Winner of the 2020 National Biography Award and the 2020 NSW Premier's
Non-Fiction Award.
The oddly compelling story of a man regarded as Australia's worst
prime minister.
William McMahon was a significant, if widely derided and disliked,
figure in Australian politics in the second half of the twentieth
century. This biography tells the story of his life, his career, and his
doomed attempts to recast views of his much-maligned time as Australia's
prime minister.
After a long ministerial career under Menzies, McMahon became treasurer
under Harold Holt, and fought a fierce, bitter war over protectionism
with John McEwen. Following Holt's death in 1967, McEwen had his revenge
by vetoing McMahon's candidature for the Liberal Party's leadership, and
thus paved the way for John Gorton to become prime minister. But almost
three years later, amid acrimony and division, McMahon would topple
Gorton and fulfill his life's ambition to become Australia's prime
minister.
In office, McMahon worked furiously to enact an agenda that grappled
with the profound changes reshaping Australia. He withdrew combat forces
from Vietnam, legislated for Commonwealth government involvement in
childcare, established the National Urban and Regional Development
Authority and the first Department of the Environment, began phasing out
the means test on pensions, sought to control foreign investments, and
accelerated the timetable for the independence of Papua New Guinea. But
his failures would overshadow his successes, and by the time of the 1972
election McMahon would lead a divided, tired, and rancorous party to
defeat.
A man whose life was coloured by tragedy, comedy, persistence, courage,
farce, and failure, McMahon's story has never been told at length.
Tiberius with a Telephone fills that gap, using deep archival research
and extensive interviews with McMahon's contemporaries and colleagues.
It is a tour de force -- an authoritative and colourful account of a
unique politician and a vital period in Australia's history.
