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The Alchemy of Leadership: Seven Australian Prime Ministers in a Turbulent Twenty-First Century
For most of the twenty-first century, Australia’s national politics has been characterised by tumult and seven prime ministers; stagnation in key policy areas; dwindling support for the established parties; insurgencies on the left and right flanks; and declining public trust in government and the democratic system itself.
The flux is occurring in the context of a global democratic winter, exemplified by the rise of strongman populists who foment and feed on public grievance. It is an era in which the power of leaders to make and unmake the world is vividly on display. Understanding those who govern us is an urgent task.
In The Alchemy of Leadership, Paul Strangio examines the formative experiences, personality traits, world views and leadership styles of prime ministers of the last quarter century. How much of the instability of the period has been due to these individual office holders? Why has political leadership been so confounding?
Strangio’s study reveals how a homegrown version of conservative populism was smuggled into mainstream politics from the beginning of the century, which had a catalytic effect on both major parties. The 2025 federal election represented a watershed in the repudiation of that kind of politics. The centre held – Australia’s mostly unremarked democratic exceptionalism emerged resilient. Yet brave and judicious leadership will be vital if the country is to continue as a safe harbour when democracy is besieged globally.
The flux is occurring in the context of a global democratic winter, exemplified by the rise of strongman populists who foment and feed on public grievance. It is an era in which the power of leaders to make and unmake the world is vividly on display. Understanding those who govern us is an urgent task.
In The Alchemy of Leadership, Paul Strangio examines the formative experiences, personality traits, world views and leadership styles of prime ministers of the last quarter century. How much of the instability of the period has been due to these individual office holders? Why has political leadership been so confounding?
Strangio’s study reveals how a homegrown version of conservative populism was smuggled into mainstream politics from the beginning of the century, which had a catalytic effect on both major parties. The 2025 federal election represented a watershed in the repudiation of that kind of politics. The centre held – Australia’s mostly unremarked democratic exceptionalism emerged resilient. Yet brave and judicious leadership will be vital if the country is to continue as a safe harbour when democracy is besieged globally.
521 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 12, 2026
About the author
Paul Strangio
18 books1 followerAssociate professor at Associate Professor, Politics & International Relations.
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June 13, 2026
Australia has had seven prime ministers in the 21st century. With the exception of our current leader, Anthony Albanese, all have been turfed from office by either their party or the people. John Howard and Albanese are the only prime ministers this century to have won consecutive elections. It has been one of the most turbulent leadership periods in Australia for half a century, the previous being the decade that followed Robert Menzies’ retirement. Moreover, with the exception of Albanese’s tenure, this all occurred prior to the disintegration of the Liberal–Labor duopoly.
A good biographical text, particularly one about political figures, ought to concurrently exhibit the social and historical context of the individuals under analysis. With encyclopedic knowledge of Australian politics, Paul Strangio—emeritus professor of politics at Monash University—does this with aplomb. Despite being only 300 pages, one learns much about Australia’s political history of the twenty-first century, as well as the key events and actors of the twentieth that continue to shape the contemporary polity.
Paul Strangio examines the underpinnings of each prime minister’s political psychology, which, in turn, markedly influenced their premierships. He asserts that the “character and dispositions of leaders are highly determinative of whether or not they prosper in office, along with heightened alertness to the critical influence that leaders have on the wellbeing of the world.” Yet, as Strangio observes: “a leader’s agency depends on the context in which they rule as well as the institutional framework in which they are situated.”
Strangio posits that prodigious parental love—or, in Malcolm Turnbull’s case, fatherly love, and in Kevin Rudd’s and Albanese’s, motherly love—was integral to fostering the self-belief that sustained future leaders. As former prime minister Paul Keating stated: “You’ve got to go through life with someone thinking you’re special. When you’ve got to get the sword out for real combat, I think having the love quotient working for you is very powerful… It’s almost like wearing an asbestos suit—you go through the fire but you’re not going to be burned because someone loves you, you are complete, you are together.”
Absent love also influenced the personalities of prime ministers, albeit in different ways. Strangio advances that Rudd’s demagoguery was, in part, a compensatory measure to cope with the “searing experience surrounding his father’s decline and death.” By contrast, growing up in a single-mother household underscored Albanese’s compassion and kindness—leadership behaviours stereotypically associated with women. Turnbull was least affected by his mother’s desertion, mostly because, from afar, she still broadcast “the most incredible expectations she harboured for him.”
The politics of the household one grew up in also indelibly shaped the politics of future prime ministers. Underprivileged, working-class parents bred the three Labor prime ministers—Rudd, Julia Gillard, and Albanese. Middle-class, conservative families bred Liberal prime ministers—Howard, Abbott, and Morrison. Turnbull sits in the middle of all this; though he experienced financial strain in childhood, his father prioritised an elite education, which likely inclined him towards the Liberals, even if he was never fully at home there.
