labor Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd who praised the book before launching a frontal assault on its central propositions.
The reality, however, is that Keating and Howard had run the Australian Treasury unbroken from 1977 to 1991 and then occupied the office of prime minister from 1991 to 2007. While they engaged in many fierce policy disputes during these years there was much continuity in Australia’s direction and it is the continuity that determines enduring national progress.
The real theme of the book was the rise of Australian Exceptionalism and the refinement of an Australian model, different from the US and UK, on how to succeed in a globalised age with a premium on the good society.
During Rudd’s launch speech, a stung Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, leaned over to the author, expressing his distaste for Rudd’s remarks. Rudd had two main complaints. First, he rejected Kelly’s thesis that the economic model Rudd inherited in 2007 was a Labor-Liberal “shared achievement” from the reform age and the work of both Labor and Liberal governments. Second, he rejected Kelly’s view that the Howard-Costello economic framework did not constitute a neoliberal project – and indeed that Australia had never seen a national neoliberal government. Rudd said the Liberals, in essence, were a party of neoliberal ideology and that the task of social democrats and his government had been to save capitalism from the yoke of free market fundamentalism practised by the Liberals.
Reviews
“This is a monumental account that will become a benchmark for future research” – Kevin Rudd at the launch.
“This is one of the most revealing books so far written on contemporary history in Australia’ – Geoffrey Blainey, The Australian.
“No-one from journalism, professional commentary or academia has come within a bull’s roar of producing a work of such sweep and quality” – Paddy Gourley, The Canberra Times.
“Since the Second World War Australia has produced many political journalists, but just two of them, Alan Reid and Paul Kelly, have been serious chroniclers of their political times. They have been the only ones to attempt to tell a story of Australian politics, with its changes and convulsions through the years. For that they deserve a special place in the regard of both participants and observers of Australian politics” – John Howard, Quadrant, in his review of The March of Patriots.
“This project is marked by the sheer scale of its research, the sustained momentum of the narrative, the clarity of the analysis and the confident authority of the insider” – Paul Sheehan, The Sydney Morning Herald
“This is how political history should be written but seldom is. Paul Kelly’s prose has the clarity of cut glass. His battleground is the world of ideas and his gift is for distillation” – Les Carlyon
“The March of Patriots is brilliant – ambitious in scope and forensic in detail” - Laurie Oakes.
“A work of first-rate significance almost certain to provide the definitive account of Australian politics during the decade” – Robert Manne, The Monthly
