A strong work, although it is crippled and boosted in equal measure by its proximity to the events described herein.

Paul Kelly has been one of Australia's most respected political journalists for half a century, and The Hawke Ascendancy was published in 1984, only a year after Bob Hawke become Prime Minister. In that sense, this is a fascinating insider's account, written at a time when Labor was still in flux, and no commentator could have accurately predicted the 14 glorious years that would follow. Kelly knew his stuff well, though, and this account, which reaches from the Whitlam dismissal in 1975 to Hawke's rising in 1983 is perceptive, engrossing, and whip-smart. Having known so many of the players, and followed the day-by-day developments, Kelly can climb inside disagreements and schemes that would surely otherwise be forgotten. Ultimately it is a battle of two men, Bill Hayden and Bob Hawke, for leadership of the party, while others - notably Paul Keating, of course - weave in and out of the narrative. One of the unexpected consequences of reading this book 35 years later, for a member of my generation, is to be startled by how prominent Keating and Howard were more than a decade before they would take leadership. In this day where prime ministers and party leaders are dismissed at the drop of a hat, that takes some mental adjustment!

In contrast, however, the age of the book is also a disadvantage. Partly because, written, so soon after the events it describes, The Hawke Ascendancy inevitably focuses on some areas and issues that are no longer of interest except to the historian. Anyone trying to tell a history will inevitably expand upon some moments that future generations find irrelevant, while glossing over moments that will come to be infamous. Consider - rather less importantly, I know - commentaries on television and film DVDs. Often they're recorded immediately after production, meaning there's a lot of "you were so great in this scene!" and "it was raining that day, remember?" When you look at commentaries recorded years or even decades later, however, the participants have a sense of the work's place in history, and its appeal to fandom. As a result they are more likely to dwell in the spaces of long-term interest. All of which is to say that this book was urgent and white-hot in 1984; it is now an historical document in itself.

Still, there's a definite spark here from the friction between two situations: a book that is so close to its situation that we feel as if we are back in 1984, learning new things on every page, and a book that has no idea of what lies ahead for Hawke, Keating, and Howard, where we are effectively ahead of the writer on every page too. A mind-boggling reading experience in that sense. ( )