One’s tenure as leader is also defined by the political context of the time and the circumstances under which they came to power. Howard’s ascent to the prime ministership followed decades in parliament, several stints as opposition leader, and 13 years of Labor rule, which garnered him prophetic status within the Liberals. Rudd defeated Howard after 11 years in office and was granted powers of centralised executive control by his party. Rudd was an egomaniac prone to paroxysms of anger, so Gillard usurped his leadership. Her fraught ascendance ensured a tremulous tenure.
Abbott returned the Liberals to power after six fractious years of Labor rule. The electorate’s contempt for Labor outweighed its reservations about Abbott. His abrasive conservatism and disregard for the opinions of his party room lasted two years before Turnbull deposed him. Like Gillard, Turnbull’s path to power paved the way for his exit. The conservative wing of the Liberals later tore down Turnbull to install Morrison, who then won an “unwinnable” election. Although resented, Morrison was not deposed by his party, enabling Labor’s return to government under Albanese.
Strangio does not explicitly opine on who the best leader was, but, reading between the lines, one can discern that Gillard is the most likely candidate. She was resilient, pragmatic, and earnest, and was—legislatively—one of the most productive leaders. From the start, however, Gillard had three opponents: Rudd’s vindictiveness, Abbott’s antagonism, and News Corp’s misogyny. Combined with an ineffective communication style and the perception that she was untrustworthy because of the way she came to power, these factors cancelled out, for many voters, her positive leadership traits.
Strangio unequivocally declares Morrison the worst prime minister of this century. Morrison was arrogant, inherently untrustworthy, and refused accountability. Much of this was due to his religious fanaticism, whereby he believed that only God, not his peers or the public, could judge his actions. In consequence, he rejected the findings of the Robodebt Royal Commission, had his wife publicly declare that going to Hawaii while bushfires raged was her idea, lacked urgency in responding to COVID, and demonstrated a lack of empathy and understanding of how women think and feel.
For all prime ministers, however, there is no substitute for Strangio's prose.
John Howard
“Howard’s was a conservative populism, still fundamentally conventional in respecting the political system, and of a resolutely plain-speaking, no-frills type. He embodied the ordinary who he claimed to speak for. Indeed, perhaps this was his true masterstroke and the secret to why his populist formulation was palatable to Australian tastes, because of its mild-mannered, unaffected presentation and its unthreatening traditionalism. Of course, the absence of threatening artifice was possible because Howard was being entirely authentic. This was no confection: he was expressing his deepest convictions rooted in his life experience.”
Kevin Rudd
“The difficulties of the prime minister’s relationship with party colleagues, however, went beyond remoteness. One of those most implicated in his downfall, David Feeney, observed that the leadership insurrection against Rudd of mid-2010 could only ‘be understood with an appreciation of the insufferable atmosphere of fear and intimidation that prevailed amongst [Labor] MPs and senators’. In a portent of this in late 2009 a senior member of the Canberra press gallery spoke of Rudd having ‘cowed his party, his caucus, his cabinet’. Presciently, he warned of growing internal resentment: ‘they say when he falls... it will be with the blinding speed as his own party rushes in to tear down the statue.”
Julia Gillard
“Gillard demonstrated greater administrative prowess than most of the other post-Howard prime ministers. Her leadership project was also purposeful and plucky. Yet, a major Achilles heel was her deficiency as the government’s communicator-in-chief, always a fundamental function for a prime minister but never more so than in the twenty-first century. Gillard was incapable of parlaying her record of policy achievement into electoral favour. Her political capital was low from the start because of the means by which she entered office…. But her incapacity to win over voters also stemmed from a persistent failure to convey the sum of the different parts of Labor’s program formed a cohesive whole. In the absence of a unifying message and rhetorically anodyne, she relied on her government’s activities to amount to a self-evident vision. This yet again said something about modern Labor’s philosophical barrenness.”
Tony Abbott
“If Howard had transfigured into a ‘strong leader’ by 2001, his protégé Abbott’s prime-ministerial person was a version of that in extremis — indeed, to the point of caricature. According to Graham Little’s definition, strong leaders are those who have ‘a malignly dichotomous world [view], a world of win or lose, lead or be led, control or be controlled’, and a corresponding mercilessness towards opponents. Their objective ‘is not to contribute to debate; the intention is to overcome and then marginalise contrary views out of existence’. They are leaders who stoke fears and thrive best in a crisis setting. Abbott was all of these things and more.”
