Before the 1990s the decades in Australia used to run to a predictable scriptof bust boom and bust. Theyd commence with the economy in the pits assumethe person... » 

Before the 1990s the decades in Australia used to run to a predictable scriptof bust boom and bust. Theyd commence with the economy in the pits assumethe personality of the good times that followed and conclude with anothercollapse. Conveniently this cycle took about ten years to play out. PaulKeating and John Howard altered the nations bodyclock. Between them theyhave dominated the past 30 years of power as both treasurers and primeministers. Typically they are seen only as antagonists with competing visionsof Australia and its place in the world. In The Longest Decade GeorgeMegalogenis argues that they also deserve to be seen as the twin architects ofthe political economic and social revolution that took Australia through aperiod of trauma and recovery and then on to an era of unprecedentedaffluence. Based on exclusive interviews with both Keating and Howard and onMegalogeniss many years experience as a member of the Canberra press galleryThe Longest Decade is a brilliant nonpartisan analysis of the forces thatshape Australia today from the rise of working women to the triumph of theMcMansion.This is the story of how an era came to be defined by Keating andHoward but it is also the bigger story of how Australia became a more complexsociety and how the nations evolution in turn forced its leaders to adapt.It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand Australia in the21st century. This fully revised and updated edition of the most influentialpolitical book of recent years includes two new chapters on the decline andfall of the Howard government. «