Paul Kelly’s exceptional history charts the decline and fall of the Coalition – but leaves questions unanswered

The Twilight of Exceptionalism is veteran journalist Paul Kelly’s latest contribution to the chronicles of Australian political history.

In the tradition of Edward Gibbon , it’s a story of the decline and fall – not the rise and fall – of the Coalition government from 2013 to 2022.

And in this tale, there are populist barbarians pressing at the gates.

The book explores the policy dilemmas of the era and the personal characteristics of the three prime ministers at their centre: the “warrior” Tony Abbott, the “technocratic” Malcolm Turnbull and the “pragmatic” Scott Morrison.

It recognises some policy achievements, but tells a story largely of problems unsolved and potential unfulfilled.

Review: The Twilight of Exceptionalism: The Liberal and Conservative Era – Paul Kelly (Melbourne University Press) Kelly describes The Twilight of Exceptionalism, his 13th solo or coauthored book, as the most “difficult” of them all.

In his acknowledgements, he reflects on managing competing professional responsibilities as editor-at-large at The Australian and tackling personal and health setbacks.

All the same, it is striking that such an experienced political writer found the Coalition’s decade in power so hard to put on paper.

A bigger picture? Big books are getting rarer.

In an end-of-year column on 2025 book trends, Nikki Gemmell said slim novels of 100 pages or so were all the rage.

“It’s a reflection of changing reading habits,” she wrote, “of fracturing attention spans in a screen dominated world.” This trend also applies to nonfiction publishing, which requires authors to tackle big topics with fewer pages.

Against that backdrop, The Twilight of Exceptionalism is itself exceptional at roughly 700 pages, excluding the endnotes and index.

This gives Kelly an enormous canvas on which to paint what Turnbull might have called a “ bigger picture ”.

All the major milestones of the era are covered: the destructive budget in 2014 that broke election promises and slashed funding for healthcare and pensions, two bruising leadership changes in 2015 and 2018, the Coalition’s premonitory weak election result in 2016, and the same-sex marriage postal survey in 2017.