Malcolm Turnbull
“Turnbull had promised much with his animating optimism, expansive world view, high intelligence and elan. The Australian public invested great hopes in him when he ascended to the role, only to be sorely let down as his promise was unrealised. He consistently failed to assert himself over the Coalition’s conservatives, with the result that he steadily bankrupted his political identity. He became a pale imitation of the dynamic progressive he professed to be. Turnbull’s prime ministership was, in the final analysis, a study in the realities of being a moderate in a Liberal Party shrivelling into an arid and bigoted conservatism. Nor could one ignore that, despite his easy charm and eloquence, he was actually a poor politician.”
Scott Morrison
“Morrison, as aberrant a prime minister as Australia has experienced, only deepened the predicament of the Liberals. A Christian fundamentalist, by his own admission, he was anomalous to the Australia of the twenty-first century. But it was worse than that. His public person and political project were mostly hollow, an act of smoke and mirrors topped off by barefaced hypocrisy and repeated mendacity. Morrison degraded politics and stained the reputation of his party.”
Anthony Albanese
“On arrival in Canberra, Albanese had the hallmarks of a party apparatchik. Though he had held an array of part-time jobs. he was fundamentally a creature of the Labor Party. For many in this category it has a stunting effect on them as politicians. They are soulless technicians rather than artists of their craft. While formally educated to a level unattainable by many of their predecessors, they generally lack the erudition of the voracious autodidacts of the past. Albanese’s many party functionaries. But a question that hovered over him on his road to, and ultimately once in, The Lodge concerned intellectual gravitas. Practical minded, instinctual and externally oriented, he did not give the impression of being a collector of ideas, nor did he display an evident facility with them. No leader is, of course, the complete package: recognising one’s limitations and harnessing other traits to compensate is perhaps the truest test.”
Alongside an assessment of leadership, Strangio’s book assesses the rise and gradual transmogrification of Howardism. Howard’s conservative populism combined political astuteness, middle-class welfare buttressed by fortuitous economic prosperity, and neoconservative foreign policy. He was a man of conviction bent on resisting the tide of secular social liberalism set forth by Whitlam when Howard first entered parliament and pursued rigorously by Keating prior to Howard winning government. As Strangio mentions: “Howard was a prime minister of rare alchemy”.
His conservative acolytes—Abbott, Morrison, Dutton—attempted to replicate Howard’s leadership. Each, however, lacked his political dexterity. Strangio is excoriating of Dutton, who was “publicly funereal; he was the antithesis of charismatic…. The reality was that Dutton’s right-wing populism was… ordinary of countenance and devoid of demagoguery. It was Howard-like, albeit a fever-dream manifestation of it.” By 2025, the Liberals held an incoherent vision for the future that relied on courting fear among the people. As Strangio states:
“With Abbott, a philosophical grounding afforded texture to his arch conservatism, besides which it was packaged within a spirited individual quirkiness. Dutton’s outlook… was unyoked from any substantive statement of philosophy, which left the impression that there was little more than an effusion of personally rooted grievance reinforced by a sizeable degree of sinister expedience. Notably, too, where Howard and Abbott principally conjured enemies without, in Dutton’s paranoid worldview they had already breached the gates.”
What has also fundamentally changed in Australia is the political context. Howard was politically fortunate to have governed until only a few months before the Global Financial Crisis, during a time of heightened fear following the 11 September terrorist attacks, and while baby boomers were the main voter base. Howard’s brand of politics was fit for the times. Subsequent Liberal leadership, with the exception of Turnbull, did not move on from the market-driven, socially conservative, and nativist political paradigm of 2004, when Howard won a fourth successive term as prime minister.
Two decades later, Strangio posits that Howardism has yet to have been “exorcised.” To win government twice, Albanese’s Labor believed they had to promise no changes to the inequitable tax policies “biased towards older, well-to-do Australians and which, conversely, handicapped younger generations”; continue adherence to boat turnbacks; and uncritical acceptance of, and since unswerving commitment to, AUKUS—all hallmarks of a “party bowing to the terms of the Howard settlement.”
The tactful populism of Howard began the Liberals’ flirtation “with the dark angels of politics,” which was followed by the clumsy populism of Abbott, the duplicitous populism of Morrison, and, finally, the caustic populism of Dutton, where the “dalliance with malign spirits became self-destructive.” This is why, according to Strangio, “Howard’s legacy for his side of politics has ultimately curdled.” However, as Australia’s politics rapidly changes, Strangio appears only partially right. His legacy may have curdled for the Liberals, but not for conservative populism.
One Nation’s rise has been so meteoric and the Liberals’ descent so rapid that Strangio only mentions Pauline Hanson in passing. Whereas parts of Howardism that Albanese adopted to get elected are gradually being overturned—negative gearing and capital gains, for instance—Albanese has not quashed the vein of conservative populism that Howard unleashed during his time in office. Howard’s refusal to condemn Hanson in the 1990s until it was politically expedient to do so arguably watered the seeds of the movement that grew into the bête noire we see today.
