From Whitlam To Fraser: Reform And Reaction In Australian Politics
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Acceptable
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: Ex-library with usual markings
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Few periods in Australian political history have been as turbulent, defining, or fiercely contested as the years spanning the Whitlam Labor government and the conservative Fraser coalition that followed — and From Whitlam to Fraser: Reform and Reaction in Australian Politics chronicles this seismic era with precision and authority. Allan Patience and Brian Head present a rigorous political analysis of how Gough Whitlam's ambitious reformist agenda — encompassing healthcare, education, foreign policy, and social welfare — collided with entrenched conservative forces, culminating in the constitutional crisis of 1975 and the dismissal of a sitting prime minister by the Governor-General, an event that continues to reverberate through the Australian political consciousness. The work situates these dramatic events within the broader landscape of Australian democratic theory and governance, arguing that the Whitlam-Fraser transition was not merely a change of government but a fundamental contest over the direction of the Australian state. Patience and Head bring an academic rigour tempered by genuine narrative momentum, drawing on political science, historical analysis, and policy critique to illuminate the ideological fault lines of the era. For anyone seeking to understand how reform and reaction shape a nation's political identity, this volume poses a question that remains urgently relevant: when institutional power clashes with democratic mandate, which one truly governs?
Author: Patience & Head
Format: Paperback
Published: 1979, Oxford University Press
Genre: Australian history
Condition remarks:
Book: Acceptable
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: Ex-library with usual markings
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Few periods in Australian political history have been as turbulent, defining, or fiercely contested as the years spanning the Whitlam Labor government and the conservative Fraser coalition that followed — and From Whitlam to Fraser: Reform and Reaction in Australian Politics chronicles this seismic era with precision and authority. Allan Patience and Brian Head present a rigorous political analysis of how Gough Whitlam's ambitious reformist agenda — encompassing healthcare, education, foreign policy, and social welfare — collided with entrenched conservative forces, culminating in the constitutional crisis of 1975 and the dismissal of a sitting prime minister by the Governor-General, an event that continues to reverberate through the Australian political consciousness. The work situates these dramatic events within the broader landscape of Australian democratic theory and governance, arguing that the Whitlam-Fraser transition was not merely a change of government but a fundamental contest over the direction of the Australian state. Patience and Head bring an academic rigour tempered by genuine narrative momentum, drawing on political science, historical analysis, and policy critique to illuminate the ideological fault lines of the era. For anyone seeking to understand how reform and reaction shape a nation's political identity, this volume poses a question that remains urgently relevant: when institutional power clashes with democratic mandate, which one truly governs?