Tiberius with a Telephone:
the life and stories of William McMahon
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Tiberius with a Telephone:
the life and stories of William McMahon
Overview
Winner of the 2020 National Biography Award and the 2020 NSW Premier’s Non-Fiction Award.
The oddly compelling story of a man regarded as Australia’s worst prime minister.
William McMahon was a significant, if widely derided and disliked, figure in Australian politics in the second half of the twentieth century. This biography tells the story of his life, his career, and his doomed attempts to recast views of his much-maligned time as Australia’s prime minister.
After a long ministerial career under Menzies, McMahon became treasurer under Harold Holt, and fought a fierce, bitter war over protectionism with John McEwen. Following Holt’s death in 1967, McEwen had his revenge by vetoing McMahon’s candidature for the Liberal Party’s leadership, and thus paved the way for John Gorton to become prime minister. But almost three years later, amid acrimony and division, McMahon would topple Gorton and fulfill his life’s ambition to become Australia’s prime minister.
In office, McMahon worked furiously to enact an agenda that grappled with the profound changes reshaping Australia. He withdrew combat forces from Vietnam, legislated for Commonwealth government involvement in childcare, established the National Urban and Regional Development Authority and the first Department of the Environment, began phasing out the means test on pensions, sought to control foreign investments, and accelerated the timetable for the independence of Papua New Guinea. But his failures would overshadow his successes, and by the time of the 1972 election McMahon would lead a divided, tired, and rancorous party to defeat.
A man whose life was coloured by tragedy, comedy, persistence, courage, farce, and failure, McMahon’s story has never been told at length. Tiberius with a Telephone fills that gap, using deep archival research and extensive interviews with McMahon’s contemporaries and colleagues. It is a tour de force — an authoritative and colourful account of a unique politician and a vital period in Australia’s history.
Details
- Format
- Size
- Extent
- ISBN
- RRP
- Pub date
- Rights held
- Paperback
- 210mm x 135mm
- 784 pages
- 9781922310637
- AUD$45.00
- 13 October 2020
- World
Awards
- Longlisted for the 2019 Walkley Book Award
- Winner of the 2020 NSW Premier’s Literary Award Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction
- Winner of the 2020 State Library NSW National Biography Award
Praise
‘Sir William McMahon, Liberal party leader and Australia’s 20th prime minister, was a master of political intrigue. He accumulated epithets — ‘Billy big-ears’, ‘Billy the leak’, ‘a quean’, and in Gough Whitlam’s memorable quip, ‘Tiberius with a telephone’. In this commanding and exceptionally researched biography, Patrick Mullins has retrieved McMahon from historical neglect, revealing the man behind the personal and political caricature. It is a compelling portrait of an insecure, vain, deeply ambitious man, and a skilful political operator whose one great strength, his remarkable persistence, was eventually rewarded with the liberal prime ministership.
At once fascinating, revelatory, unflattering, and at times uncomfortable, Mullins never shies away from McMahon’s clear and unavoidable personal failings. His own colleagues described him as an inveterate liar, a compulsive leaker, and ‘completely untrustworthy’. Some refused outright ever to work with him.
As Mullins unravels this devastating personal and political critique, McMahon’s ascendency is all the more remarkable. But this is a story also of the Liberal Party in decline, divided and uncertain of its place in the weary interregnum between the twin titans of Australian politics — the founding Liberal leader, Sir Robert Menzies, and Labor’s Gough Whitlam.
Mullins’ exemplary research, skilful use of an innovative structure, and engaging biographical narrative shows a complete picture of McMahon for the first time. This is everything a political biography should be.’
‘‘For God’s sake behave like a prime minister’, implored the journalist who had assisted William McMahon to attain that office. His faults were legion. Throughout his political career he boasted and intrigued, curried favour, and was habitually disloyal. He worked assiduously with little comprehension of his responsibilities, and was indecisive and prone to panic. Patrick Mullins’ engrossing, fine biography does much more than document all these liabilities: it explains how they enabled him to attain national leadership and left him unable to exercise it.’
About the Author
Patrick Mullins is a Canberra-based writer and academic who has a PhD from the University of Canberra. Tiberius with a Telephone, his first book, won the 2020 NSW Premier’s Non-Fiction Award and the 2020 National Biography Award. He is also the author of The Trials of Portnoy: how Penguin brought down Australia’s censorship system.