Hanson has risen so speedily because the politics of our time favour her style of grievance politics. Bigotry and reactionism have underscored much of her primary vote over the past decade, yet it would be unwise to posit that this is the case for the approximately 30 per cent or more primary vote she is presently polling. Australia’s intergenerational egalitarian malaise, buttressed by the Howard settlement, was gradual, then sudden. The Coalition did little to assuage this trend while in power and has demonstrated nothing short of incompetence while in opposition.
Labor, until recently, has generally acquiesced to key pillars of Howardism to win power. Hanson has offered an alternative to the entrenched status quo of the two-party system and is riding the populist wave that Howard unleashed at the turn of the century. Unlike during Abbott’s, Morrison’s, and Dutton’s tenures, the domestic and international political environments are ripe for Hanson’s brand of vengeful, conservative populism. The people are looking both to blow up the system and to blame something—socio-economic change over the last few decades, migrants, or both.
Could Hanson succeed as leader of Australia? Strangio contends: “For a leader to succeed, they must have a North Star, an element of aiming at the ‘heroic’.” The ideal leader would have “Whitlam’s exhilarating breadth of vision, erudition and ambition; Hawke’s mystical emotional rapport with the public; Keating’s epic storytelling ability, imaginative flair and stirring audacity; Howard’s shrewdness, conviction and indomitability; Rudd’s phenomenal work ethic; Gillard’s tenacity and courage under fire; Turnbull’s brio and brilliance; and Albanese’s compassion and decency.”
On many of these aspects, Hanson clearly fails. Her North Star appears to be a return to a whiter, more conservative Australia. Though ambitious, this vision is inherently backward and lacking in erudition. Beyond her base, it is hard to see Hanson building a mystical rapport like Hawke. Nor does she have the storytelling of Keating, but she does reflect his audacity. She lacks Howard’s shrewdness but embodies his conviction. Hanson does not have Rudd’s work ethic but has Gillard’s tenacity, and she is neither brilliant like Turnbull nor decent like Albanese.
Although Hanson may lack many of the ideals of a leader, some polls have indicated that One Nation’s primary vote may be the highest of any party. That said, the polls suggested similarly for Dutton until he was swept into the dustbin of history. Nonetheless, it is imperative for the country that she does not become leader, as it would institute a degradation of Australia’s polity akin to that witnessed in America under the Trump administration. Pauline Hanson proudly asserts that she would emulate Trump’s style of governance.
With such high stakes, leadership matters. Albanese is our current leader, and his government is the primary bulwark against a One Nation government. Kindness is not enough to overcome grievance politics, yet Albanese lacks the principled dynamism of past Labor giants—Whitlam, Hawke, and Keating. He may have the work ethic and tenacity of Rudd and Gillard, but the public do not generally vote on those traits. Like Howard, Albanese may be a creature of parliament, yet unlike Howard, he has veiled his convictions to get to the top.
Albanese’s technocratic government has achieved much, including improved healthcare, taxation reform, and a green energy transition. However, it has not registered with the broader public. Many consider his leadership uninspiring. It needs to change. Should Labor’s polling decline while giving One Nation a viable path to government, he must step down. One need only look at the 2024 US presidential race to see how individual hubris and party aloofness can elevate even the most wretched of candidates to a position where they can lead a liberal-democratic nation.
https://callumscolumn.substack.com/
A good biographical text, particularly one about political figures, ought to concurrently exhibit the social and historical context of the individuals under analysis. With encyclopedic knowledge of Australian politics, Paul Strangio—emeritus professor of politics at Monash University—does this with aplomb. Despite being only 300 pages, one learns much about Australia’s political history of the twenty-first century, as well as the key events and actors of the twentieth that continue to shape the contemporary polity.
Paul Strangio examines the underpinnings of each prime minister’s political psychology, which, in turn, markedly influenced their premierships. He asserts that the “character and dispositions of leaders are highly determinative of whether or not they prosper in office, along with heightened alertness to the critical influence that leaders have on the wellbeing of the world.” Yet, as Strangio observes: “a leader’s agency depends on the context in which they rule as well as the institutional framework in which they are situated.”
Strangio posits that prodigious parental love—or, in Malcolm Turnbull’s case, fatherly love, and in Kevin Rudd’s and Albanese’s, motherly love—was integral to fostering the self-belief that sustained future leaders. As former prime minister Paul Keating stated: “You’ve got to go through life with someone thinking you’re special. When you’ve got to get the sword out for real combat, I think having the love quotient working for you is very powerful… It’s almost like wearing an asbestos suit—you go through the fire but you’re not going to be burned because someone loves you, you are complete, you are together.”
