Australia's is a polity obsessed with the quest for power. From the Peacock-Howard struggles to the Hawke-Keating Kirribilli House agreement, from the gradual political strangulation of John Hewson to the purposeful lying to Bill Hayden by his colleagues, events of the past decade or so show that doing "whatever it takes" to achieve power is seen by many to be de rigueur in contemporary Australian politics. One supposes that this is more or less a truism for most political organisms, but what makes the Australian situation remarkable among Western democracies is the extent to which the quest is publicly celebrated. As was made only too plain by the memoirs of both former Prime Minister Bob Hawke and former Senator Graham Richardson, the Australian version of the power lust is one prominent in its nakedness.
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