Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class
From Alfred Deakin to John Howard

This 2003 book provides a complete history of the Australian liberal tradition and the Liberal Party of Australia.

Judith Brett (Author)

9780521536349, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 5 August 2003

274 pages, 8 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.41 kg

'Judith Brett has a story to tell that is not only fascinating in itself, but at times almost spookily reminiscent of passes in the history of British parties in the twentieth century … an account of Australian party politics which breaks free of many of the crudities of political science and casts a flood of light on the relationship between rhetoric and morality in the politics of twentieth-century liberal democracies.' The Times Literary Supplement

The Liberal Party of Australia was late to form in 1945, but the traditions and ideals upon which it is founded have been central to Australian politics since Federation. This 2003 book, by award-winning author and leading Australian political scientist Judith Brett, provides the very first complete history of the Australian liberal tradition, and then of the Liberal Party from the second half of the twentieth century. The book sparkles with insight, particularly in its sustained analysis of the shifting relationships between the experiences of the moral middle class and Australian liberals' own self understandings. It begins with Alfred Deakin facing the organised working class in parliament and ends with John Howard, electorally triumphant but alienated from key sections of middle class opinion. This book is destined to become the definitive account of Australian liberalism, and of the Liberal Party of Australia.

1. Introduction
2. Organisation and the meaning of fusion
3. Protestants
4. Good citizens and public order
5. Honest finance
6. From Menzies' forgotten people to the Whitlam generation
7. Fraser
8. Neoliberalism
9. John Howard, race and nation.

Subject Areas: Political parties [JPL], Politics & government [JP], Cultural studies [JFC], Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000 [HBLW3], Australasian & Pacific history [HBJM]