Absent love also influenced the personalities of prime ministers, albeit in different ways. Strangio advances that Rudd’s demagoguery was, in part, a compensatory measure to cope with the “searing experience surrounding his father’s decline and death.” By contrast, growing up in a single-mother household underscored Albanese’s compassion and kindness—leadership behaviours stereotypically associated with women. Turnbull was least affected by his mother’s desertion, mostly because, from afar, she still broadcast “the most incredible expectations she harboured for him.”
The politics of the household one grew up in also indelibly shaped the politics of future prime ministers. Underprivileged, working-class parents bred the three Labor prime ministers—Rudd, Julia Gillard, and Albanese. Middle-class, conservative families bred Liberal prime ministers—Howard, Abbott, and Morrison. Turnbull sits in the middle of all this; though he experienced financial strain in childhood, his father prioritised an elite education, which likely inclined him towards the Liberals, even if he was never fully at home there.
One’s tenure as leader is also defined by the political context of the time and the circumstances under which they came to power. Howard’s ascent to the prime ministership followed decades in parliament, several stints as opposition leader, and 13 years of Labor rule, which garnered him prophetic status within the Liberals. Rudd defeated Howard after 11 years in office and was granted powers of centralised executive control by his party. Rudd was an egomaniac prone to paroxysms of anger, so Gillard usurped his leadership. Her fraught ascendance ensured a tremulous tenure.
Abbott returned the Liberals to power after six fractious years of Labor rule. The electorate’s contempt for Labor outweighed its reservations about Abbott. His abrasive conservatism and disregard for the opinions of his party room lasted two years before Turnbull deposed him. Like Gillard, Turnbull’s path to power paved the way for his exit. The conservative wing of the Liberals later tore down Turnbull to install Morrison, who then won an “unwinnable” election. Although resented, Morrison was not deposed by his party, enabling Labor’s return to government under Albanese.
Strangio does not explicitly opine on who the best leader was, but, reading between the lines, one can discern that Gillard is the most likely candidate. She was resilient, pragmatic, and earnest, and was—legislatively—one of the most productive leaders. From the start, however, Gillard had three opponents: Rudd’s vindictiveness, Abbott’s antagonism, and News Corp’s misogyny. Combined with an ineffective communication style and the perception that she was untrustworthy because of the way she came to power, these factors cancelled out, for many voters, her positive leadership traits.
Strangio unequivocally declares Morrison the worst prime minister of this century. Morrison was arrogant, inherently untrustworthy, and refused accountability. Much of this was due to his religious fanaticism, whereby he believed that only God, not his peers or the public, could judge his actions. In consequence, he rejected the findings of the Robodebt Royal Commission, had his wife publicly declare that going to Hawaii while bushfires raged was her idea, lacked urgency in responding to COVID, and demonstrated a lack of empathy and understanding of how women think and feel.
For all prime ministers, however, there is no substitute for Strangio's prose.
John Howard
“Howard’s was a conservative populism, still fundamentally conventional in respecting the political system, and of a resolutely plain-speaking, no-frills type. He embodied the ordinary who he claimed to speak for. Indeed, perhaps this was his true masterstroke and the secret to why his populist formulation was palatable to Australian tastes, because of its mild-mannered, unaffected presentation and its unthreatening traditionalism. Of course, the absence of threatening artifice was possible because Howard was being entirely authentic. This was no confection: he was expressing his deepest convictions rooted in his life experience.”
Kevin Rudd
“The difficulties of the prime minister’s relationship with party colleagues, however, went beyond remoteness. One of those most implicated in his downfall, David Feeney, observed that the leadership insurrection against Rudd of mid-2010 could only ‘be understood with an appreciation of the insufferable atmosphere of fear and intimidation that prevailed amongst [Labor] MPs and senators’. In a portent of this in late 2009 a senior member of the Canberra press gallery spoke of Rudd having ‘cowed his party, his caucus, his cabinet’. Presciently, he warned of growing internal resentment: ‘they say when he falls... it will be with the blinding speed as his own party rushes in to tear down the statue.”
Julia Gillard
“Gillard demonstrated greater administrative prowess than most of the other post-Howard prime ministers. Her leadership project was also purposeful and plucky. Yet, a major Achilles heel was her deficiency as the government’s communicator-in-chief, always a fundamental function for a prime minister but never more so than in the twenty-first century. Gillard was incapable of parlaying her record of policy achievement into electoral favour. Her political capital was low from the start because of the means by which she entered office…. But her incapacity to win over voters also stemmed from a persistent failure to convey the sum of the different parts of Labor’s program formed a cohesive whole. In the absence of a unifying message and rhetorically anodyne, she relied on her government’s activities to amount to a self-evident vision. This yet again said something about modern Labor’s philosophical barrenness.”
