The Independent Member for Lyne: A Memoir

From his apprenticeship in the NSW Parliament to the last days of the Gillard government, this is the honest and real story of life in Australian politics. Passionate, vivid and immediate, full of insights and anecdotes, Rob Oakeshott tells it as it was.

When the results of the 2010 federal elections became known, no party had a majority in the House of Representatives - it was the first hung parliament for 40 years. So both the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, set about wooing the independents - Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott, Bob Katter, Andrew Wilkie, and Adam Bandt of the Greens. In the end Julia Gillard stitched together an agreement with them to form government. When it was announced, famously there was talk of a ‘kinder, gentler polity’. That lasted for about one day.

Rob Oakeshott, in his very candid and compelling memoir, relates the events leading up to this agreement and what happened thereafter when he and Windsor, in particular, proved themselves to be stauncher supporters of Julia Gillard than many of her party colleagues. He remembers moments of celebration and incidents of perfidy. But above all, we get to meet close up and personal the man who played such an important role in the 43rd Parliament.