Don Dunstan by Angel Woollacott

I regularly listen to the Radio National program Late Night Live and heard Phillip Adams interviewing researcher and academic Angela Woollacott about her new book Don Dunstan, the visionary politician who changed Australia on 27th August 2019.

I immediately decided I wanted to read the book and put it on my birthday list. It was duly bought by my wife and I put it in the pile. Now, in May 2020, I have finally finished the read. It was definitely not a hard read, but I just had lots of other books to read first. I finally put my mind to it earlier this month and knocked it off pretty quickly.

Here is what Woollacott had to say about her book

My biography of Don Dunstan, the transformative Premier of South Australia in the 1960s-70s who was a major political figure nationally and internationally, was published by Allen and Unwin on 19 August 2019. It is the first comprehensive, scholarly biography of Dunstan, and has been widely and positively reviewed in the Australian media. My research and writing were supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery grant, which I gratefully acknowledge.

I was a big Dunstan fan. He was one of the most significant political figures of 20th century Australia. As Premier of South Australia, he blazed a trail of reform. But his influence reached far beyond his home state. He was seen as the architect of a new kind of Australian society, and his decade in office marked a golden age.

Linda Jaivin in her book review writes

Only after reading Don Dunstan, Angela Woollacott’s biography of the visionary South Australian premier, did I realise how much he had done to shape the Australia I fell in love with. When Dunstan died in 1999, Gough Whitlam himself said, “No one has done more to transform his own community and society and, by his example, the whole of Australia.”

I found the book a wonderful read. While Dunstan might have had his flaws (we all do), his prolific output as a reformer was pretty much unparalled, except perhaps for the short reign of Gough Whitlam nationally. Cook, academic, reforming politician, arts visionary, gay rights activist, the list goes on and on. Sadly, he was taken at a relatively young age after a long battle with cancer.

He is from that golden age of Labor politicians - Dunstan, Whitlam, Hawke and Keating. Will we ever see their likes again.

I have biographies of Paul Keating, Bob Hawke, Kevin Rudd, Anthony Albanese, John Curtin and Ben Chifley, all Labor Prime Ministers. By any measure, Dunstan can stand tall against them.