Tony Abbott
“If Howard had transfigured into a ‘strong leader’ by 2001, his protégé Abbott’s prime-ministerial person was a version of that in extremis — indeed, to the point of caricature. According to Graham Little’s definition, strong leaders are those who have ‘a malignly dichotomous world [view], a world of win or lose, lead or be led, control or be controlled’, and a corresponding mercilessness towards opponents. Their objective ‘is not to contribute to debate; the intention is to overcome and then marginalise contrary views out of existence’. They are leaders who stoke fears and thrive best in a crisis setting. Abbott was all of these things and more.”
Malcolm Turnbull
“Turnbull had promised much with his animating optimism, expansive world view, high intelligence and elan. The Australian public invested great hopes in him when he ascended to the role, only to be sorely let down as his promise was unrealised. He consistently failed to assert himself over the Coalition’s conservatives, with the result that he steadily bankrupted his political identity. He became a pale imitation of the dynamic progressive he professed to be. Turnbull’s prime ministership was, in the final analysis, a study in the realities of being a moderate in a Liberal Party shrivelling into an arid and bigoted conservatism. Nor could one ignore that, despite his easy charm and eloquence, he was actually a poor politician.”
Scott Morrison
“Morrison, as aberrant a prime minister as Australia has experienced, only deepened the predicament of the Liberals. A Christian fundamentalist, by his own admission, he was anomalous to the Australia of the twenty-first century. But it was worse than that. His public person and political project were mostly hollow, an act of smoke and mirrors topped off by barefaced hypocrisy and repeated mendacity. Morrison degraded politics and stained the reputation of his party.”
Anthony Albanese
“On arrival in Canberra, Albanese had the hallmarks of a party apparatchik. Though he had held an array of part-time jobs. he was fundamentally a creature of the Labor Party. For many in this category it has a stunting effect on them as politicians. They are soulless technicians rather than artists of their craft. While formally educated to a level unattainable by many of their predecessors, they generally lack the erudition of the voracious autodidacts of the past. Albanese’s many party functionaries. But a question that hovered over him on his road to, and ultimately once in, The Lodge concerned intellectual gravitas. Practical minded, instinctual and externally oriented, he did not give the impression of being a collector of ideas, nor did he display an evident facility with them. No leader is, of course, the complete package: recognising one’s limitations and harnessing other traits to compensate is perhaps the truest test.”
Alongside an assessment of leadership, Strangio’s book assesses the rise and gradual transmogrification of Howardism. Howard’s conservative populism combined political astuteness, middle-class welfare buttressed by fortuitous economic prosperity, and neoconservative foreign policy. He was a man of conviction bent on resisting the tide of secular social liberalism set forth by Whitlam when Howard first entered parliament and pursued rigorously by Keating prior to Howard winning government. As Strangio mentions: “Howard was a prime minister of rare alchemy”.
His conservative acolytes—Abbott, Morrison, Dutton—attempted to replicate Howard’s leadership. Each, however, lacked his political dexterity. Strangio is excoriating of Dutton, who was “publicly funereal; he was the antithesis of charismatic…. The reality was that Dutton’s right-wing populism was… ordinary of countenance and devoid of demagoguery. It was Howard-like, albeit a fever-dream manifestation of it.” By 2025, the Liberals held an incoherent vision for the future that relied on courting fear among the people. As Strangio states:
“With Abbott, a philosophical grounding afforded texture to his arch conservatism, besides which it was packaged within a spirited individual quirkiness. Dutton’s outlook… was unyoked from any substantive statement of philosophy, which left the impression that there was little more than an effusion of personally rooted grievance reinforced by a sizeable degree of sinister expedience. Notably, too, where Howard and Abbott principally conjured enemies without, in Dutton’s paranoid worldview they had already breached the gates.”
What has also fundamentally changed in Australia is the political context. Howard was politically fortunate to have governed until only a few months before the Global Financial Crisis, during a time of heightened fear following the 11 September terrorist attacks, and while baby boomers were the main voter base. Howard’s brand of politics was fit for the times. Subsequent Liberal leadership, with the exception of Turnbull, did not move on from the market-driven, socially conservative, and nativist political paradigm of 2004, when Howard won a fourth successive term as prime minister.
Two decades later, Strangio posits that Howardism has yet to have been “exorcised.” To win government twice, Albanese’s Labor believed they had to promise no changes to the inequitable tax policies “biased towards older, well-to-do Australians and which, conversely, handicapped younger generations”; continue adherence to boat turnbacks; and uncritical acceptance of, and since unswerving commitment to, AUKUS—all hallmarks of a “party bowing to the terms of the Howard settlement.”
The tactful populism of Howard began the Liberals’ flirtation “with the dark angels of politics,” which was followed by the clumsy populism of Abbott, the duplicitous populism of Morrison, and, finally, the caustic populism of Dutton, where the “dalliance with malign spirits became self-destructive.” This is why, according to Strangio, “Howard’s legacy for his side of politics has ultimately curdled.” However, as Australia’s politics rapidly changes, Strangio appears only partially right. His legacy may have curdled for the Liberals, but not for conservative populism.
