The Reith Papers

Book excerpt: Peter Reith was a senior cabinet minister under John Howard from 1996 to 2001. He was the face of the government’s tough waterfront reforms and architect of sweeping industrial laws, a major contributor to the Fightback policy, a potential leader of the Liberal Party, a key player in the introduction of the GST, an influential republican in the 1999 referendum and Minister for Defence during the time that it was wrongly claimed that asylum seekers had thrown their children overboard. A relentless diary keeper, Peter Reith kept extensive records of those tumultuous years in over a hundred notebooks he filled with recollections of conversations with his colleagues, discussions in cabinet and his private views and predictions. The Reith Papers is the best of those diary entries from the heart of a government that changed Australia.