Paul Williams, ‘Australian to the Bootheels’ Unpacking the John Gorton Experiment

John Gorton attained the Prime Ministership in the unlikeliest of ways. Propelled into the media spotlight for lancing the boil of the VIP Aircraft Affair, he was able to use television and personal popularity to leap-frog many senior colleagues into the leadership after Harold Holt’s disappearance. Once he had attained the reins of office, Gorton was determined to do things ‘his way’, centralising power in the hands of the Commonwealth and riding roughshod over a string of conservative orthodoxies. That he ultimately came unstuck as his leadership skills could not match his grand ambition only serves to add interest to the story of one of Australia’s most unique politicians.

In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to Paul Williams from Griffith University about Menzies’s least conventional Liberal successor.

Paul Williams is an Associate Professor in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University, where he teaches politics, journalism and public relations. As a political scientist, his research has culminated in over 80 peer-reviewed scholarly publications, dozens of non-refereed articles and more than 1,000 newspaper columns on local, state, national and international politics and public policy. Paul is long-standing journalist with The Courier Mail and has earned a reputation as an authoritative and impartial commentator. He is the author of John Grey Gorton: Australian to the Bootheels, which is part of the Australian Biographical Monographs series.