One Nation’s rise has been so meteoric and the Liberals’ descent so rapid that Strangio only mentions Pauline Hanson in passing. Whereas parts of Howardism that Albanese adopted to get elected are gradually being overturned—negative gearing and capital gains, for instance—Albanese has not quashed the vein of conservative populism that Howard unleashed during his time in office. Howard’s refusal to condemn Hanson in the 1990s until it was politically expedient to do so arguably watered the seeds of the movement that grew into the bête noire we see today.
Hanson has risen so speedily because the politics of our time favour her style of grievance politics. Bigotry and reactionism have underscored much of her primary vote over the past decade, yet it would be unwise to posit that this is the case for the approximately 30 per cent or more primary vote she is presently polling. Australia’s intergenerational egalitarian malaise, buttressed by the Howard settlement, was gradual, then sudden. The Coalition did little to assuage this trend while in power and has demonstrated nothing short of incompetence while in opposition.
Labor, until recently, has generally acquiesced to key pillars of Howardism to win power. Hanson has offered an alternative to the entrenched status quo of the two-party system and is riding the populist wave that Howard unleashed at the turn of the century. Unlike during Abbott’s, Morrison’s, and Dutton’s tenures, the domestic and international political environments are ripe for Hanson’s brand of vengeful, conservative populism. The people are looking both to blow up the system and to blame something—socio-economic change over the last few decades, migrants, or both.
Could Hanson succeed as leader of Australia? Strangio contends: “For a leader to succeed, they must have a North Star, an element of aiming at the ‘heroic’.” The ideal leader would have “Whitlam’s exhilarating breadth of vision, erudition and ambition; Hawke’s mystical emotional rapport with the public; Keating’s epic storytelling ability, imaginative flair and stirring audacity; Howard’s shrewdness, conviction and indomitability; Rudd’s phenomenal work ethic; Gillard’s tenacity and courage under fire; Turnbull’s brio and brilliance; and Albanese’s compassion and decency.”
On many of these aspects, Hanson clearly fails. Her North Star appears to be a return to a whiter, more conservative Australia. Though ambitious, this vision is inherently backward and lacking in erudition. Beyond her base, it is hard to see Hanson building a mystical rapport like Hawke. Nor does she have the storytelling of Keating, but she does reflect his audacity. She lacks Howard’s shrewdness but embodies his conviction. Hanson does not have Rudd’s work ethic but has Gillard’s tenacity, and she is neither brilliant like Turnbull nor decent like Albanese.
Although Hanson may lack many of the ideals of a leader, some polls have indicated that One Nation’s primary vote may be the highest of any party. That said, the polls suggested similarly for Dutton until he was swept into the dustbin of history. Nonetheless, it is imperative for the country that she does not become leader, as it would institute a degradation of Australia’s polity akin to that witnessed in America under the Trump administration. Pauline Hanson proudly asserts that she would emulate Trump’s style of governance.
With such high stakes, leadership matters. Albanese is our current leader, and his government is the primary bulwark against a One Nation government. Kindness is not enough to overcome grievance politics, yet Albanese lacks the principled dynamism of past Labor giants—Whitlam, Hawke, and Keating. He may have the work ethic and tenacity of Rudd and Gillard, but the public do not generally vote on those traits. Like Howard, Albanese may be a creature of parliament, yet unlike Howard, he has veiled his convictions to get to the top.
Albanese’s technocratic government has achieved much, including improved healthcare, taxation reform, and a green energy transition. However, it has not registered with the broader public. Many consider his leadership uninspiring. It needs to change. Should Labor’s polling decline while giving One Nation a viable path to government, he must step down. One need only look at the 2024 US presidential race to see how individual hubris and party aloofness can elevate even the most wretched of candidates to a position where they can lead a liberal-democratic nation.
https://callumscolumn.substack.com/
September 9, 2026
I really enjoyed this book. Great run down of the last seven prime ministers of Australia. I’m spending the next couple of months focussed on non fiction political books so this was one of the better ones.
September 10, 2026
Finish date: 09.09.2026
Genre: non-fiction
Rating: A++++++
#AusReadingMonth 2026
##Australian Political Book of the Year 2026
Good News: Always in good hands reading a book by an historian!
Paul Strangio is emeritus professor of politics in the School of Social Sciences at
Monash University and specialises in political leadership and political parties
I read the introduction and worried if this
…erudite professor with an intense vocabulary would …be fun.
Keep reading! The rest of the book is so engaging…
…even history can be enjoyable if you have the right teacher.
Bravo, Paul!
