Neal Blewett

And yet they're traversing other people's impressions and trying to basically stress test those impressions.

Is Neil Blewett right when he describes you this way? Or was Peter Walsh right to say this? That's not a recipe for originality, I don't think.

The other point I'd make about that program is it airs in about November 2013.

And if I recall correctly, late 2013 wasn't the best time to be the Labor Party.

Well I haven't seen the doco but I did know John Button and I love that you've chosen it because he wasn't just curious but also genuinely kind and those qualities which you see very much in his son James as well who you mention in the book really come through with the texts.

In some cases political autobiographies are treading on questionable legal ground.

We have the issue of cabinet confidentiality and you report on Neil Blewett's cabinet diaries and the threatening letter that the head of PM&C, Max Moore-Wilton, wrote to him.

How do you think the norms about reporting on cabinet confidentiality in an autobiography have changed? I'm asking here for a friend.

And it was very difficult for bureaucrats or academics to move them away from their positions.

Neil Blewett eventually decided that as Minister of Health that all Commonwealth committees on these issues, Commonwealth Health Department committees should involve consumers and that dramatically changed the nature of the discussions and the one that stands out in my mind is where a clinician had been talking about the capacity of modern medicine to help women with endometriosis and he was talking very glowingly about this but this consumer said look I have nearly over 400 people in my endometriosis group And that is not their lived experience.

Despite all the best medical practice that they can, medical help they can get, their experience is still a life of great suffering and great difficulties.

And I mean, the doctor is speechless and it just changed the whole dynamic of the conversation.

I think even conservative politicians will readily concede that that's probably the best cabinet in the history of Australia.

Willis Dawkins, Evans, Lionel Bowen, Mick Young, John Button, Neil Blewett, Duffy, Howe.

And they were in the Adam industry then.

Keating, Hawke only one woman Susan Ryan being the only member of Emily's list elected at the time things have certainly improved in that regard but they were an extraordinary cabinet and Hawke was smart enough to let them do it and he would say to your ministers they're your portfolios off you go he knew how to delegate and I mean that was Rudd's problem he did not know how to delegate But if you trust the people around you and you get the best talent and you're not scared of it, and then Hawke would just earn all the political capital.