The Hawke-Keating Hijack: The ALP in Transition

by Dean Jaensch

What happened?

Six years after Bob Hawke's victory, what is the ALP? Since 1983 almost every component of the ethos, structure and practice of the Labor Party has been questioned, changed, ignored or abandoned. The changes include new policies, new sources of support, a transformation of doctrine and significant alterations to the way the party decides on policy.

Journalists, the Opposition and rank-and-file party members have had much to say about the fate of Australia's oldest party but few can give the voter a full picture of what has happened, why it happened and where it's leading.

The Hawke-Keating Hijack goes beyond the rhetoric to reveal the forces behind the remaking of Labor politics.

Genres: Politics

189 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1989

About the author

Dean Jaensch was an Australian political scientist and commentator. He studied at the University of Adelaide and went on to lecture in politics and international studies at Flinders University from the early 1970s to 2001, when he retired.

Reviews

[Ulrike]

insanely misleading title given that this was published in 1989 and not after what most would consider The hawke-keating hijack in 1991 but this was a very interesting history of ideological, factional, and voter shifts in the ALP. well interesting if you’re me. the machine...

[Victor Bevz]

Well-researched and highly informative. A history of the push and pull between electoral pragmatism and ever-changing conceptions of the ALP's identity. It culminates in the Hawke Labor government, the unprecedented success of which has been aided by a dominant internal Right and disorganisation among its opponents. The long evolution of the party acts as a broad guide to state and federal factions as they stood in the late 1980s.