The Light on the Hill

A revised and updated edition of award-winning historian Ross McMullin’s acclaimed history of the Australian Labor Party — an entertaining, action-packed, warts-and-all narrative full of illuminating pen-portraits and vivid anecdotes.

The story is told through the people who made it. All Labor’s prime ministers feature — Watson, Fisher, Hughes, Scullin, Curtin, Chifley, Whitlam, Hawke, Keating, Rudd, Gillard, and Albanese. The sweeping storytelling blends their governments’ achievements and tribulations with those of ALP state branches, conflicts over organisation and policy, emotional highs and lows, and intrigue and intimidation behind the scenes.

Labor’s most spectacular controversies are also examined — three devastating ruptures, the Whitlam government’s dismissal, and the fierce Hawke–Keating and Rudd–Gillard–Rudd leadership contests.

The Light on the Hill also illuminates the notable families, the lost talents, and the ups and downs for Labor’s true believers since 1891. It covers Doc Evatt and Don Dunstan, Susan Ryan and Carmen Lawrence, ‘Windy Mick’ and ‘Happy Jack’, ‘Red Ted’ and ‘Stabber Jack’, ‘Electric Eric’ and the ‘Killer of Santa Claus’ — they’re all here. So are Labor’s triumphs, notably the 2025 Albanese electoral landslide.

Prodigiously researched, captivating, and powerful, The Light on the Hill is the most authoritative and monumental account of Labor’s rich history.