I am delighted to announce that I have decided to jointly award the inaugural Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History to:
* Les Carlyon for The Great War; and
* Peter Cochrane for Colonial Ambition: Foundations of Australian Democracy.
This prize, which I announced last August at the National History Summit, recognises an outstanding piece of work published, produced or broadcast between 20 September 2004 and 31 December 2006, and which contributes significantly to an understanding of Australian history.
Les Carlyon's The Great War provides a compelling narrative of Australia's involvement in World War I, centred on the Western Front, including through the stories of individual soldiers. Relating these stories against a vast global backdrop, he reveals much about the formation of our national identity.
Peter Cochrane's Colonial Ambition highlights our British political inheritance and brings to life the human drama of our democratic foundations through the contest in the 1840s and 1850s between the great landowners of New South Wales and the rising class of Sydney shopkeepers, merchants, artisans and renegade gentry.
The winners have each received an embossed gold medallion and will share a grant of $100,000. The Government will amend the income tax law to make this grant tax exempt. Legislation giving effect to the amendments will be introduced as soon as practicable
I congratulate again the two other short-listed nominees, selected from a total of 130 nominations for 151 works, for their major contribution to the study of Australian History:
* David Branagan for T.W. Edgeworth David: A Life; and
* Josephine Flood for The Original Australians: Story of the Aboriginal People.