Book review: "Incorrigible Optimist: A Political Memoir" (AUR 60 01)

As he reveals in this memoir, Gareth Evans was one of only two cabinet members to have served for the totality of the Hawke/Keating governments (the other was Ralph Willis). This book follows his Inside the Hawke Keating Government: A Cabinet Diary (2014), which covered the period from September 1984 to October 1986. Ultimately, various pressures left him unable to continue the diary while a minister – more’s the pity. In this more conventional format, he tells the story of a substantial public career – before, in and after parliament. More...