George Megalogenis

He then moved to The Australian newspaper in 1991, where he became a senior feature writer. After eleven years in the Canberra Press Gallery, from 1988 to 1999, he returned to Melbourne, and since 2012 he has primarily focused on book writing and documentary making. His work examines the political, economic and social history of Australia.^[5]

During a 2017 interview, Megalogenis said to the ABC that Australia must embrace a Eurasian future.^[6][7]

Personal life

Megalogenis was married to Annastacia Palaszczuk, Premier of Queensland 2015 to 2023, from 1996 to 1998.^[8][9]

Written work

• Faultlines: Race, Work, and the Politics of Changing Australia (2003) – An in-depth review of the shifting demographics, the political handling of race-related issues, and the work-family challenges that have contributed to the changing face of Australia.^[10]
• The Longest Decade (2006) – A look at how the 1990s in Australia was a political era defined by two men, Paul Keating and John Howard, who altered Australia's predictable economic script of bust, boom, and bust. As treasurers and prime ministers, Keating and Howard dominated 30 years of power in Australia. By many, they are viewed as antagonists with competing visions of Australia and its place in the world. Megalogenis argues they should also be remembered as the architects of a political, social and economic revolution that led to a more complex society and an era of unprecedented affluence.^[11]
• "Trivial Pursuit: Leadership and the End of the Reform Era" (2010) – In this contribution to Quarterly Essay,^[12] Megalogenis argues that Australia's Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and early John Howard years were ones of bold reform; and that more recently Australia has seen an era of power without purpose. He dissects the cycle of polls, focus groups and presidential politics and what these have done to the prospect of serious, difficult reform. He argues that politics has become a self-defeating game, and he mounts a case for a different style of leadership.
• Prime Minister's Literary Award for non-fiction, and was Australia's bestselling political book of 2012.^[15]
  The book was updated with a new afterword and appendix in 2015.
• Australia's Second Chance (2015) – Megalogenis argues that while most nations do not get a first chance to prosper, Australia is on its second. He examines how Australia, one of the world's richest countries through the nineteenth century, moved from being a booming pioneer for democracy and a magnet for migrants to a subsequent fifty-year bust. And now that Australia is back on top, in the position where history suggests its biggest mistakes have been made, he asks: can Australia's leaders learn from the past and cement its place as one of the world's great nations?