AustLit

'Tanya Plibersek’s biographer makes the case for her “strength of understanding and coolness of judgement”' 

'In early March 2023, Tanya Plibersek fronted an audience at the Australian National University to question historian Chris Wallace about her newly released account of twentieth-century prime ministers and their biographers. Coming shortly before the publication of Margaret Simons’s biography of her, Plibersek’s interest in the dynamics of writing about a living, breathing, vote-seeking politician seemed prompted by more than mere professional courtesy. ‘It’s like building a golem, in the shape of a person, in a way, isn’t it?’ she remarked. ‘And then you’re putting magic into it and animating it. It comes out of the mud.’'  (Introduction) 

'Biographies of politicians still in the game have a slippery quality, even if – as in Margaret Simons’ solidly researched, cautiously told life of Tanya Plibersek – they wear such limitations on their sleeve. Simons’ Tanya Plibersek: On Her Own Terms is not a historical verdict being rendered on some superannuated figure safely euthanised by time and the voting public. This book is inevitably entangled with the live debates and power struggles of the moment.' (Introduction)

'Days before the publication of a new biography of federal Labor cabinet minister Tanya Plibersek, the Nine newspapers carried an exclusive extract in the Good Weekend magazine, accompanied by a news article leading with Plibersek’s assertion that if she had stood for the party’s leadership after the 2019 election she would have won.'  (Introduction)