Peter Hartcher wins Ashurst Business Literature Prize

Award-winning journalist and author Peter Hartcher has won this year's Ashurst Business Literature Prize for The Sweet Spot: How Australia made its own luck - and could now throw it all away (Black Inc.).

In The Sweet Spot Peter Hartcher takes readers on an entertaining and thought-provoking tour through Australian politics and history. He shows how a convict colony could have become a banana republic, how Australia came through the global financial crisis - it wasn't just the mining boom - and how we could now throw our success away if we don't recognise our strengths and demand true leadership of our politicians.

Hartcher's book was announced the winner from a shortlist of five books which also comprised:

• 7 Myths about Women and Work, by Catherine Fox (NewSouth Publishing)
• House of Hancock: The Rise and Rise of Gina Rinehart by Debi Marshall (Random House Australia)
• Icon in Crisis: The Reinvention of CSIRO by Ron Sandland and Graham Thompson (NewSouth Publishing)
• Mine-field: The Dark Side of Australia's Resource Rush, Paul Cleary (Black Inc.)

Hartcher received his prize from the Honourable Malcolm Turnbull MP, Federal Member for Wentworth and Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband, guest speaker at the special award dinner hosted by Australian global law firm, Ashurst, in Sydney on 6 June.

Launched in 2004 by Ashurst (then Blake Dawson) and administered by the State Library of NSW, the $30,000 Prize is Australia's largest and most significant award for business literature. It was established to encourage the highest possible standards of literary commentary on Australian business and financial affairs.

Ashurst Chairman, Mary Padbury, said: "Congratulations to Peter Hartcher on his achievement in winning this year's prize. We are delighted that the Ashurst Business Literature Prize, now in its ninth year, has been awarded to such a worthy winner."

"The State Library not only supports business through its provision of online and printed business, legal and other information, such as standards, but we also collect business records that trace the growth and diversification of the economy over the last 225 years and into the future. Our partnership with Ashurst to offer this Prize demonstrates the strength of our relationship with business and acknowledges talented Australian authors in this particularly exciting field of writing," said Alex Byrne, NSW State Librarian and Chief Executive.

According to the independent judging panel, Alan Cameron AO, Richard Fisher AM and Narelle Hooper, The Sweet Spot analyses the nature of the economic relationship between business and the community in terms which all of us can grasp. Peter Hartcher reminds us of the historic tension between free traders and protectionists in Australia, and continues to the present day - a new phase, in the wake of the GFC.

Alan Cameron AO, chair of the judging panel commented: "Thoughtful business leaders working on their own long term strategies will have regard for Hartcher's analysis - as he says, we are neither free market Hong Kong nor socialist France. The Sweet Spot is a good read into the bargain."

Background

Past Ashurst Business Literature Prize winners:

• 2011  Six Months of Panic - Trevor Sykes
• 2010   Who Wants to be a Billionaire - Paul Barry
• 2009   The Big Fella: The rise and rise of BHP Billiton - Peter Thompson and Robert Macklin
• 2008   Funny Business - Leonie Wood
• 2007   Kickback: Inside the Australian Wheat Board scandal - Caroline Overington
• 2006   Asbestos House - Gideon Haig
• 2005   Public Private Partnerships: The worldwide revolution in infrastructure provision and project finance - Mervyn Lewis and Darrin Grimsey
• 2004   A Portrait of Power: Allan Fels - Fred Brenchley

The past award dinner keynote speakers:

• 2011  Mr Gideon Haigh
• 2010   Emeritus Professor Ron McCallum
• 2009   Thomas Keneally, AO
• 2008   John Hartigan, then CEO and Chairman, News Limited
• 2007   Professor Geoffrey Blainey
• 2006   General Peter Cosgrove, AC MC
• 2005   Geoff Dixon, CEO and then Managing Director of Qantas Airways Limited 
• 2004 Trevor Sykes, business journalist, author and then assistant editor at the Australian Financial Review

About Peter Hartcher

Peter Hartcher is the political editor and international editor for the Sydney Morning Herald and has worked as a foreign correspondent in Tokyo and Washington. He has won both the Gold Walkley award for journalism and the Citibank award for business reporting. His books include Bubble Man: Alan Greenspan and the Missing 7 Trillion Dollars and To the Bitter End: the Dramatic Story Behind the Fall of John Howard and the Rise of Kevin Rudd.
 
For more information and interviews please contact:
 
Glenn Taylor, National Public Relations Manager, Ashurst
(02) 9258 6354, 0408 939 226, glenn.taylor@ashurst.com
 
Vanessa Bond, Media & Communications, Manager, State Library of NSW
(02) 9273 1566, 0411 259 898, vbond@sl.nsw.gov.au