AustLit

'This book is about two brilliant boys. The first is the gifted and driven Bert or Doc Evatt. Of lower- middle-class origins, he went to Sydney’s Fort Street Boys’ High and on to law at Sydney University, winning prizes and scholarships all the way. Evatt shone at the Sydney bar in the early 1920s before entering the New South Wales parliament for Labor when Jack Lang was premier. Like his friend, Vere Gordon Childe, Evatt was a Labor intellectual – a difficult position in the party of the workers – but he established his credentials when he successfully prevented the Bruce government’s deportation of two union organisers, Tom Walsh and Jacob Johnson of the Seamen’s Union. Although born overseas, both were long-time Australian residents and Evatt argued successfully before the High Court that they were beyond the reach of the Immigration Act.' (Introduction)