Craig McGregor

Writing a biography of any practising politician is a difficult task: you are more or less beholden to your subject, and the book can end up an exercise in diplomacy instead of perception. Writing a book about Bill Hayden, who has been called an enigma, a Hamlet, and a Cassandra, is double difficult. Writing about Hayden without Hayden’s help (he ‘was able to squeeze in only limited interviews’) is almost impossible.

‘In fifty years’ time,’ Robert Haupt and Michelle Grattan write in 31 Days to Power. ‘historians will look at the 1983 elections, see that inflation, unemployment and interest rates were at high levels compared to the past, and conclude that Fraser could never have won’.