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Patrick Mullins, ‘A question that had to be asked and answered’ How did Billy McMahon reach the top of Australian politics?

Often described as one of Australia’s weakest Prime Ministers, Billy McMahon nevertheless makes for a fascinating biographical subject. A notorious leaker who made far more enemies than friends, McMahon’s climb to the top position of Australian political leadership is one of the most surprising and remarkable achievements in Australian politics. For all of his flaws, McMahon was a man of great perseverance, work-ethic, and drive, and on a number of policy positions, particularly that of free trade, he was actually more perceptive and forward thinking than his colleagues. While McMahon is best remembered for losing 1972 election, even that epoch defining result was a far closer fight than the popular memory would allow.

In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to award winning biographer Patrick Mullins about the last of Menzies’s immediate successors, and the man who brought the record run of Coalition government to an end.

Patrick Mullins is a Canberra based writer and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research at the University of Canberra, where he received his PhD. He has published three books, including Tiberius with a Telephone, a biography of former Australian prime minister William McMahon (1971–72), which won the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction at the 2020 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, and the National Biography Award for 2020. His latest work is Who needs the ABC?, an account of and an argument for the ABC in modern Australia co-authored with Matthew Ricketson.