Performance Politics

Australian Politicians and Their Storytelling
Performance Politics is a compelling expose of how Australian political life has become so personalised, emotional and autobiographical.
How has Australian political life become so personalised, emotional and autobiographical?

In Performance Politics historian and speechwriter Josh Black provides an eye-opening account of how Australian politicians have become experts at fashioning and refashioning stories about themselves, their lives, personal ambitions and political entanglements. Delving into memoirs, autobiographies, documentaries, media coverage, personal papers and original interviews, the book reveals how much of our recent political history has been delivered through the prism of the publishing house, the book launch, the documentary, and the loungerooms where political retrospectives were broadcast. From a time when telling tales out of school (as Billy Hughes once put it)