The Light on the Hill:
An Updated History of the Australian Labor Party
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The Light on the Hill:
An Updated History of the Australian Labor Party
Overview
A revised and updated edition of award-winning historian Ross McMullin’s acclaimed history of the Australian Labor Party — an entertaining, action-packed, warts-and-all narrative full of illuminating pen-portraits and vivid anecdotes.
The story is told through the people who made it. All Labor’s prime ministers feature — Watson, Fisher, Hughes, Scullin, Curtin, Chifley, Whitlam, Hawke, Keating, Rudd, Gillard, and Albanese. The sweeping storytelling blends their governments’ achievements and tribulations with those of ALP state branches, conflicts over organisation and policy, emotional highs and lows, and intrigue and intimidation behind the scenes.
Labor’s most spectacular controversies are also examined — three devastating ruptures, the Whitlam government’s dismissal, and the fierce Hawke–Keating and Rudd–Gillard–Rudd leadership contests.
The Light on the Hill also illuminates the notable families, the lost talents, and the ups and downs for Labor’s true believers since 1891. It covers Doc Evatt and Don Dunstan, Susan Ryan and Carmen Lawrence, ‘Windy Mick’ and ‘Happy Jack’, ‘Red Ted’ and ‘Stabber Jack’, ‘Electric Eric’ and the ‘Killer of Santa Claus’ — they’re all here. So are Labor’s triumphs, notably the 2025 Albanese electoral landslide.
Prodigiously researched, captivating, and powerful, The Light on the Hill is the most authoritative and monumental account of Labor’s rich history.
Details
- Format
- Size
- Extent
- ISBN
- RRP
- Pub date
- Rights held
- Paperback
- 234mm x 153mm
- 800 pages with 3 x 16 page mono picture sections
- 9781761381904
- AUD$55.00
- 30 June 2026
- World
Praise
‘The Light on the Hill returns us to a world made in what Eric Hobsbawm called the “Age of Extremes”, but this new edition provides an overview of what happened once the Cold War was over — and a new age of extremes dawned … A new generation of readers will be able to add this book to their collection and enjoy McMullin’s undoubted gifts as an award-winning historian and prose writer. The Light on the Hill remains a standard setter for deeply researched, accessible political history.’
‘Described as a definitive history, The Light on the Hill was first published 35 years ago, but has been updated to include the 1991-2025 period missing from the first volume … A feast for the true believers.’
About the Author
Ross McMullin is an award-winning historian, biographer, and storyteller. His books include two multi-biographies: Farewell, Dear People: biographies of Australia’s lost generation, which won national awards, including the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History, and its sequel, Life So Full of Promise, which won The Age Book of the Year Award. His biographies include Pompey Elliott, which also won multiple awards, and Will Dyson: Australia’s radical genius. He assembled Elliott’s extraordinary letters in Pompey Elliott at War: in his own words, and his political histories comprise The Light on the Hill and So Monstrous a Travesty: Chris Watson and the world’s first national labour government.
