Jun 23, 2026 · 1 hr 37 min · 13 segments
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Patrick WellerGuestJoe WalkerHostNo entities detected.
So I think of you as a kind of British, a kind of combination of a British Tocqueville come to Australia and an Australian Robert Caro who examines the sort of texture of political power.
And For that reason, I was very excited to read in a few of your essays reflecting on your work, especially your book about Malcolm Fraser as Prime Minister, that Robert Caro was, or maybe the major influence on you intellectually, certainly the major influence on you with respect to your book about Fraser.
One of which was a book which made me a political scientist rather than a historian about how parties operated in the pre-party days in Australia.
It's the way that they understand the problems they've got, which I find particularly interesting.
And the second one was a book written by two Americans about the British Treasury.
And Now, the details are slightly outdated, but the way they did it was to point out that these are people who work with each other day in, day out.
You know, when you deal with somebody on a particular problem, you know you've got to deal with them next week on another problem.
who's talked about the American president and says the power of the president is the power to persuade.
And what we need to do is to be looking over their shoulder to see how they see the problems.
So Caro was the last nudge, so to speak, of saying, you can do things like this.
And I thought, can you study an Australian prime minister? And who would be interesting? And this was 1983, 1984.
So I think of you as a kind of British, a kind of combination of a British Tocqueville come to Australia and an Australian Robert Caro who examines the sort of texture of political power.
And For that reason, I was very excited to read in a few of your essays reflecting on your work, especially your book about Malcolm Fraser as Prime Minister, that Robert Caro was, or maybe the major influence on you intellectually, certainly the major influence on you with respect to your book about Fraser.
One of which was a book which made me a political scientist rather than a historian about how parties operated in the pre-party days in Australia.
It's the way that they understand the problems they've got, which I find particularly interesting.
And the second one was a book written by two Americans about the British Treasury.
And Now, the details are slightly outdated, but the way they did it was to point out that these are people who work with each other day in, day out.
You know, when you deal with somebody on a particular problem, you know you've got to deal with them next week on another problem.
who's talked about the American president and says the power of the president is the power to persuade.
And what we need to do is to be looking over their shoulder to see how they see the problems.
So Caro was the last nudge, so to speak, of saying, you can do things like this.
And I thought, can you study an Australian prime minister? And who would be interesting? And this was 1983, 1984.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.