Good News: I’m reading the long list #Australian Political Book of the year in a specific order.
I’ver never done that before
…I ususlly grabbed the book that looked interesting!
The Human Drama & Cultural Fault Lines
The Media Machinery & Public Rage
The Inside Political Theater
Leadership, History & The Big Picture
After reading all about John Howard in Amy Remiekis’s book
…now Paul Strangio is expaining Howard’s personality and how
…it influenced his conservative worldview
….and eventually Australian society!
The books on the list compliment each other.
First positive thing I noticed this year…there really NO books about
…the military scandals, war crimes or defense policies.
These are not the books I really like.
I was so disturbed by the long listed book
… Crossing the Line by N. McKenzie in 2023
...just awful.
Good News: This was a quick scan of the Australian prime ministers of the 21st C:
John Howard, Kevin Ruud, Julia Gaillard, Tony Abbott
…Malcolm Turnbell, Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese.
Just on a personal preference level….
No brainer, Julia Gillard was my favorite Australian Prime Minister!
Despite having to explain more than an average prime minister
…gender, atheism, single, no children
…she just kept doing stuff.
“Getting on with it” speaks to her female pragmatism.
No brainer: Scott Morrison was my least favorite Australian Prime Minister.
…with his right-wing populist technique inspired by the methods of Trump!
The rest of the PM’s….can I be honest?
They were all flawed…even Julia.
A prime minister must learn to adapt (w/ world issues, pandemic) and
…learn to be a good communicator
…moving from what used to be “broadcasting” news and opinions …
...”narrowcasting” where social media platforms are very
…influential in opinion formation.
Personal: I was VERY impressed by Paul Santigo’s book.
His analysis (…very good last chapter)
…and writing style makes it read like a “novel”!
This book is #WorthYourReadingTime!
I think it is even BETTER than
…Niki Savva’s back-room exposé of Australian politics.
The Alchemy of Leadership should be SHORT LISTED!
Genre: non-fiction
Rating: A++++++
#AusReadingMonth 2026
##Australian Political Book of the Year 2026
Good News: Always in good hands reading a book by an historian!
Paul Strangio is emeritus professor of politics in the School of Social Sciences at
Monash University and specialises in political leadership and political parties
I read the introduction and worried if this
…erudite professor with an intense vocabulary would …be fun.
Keep reading! The rest of the book is so engaging…
…even history can be enjoyable if you have the right teacher.
Bravo, Paul!
Good News: I’m reading the long list #Australian Political Book of the year in a specific order.
I’ver never done that before
…I ususlly grabbed the book that looked interesting!
The Human Drama & Cultural Fault Lines
The Media Machinery & Public Rage
The Inside Political Theater
Leadership, History & The Big Picture
After reading all about John Howard in Amy Remiekis’s book
…now Paul Strangio is expaining Howard’s personality and how
…it influenced his conservative worldview
….and eventually Australian society!
The books on the list compliment each other.
First positive thing I noticed this year…there really NO books about
…the military scandals, war crimes or defense policies.
These are not the books I really like.
I was so disturbed by the long listed book
… Crossing the Line by N. McKenzie in 2023
...just awful.
Good News: This was a quick scan of the Australian prime ministers of the 21st C:
John Howard, Kevin Ruud, Julia Gaillard, Tony Abbott
…Malcolm Turnbell, Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese.
Just on a personal preference level….
No brainer, Julia Gillard was my favorite Australian Prime Minister!
Despite having to explain more than an average prime minister
…gender, atheism, single, no children
…she just kept doing stuff.
“Getting on with it” speaks to her female pragmatism.
No brainer: Scott Morrison was my least favorite Australian Prime Minister.
…with his right-wing populist technique inspired by the methods of Trump!
The rest of the PM’s….can I be honest?
They were all flawed…even Julia.
A prime minister must learn to adapt (w/ world issues, pandemic) and
…learn to be a good communicator
…moving from what used to be “broadcasting” news and opinions …
...”narrowcasting” where social media platforms are very
…influential in opinion formation.
Personal: I was VERY impressed by Paul Santigo’s book.
His analysis (…very good last chapter)
…and writing style makes it read like a “novel”!
This book is #WorthYourReadingTime!
I think it is even BETTER than
…Niki Savva’s back-room exposé of Australian politics.
The Alchemy of Leadership should be SHORT LISTED!
August 23, 2026
A thoroughly well-written and researched examination of the leadership style of all the Australian Prime Ministers since the year 2000. A retrospective analysis of the countries most unsettled political period. An enlightening and enjoyable read for anyone interested in where Australia has been and the prospects for our future.
August 22, 2026
What made this book particularly interesting was the recency of its subjects. Having lived through all the prime ministers analysed by the author, I understood more about the backgrounds to the decisions they made.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews