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The Eighties: The Decade that Transformed Australia
It was the era of Hawke and Keating, Kylie and INXS, the America’s Cup and the Bicentenary.
It was perhaps the most controversial decade in Australian history, with high-flying entrepreneurs booming and busting, torrid debates over land rights and immigration, the advent of AIDS, a harsh recession and the rise of the New Right.
It was a time when Australians fought for social change – on union picket lines, at rallies for women’s rights and against nuclear weapons, and as part of a new environmental movement.
And then there were the events that left many scratching their heads: Joh for Canberra . . . the Australia Card . . . Cliff Young.
In The Eighties, Frank Bongiorno brings all this and more to life. He uncovers forgotten stories – of factory workers proud of their skills who found themselves surplus to requirements; of Vietnamese families battling to make new lives for themselves in the suburbs. He sheds new light on ‘both the ordinary and extraordinary things that happened to Australia and Australians during this liveliest of decades’.
The Eighties is contemporary history at its best.
‘Frank Bongiorno has successfully negotiated the minefield of Australia’s political egos to write the definitive account of an inspired, infuriating decade.’ – George Megalogenis
Frank Bongiorno is associate professor of history at the Australian National University and author of the award-winning The Sex Lives of Australians. He has written for the Monthly, the Australian and Inside Story.
It was perhaps the most controversial decade in Australian history, with high-flying entrepreneurs booming and busting, torrid debates over land rights and immigration, the advent of AIDS, a harsh recession and the rise of the New Right.
It was a time when Australians fought for social change – on union picket lines, at rallies for women’s rights and against nuclear weapons, and as part of a new environmental movement.
And then there were the events that left many scratching their heads: Joh for Canberra . . . the Australia Card . . . Cliff Young.
In The Eighties, Frank Bongiorno brings all this and more to life. He uncovers forgotten stories – of factory workers proud of their skills who found themselves surplus to requirements; of Vietnamese families battling to make new lives for themselves in the suburbs. He sheds new light on ‘both the ordinary and extraordinary things that happened to Australia and Australians during this liveliest of decades’.
The Eighties is contemporary history at its best.
‘Frank Bongiorno has successfully negotiated the minefield of Australia’s political egos to write the definitive account of an inspired, infuriating decade.’ – George Megalogenis
Frank Bongiorno is associate professor of history at the Australian National University and author of the award-winning The Sex Lives of Australians. He has written for the Monthly, the Australian and Inside Story.
384 pages, Paperback
First published October 21, 2015
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About the author
Frank Bongiorno
17 books9 followersFrank Bongiorno is a professor of history and former head of the School of History at the Australian National University. His most recent book is Dreamers and Schemers: A Political History of Australia.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
February 20, 2016
As other reviewers have suggested, this one falls into the easily mocked gap between journalism and historiography. In short: it's entertaining (though that might rely on the fact that I'm old enough to remember some of the decade under discussion), broad (politics, economics, culture, and environment all get a look in), and the parts don't add up to much. This is obviously intentional; Bongiorno avoids telling any kind of over-arching story, but he writes small scale stories so well that I'm sure he could have done so. Instead, he structures the book thematically, which allows for some nice juxtapositions (the America's Cup and the floating of the currency)--but doesn't allow for any sense that time was passing. The '80s end up looking rather static. He also avoids too much discussion of how he sees the decade compared to other historians, but when he does mention their disagreements, he's clear and concise. Perhaps he can public a long essay interpreting the decade; for now, he's done a very nice job of describing it.
November 3, 2015
This book was very disappointing Even more so because the introduction, and later the conclusion, promises a comprehensive analysis of an intriguing decade. However, for the educated reader much of the information has been covered before in Kelly's the Hawke Ascendency and the End of Certainty, or the Australian Moment by George Megalogenis in a more detailed fashion. Some of the cultural writing is interesting, but there's not enough of it to sustain an enjoyable read.
March 3, 2020
Bongiorno and I are contemporaries, with some quite similar experiences. But I left Australia at the start of the Nineties. I enjoyed and learned a lot from his recounting and interpretation of years that were so formative for us and, as he says, transformative of the country.
September 13, 2019
Modern Australia emerged in the 1980s, though as Frank Bongiorno shows in this wonderful history, it was a period as confused about where it was going and what it stood for as our own day seems to us.
As the afterword makes clear, one of the motives for this book is helping bring context to the regular refrain that the 1980s under the Hawke-Keating period saw the gold standard of political leadership and most things would be fixed if we just went back to that ethos. There are reasons to admire this era, but the gloss it has applied is far more of a recent invention than as was understood by either the actors or the audience in this era.
Importantly, Bongiorno widely expands the scope of actors. Hawke and Keating get their attention of course, but so do hundreds of ordinary Australians as the book ranges across the rise of new social issues, economics, culture, drugs and sport. Bongiorno has an eye for the illustrative quote from an anonymous aussie in a focus group or media spot.
The title declares this the decade that 'transformed Australia', but there's rightfully a hesitancy in this book about just how significant the period was or what it's defining lessons were. Many of the changes that occurred had been put in place in earlier eras, or were scrambles to respond that only look far-sighted and coherent now. There were also plenty of wrong turns - the history of the corporate tycoons of Bond, Homes a Court, and Skase and co is illuminating - and old legacies of yobboism, racism, paranoia and corruption which seeped through and left their mark.
This book is almost entirely focused on the domestic level, which is partly a shame, as I think some of the biggest changes occurred in the defence and foreign policy sphere. The move towards engagement with Asia - again begun in earlier decades - was vital to modern Australia and the revolutionary Defence of Australia policies deserve more than a paragraph or two. But not everything can be covered and Bongiorno does a great job giving width and depth to the book without producing a plodding tome that bores or weights down.
An important read for knowing where we have come from, even if the full legacy of this decade seems remarkably unsettled today.
As the afterword makes clear, one of the motives for this book is helping bring context to the regular refrain that the 1980s under the Hawke-Keating period saw the gold standard of political leadership and most things would be fixed if we just went back to that ethos. There are reasons to admire this era, but the gloss it has applied is far more of a recent invention than as was understood by either the actors or the audience in this era.
Importantly, Bongiorno widely expands the scope of actors. Hawke and Keating get their attention of course, but so do hundreds of ordinary Australians as the book ranges across the rise of new social issues, economics, culture, drugs and sport. Bongiorno has an eye for the illustrative quote from an anonymous aussie in a focus group or media spot.
The title declares this the decade that 'transformed Australia', but there's rightfully a hesitancy in this book about just how significant the period was or what it's defining lessons were. Many of the changes that occurred had been put in place in earlier eras, or were scrambles to respond that only look far-sighted and coherent now. There were also plenty of wrong turns - the history of the corporate tycoons of Bond, Homes a Court, and Skase and co is illuminating - and old legacies of yobboism, racism, paranoia and corruption which seeped through and left their mark.
This book is almost entirely focused on the domestic level, which is partly a shame, as I think some of the biggest changes occurred in the defence and foreign policy sphere. The move towards engagement with Asia - again begun in earlier decades - was vital to modern Australia and the revolutionary Defence of Australia policies deserve more than a paragraph or two. But not everything can be covered and Bongiorno does a great job giving width and depth to the book without producing a plodding tome that bores or weights down.
An important read for knowing where we have come from, even if the full legacy of this decade seems remarkably unsettled today.
May 21, 2024
3.5 Stars!
Starting off at the Ash Wednesday bushfires of 1983, which partly exposes the cavalier fatalism of so many Australians and how that has filtered and solidified into so much of the wider culture. He also explores the brief cult of media celebrity which blossomed the likes of the amateur ultra- runner Cliff Young to some amusing ends.
This really begins to get interesting come the second chapter. I learned some interesting things and there was a lot of good stuff in here, though often it felt a little too dense and maybe even tedious as we got bogged down in the political minutiae and corruption and scandal after scandal, with seemingly very little let up.
Ultimately this lacked consistency and seemed too focused on the political and economic side of Australia at the expense of everything else which was a bit of a shame, as I was expecting a more evenly balanced account. Don’t get me wrong there were other times when it flowed quite nicely, and we did get some decent, though very brief insights into the pop cultural side, though that felt tokenistic, as if it was just something to get out of the way before getting back to the politics.
March 25, 2018
Many look back at the 1980s in a polarised way. Either it was the beginning of the Australian Moment, a booming economy and a new place in the world, or the End of Certainty, plunging as many into despair as it dragged out of it. Frank Bongiorno’s account of it is a lot more nuanced. It’s a sober look at what the transformation of Australia wrought, of those that surged ahead, and those left behind. But while the 80s transformed Australia - economically and socially - much hasn’t changed. We still have the same debates about our past, present and future, about whether we can be a successfully multicultural society in Asia that is also aligned to the US, about rapid social change, about our economic future.
September 6, 2017
A fascinating look at the 80s in Australia. Being a child in the period I only had a loose grasp of these events.
March 28, 2018
Lost interest 2 chapters in - guess it was more interesting living it ;)
February 8, 2025
Once again Australian history telling at its best. I think that the complete negligence of this nation is deep and profound in Europe and is totally undeserved .
September 12, 2025
just a touch too bland. the overarching narrative is well argued and makes sense, but doesn't provide sufficient thrust to keep the less interesting parts engaging
March 1, 2017
An excellent summation of one of Australia's most transformative decades, covering the highs, the lows and the weirdnesses of life in this country during the years of the Hawke prime-ministership. Wide-ranging in its breadth and not afraid to delve deeply where it seems warranted (although that said, a list of Further Reading suggestions would not have gone astray), Bongiorno draws together disparate events to show the underlying themes of them, exposing much of the more hidden under-pinnings of the decade. Highly recommended as a starting place for readings in recent Australian history and politics.
February 5, 2016
It's often been said that journalism is the first rough draft of history, and I feel as if, despite the footnotes and the access to cabinet documents, that this book teeters on the cusp between the two. Nonetheless, it's an engaging read, told briskly and with humour.
See my entire review at:
https://residentjudge.wordpress.com/2...
See my entire review at:
https://residentjudge.wordpress.com/2...
April 18, 2016
A good historical account of the 80s in Australia. Mostly political bit does drift into some social trends. Entertaining to read especially if you are old enough to have been there. More a journalistic style of writing rather than a historian's style. But the subject matter lends itself to that.
November 24, 2020
I won this in a GR giveaway in 2017 and read it in 2018. As I don't read a lot of nonfiction books of history it did take me a little to pick it up. It was ok, some of the wording was out (but it was an ARC). After I finished I gave it to my grandfather and after he read it we talked. So even though I wasn't too thrilled about the book it did give me a wonderful conversation with my grandfather.
November 10, 2021
A readable but surprisingly dull account of the 80’s in Australia. At times it feels as though the author is just ticking off items from a list, rather than looking at things in any depth or with any wit or insight.
June 5, 2016
A detailed thematic look at an intriguing Australian decade. Drifts at times (and is pretty 'blokey' - such were the times), but an otherwise enjoyable and well-written read.
December 21, 2015
I moved to Australia in late 1984 so I had a lot of "I remember that" moments in this easy to read book.
April 14, 2017
A readable and sweeping overview of Australia in the 1980s highlighting some of the key events, players and themes of the decade. Events, players and themes that continue to have resonance ... reminding of us how far, and also how little, we have moved on.
As someone who came 'of age' in the 1980s ... going to university, entering the workforce and moving out of home (even moving cities) ... the book triggered many memories but also reminded me how little I was aware of, or understood, some of the changes underway at the time.
Thanks to Goodreads for the opportunity to read and enjoy 'The Eighties'.
As someone who came 'of age' in the 1980s ... going to university, entering the workforce and moving out of home (even moving cities) ... the book triggered many memories but also reminded me how little I was aware of, or understood, some of the changes underway at the time.
Thanks to Goodreads for the opportunity to read and enjoy 'The Eighties'.
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April 7, 2019Australia is a place that rushes to forget its own history, and books like The Eighties are valuable for the work they do in reminding a people fixed to an ever renewing present of what we so recently were. Bongiorno hits all the beats expected of a treatment of this time period — the America's Cup victory, the floating of the dollar, the Bicentenary, Alan Bond dealings with Kerry Packer — but the book is better when it goes beyond its rather dutiful invocations of those touchstones.
Most fascinating for me was the story of John Friedrich, a German conman apparently abandoned to history, but who, thirty years ago, scammed millions of dollars all for the purpose of transforming Victoria's National Safety Council into a search-and-rescue leviathan complete with its own fleet of helicopters. A kind of local D.B. Cooper — though with a definitive end in that he ultimately took his own life — Friedrich's tale seems emblematic of how this nation will not commit its own past to memory. Similarly, though of more social consequence, a chapter on the debates around immigration and race during the decade demonstrates how familiar some of the contemporary right's demagoguery should be; the convulsions spasming a white Australia wondering what to make of its Asian citizens are both familiar and quaint. He does well, too, in keeping track of the high-flying money men of the era and the public's response to them.
Yet the detailed excavation of a period's neuroses and formative moments offered by the subject matter never manifests; Bongiorno has not written an Australian answer to the masterful exegeses of American life in Rick Perlstein's works (Before the Storm, Nixonland, The Invisible Bridge). Instead, he jumps around, trying to survey everything and risking superficiality in doing so. His discussion of the period's pop culture, for instance, is very de rigeur, and an account of the pop music of the time does little more than list many of the decade's best known performers.
It is not that The Eighties lacks a thesis — it enunciates one plainly and concisely in the introduction and returns to it in the conclusion. It is a good one, too: "The decade has been treated as an alpha and an omega ... it is hard not to conclude that there is a certain forgetfulness operating when modern politicians, bureaucrats, and journalists paint the 1980s as a political golden age."
We remember the 1980s, Bongiorno asserts, as a fulcrum in Australian history: a moment when the nation boldly reinvented itself, transforming its economy and its society into a modern place quite removed from the older, more industrial, and more staid nation of the early and mid 20th century.
Instead:
The creator of the TV drama Mad Men, Matthew Weiner, has said that one of the attractions of making a show about the 1960s was that it offered him the chance to see an adult society that he had only experienced as a child. Reading Bongiorno's book offers for me a similar glimpse into a world I both know and don't know — but I do wish it could have offered more than this chance at personal and national self-recognition and extended to properly constructing the argument it considered.
Most fascinating for me was the story of John Friedrich, a German conman apparently abandoned to history, but who, thirty years ago, scammed millions of dollars all for the purpose of transforming Victoria's National Safety Council into a search-and-rescue leviathan complete with its own fleet of helicopters. A kind of local D.B. Cooper — though with a definitive end in that he ultimately took his own life — Friedrich's tale seems emblematic of how this nation will not commit its own past to memory. Similarly, though of more social consequence, a chapter on the debates around immigration and race during the decade demonstrates how familiar some of the contemporary right's demagoguery should be; the convulsions spasming a white Australia wondering what to make of its Asian citizens are both familiar and quaint. He does well, too, in keeping track of the high-flying money men of the era and the public's response to them.
Yet the detailed excavation of a period's neuroses and formative moments offered by the subject matter never manifests; Bongiorno has not written an Australian answer to the masterful exegeses of American life in Rick Perlstein's works (Before the Storm, Nixonland, The Invisible Bridge). Instead, he jumps around, trying to survey everything and risking superficiality in doing so. His discussion of the period's pop culture, for instance, is very de rigeur, and an account of the pop music of the time does little more than list many of the decade's best known performers.
It is not that The Eighties lacks a thesis — it enunciates one plainly and concisely in the introduction and returns to it in the conclusion. It is a good one, too: "The decade has been treated as an alpha and an omega ... it is hard not to conclude that there is a certain forgetfulness operating when modern politicians, bureaucrats, and journalists paint the 1980s as a political golden age."
We remember the 1980s, Bongiorno asserts, as a fulcrum in Australian history: a moment when the nation boldly reinvented itself, transforming its economy and its society into a modern place quite removed from the older, more industrial, and more staid nation of the early and mid 20th century.
Instead:
The 1980s ended, as the begun, in economic recession, as well as in corporate collapse and political scandal, This was the rather depressing vantage point form which most Australians reflected on the decade they had just lived through. And many, unsurprisingly, did not much like what they saw, being more likely to repudiate the values of individualism and hedonism already synonymous with the decade than recall it with the warm glow of nostalgia that is so much in evidence today.
The creator of the TV drama Mad Men, Matthew Weiner, has said that one of the attractions of making a show about the 1960s was that it offered him the chance to see an adult society that he had only experienced as a child. Reading Bongiorno's book offers for me a similar glimpse into a world I both know and don't know — but I do wish it could have offered more than this chance at personal and national self-recognition and extended to properly constructing the argument it considered.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews