Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class

When the Liberal Party of Australia was formed in 1945, it drew on political traditions and ideas that had been central to Australian politics since Federation. This book, by award-winning author and leading Australian political scientist, Judith Brett, is an exciting, new political and social history of that tradition. It offers a rich and complex analysis of the shifting relationship between the experiences of the moral middle class and the Australian Liberal Party and its predecessors; beginning with Alfred Deakin facing the organised working class in parliament and ending with John Howard, electorally triumphant but alienated from key sections of middle class opinion. It challenges many settled assumptions about the Liberals and Australia's twentieth century political history, and is destined to become the definitive account of the Liberal Party of Australia and its political forebears. <BR><BR>Shortlisted for the 2004 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards.<BR><BR>Winner of the 2004 Ernest Scott History Prize.