Don Dunstan: The Visionary Politician Who Changed Australia by Angela Woollacott

Don Dunstan was one of the most significant political figures of twentieth-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.

This is the first comprehensive biography of the larger-than-life figure. Angela Woollacott recounts how he battled Adelaide's conservative establishment to win office for Labor, and then went on to pioneer Aboriginal land rights, abolish the death penalty, support women's rights, relax censorship and drinking laws, and decriminalise homosexuality. He worked to overturn the White Australia policy, and was an ardent supported of the arts and the food industry. Although he was much loved by the public, Dunstan's career was marked by controversy and vilification, with scandal surrounding his personal relationships.

Dunstan's life story helps us to appreciate just what a watershed era the 1960s and 1970s were in Australia, and to see how one small state could, for a time, lead a nation.

Genres: Nonfiction - Biography - Politics - Australia
Condition: Very good
Published: 2019 by Allen & Unwin
Pages: 332
ISBN: 9781760631819
Weight: 495g