Tony Jones

And, and we ended up with, with the end of Pe- by the end of Peter's time, with a really stellar, uh, reporting cast at Four Corners.

I mean, names, uh, that everyone still knows, um, from Kerry O'Brien, David Marr, um, Deb Snow, uh, uh, so, so, so many of them, uh, Andrew Olle, um, Tony Jones.

Uh, it was, it was an extraordinary, uh, cast of characters, and they did amazing stories.

A roll call of the, the greats of Australian journalism.

And, you know, there would be celebrated rows in the, in the, in the Four Corners, um, office between some of these very high-powered and, um, reporters.

I mean, you didn't mess with Kerry O'Brien.

You didn't mess with, um, Tony Jones, you know?

Mm.

To this idea of performance politics, the apparently growing urge for politicians of all persuasions and levels of achievement to write books and give retrospective interviews in order to sort of shape and mold and burnish what might otherwise be an undistinguished record.

Uh, five prime ministers of the 2010s, for example, Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison, all left o-office unhappily, not of their own choosing.

Uh, then they and their former ministers, advisors, backbenchers, and journalists took to print and participation in documentaries in an attempt to cast their own version of truth for posterity.

Is this a noble urge to ensure [chuckles] history's record is true? And how did this trend to publish and polish become such an urge, uh, anyway? Josh Black has been a policy researcher and speechwriter and, uh, now lectures in Australian Political Studies, uh, in Canberra.

And, and among those moments is a big block of time in the late 2000s and, and much of the 2010s where, yeah, a series of senior Australian politicians, uh, across both major parties did turn increasingly to those books to try and do political posturing to establish their, um, th- their place in the pecking order for succession or, or to help posture for leadership.

Very few of them found success this way.

Um, Tony Abbott did.

I think that's actually a really important story in its own right.