The underlying concern of this book is the issue of balancing the needs for national security with individual rights and freedoms. Hocking argues that current security legislation compromises the separation of powers and individual legal and political rights.

Jenny Hocking's political biography of Australian barrister, politician and High Court judge Lionel Murphy forced a reinterpretation of Murphy's considerable legal, social and political legacy. Now available in paperback, this new version includes an epilogue in which Hocking reassesses Murphy's place in the recent political and legal landscape. She argues that a long and influential career should not be obscured by the traumatic years before his death or the media sensationalism since.

Gough Whitlam, Australia's twenty-first prime minister, swept to power in December 1972, ending twenty-three years of conservative rule. In barely three years Whitlam's dramatic reform agenda would transform Australia. It was an ascendancy bitterly resented by some, never accepted by others, and ended with dismissal by the Governor-General just three years laterandmdash;an outcome that polarised debate and left many believing the full story had not been told. In this much-anticipated second volume of her biography of Gough Whitlam, Jenny Hocking has used previously unearthed archival material...