The Prime Minister’s summer reading list

James Button is a Walkley Award winning journalist and political speech-writer. He spent time in the dome while writing his first book. 

I published a book last year called Speechless: a year in my father’s business. It’s about working as a speechwriter for Kevin Rudd, working in the public service, the Labor party and most importantly to me, it’s about my family’s engagement with politics. My father John Button was a minister in the Hawke and Keating governments. 

I’d come into the dome to scribble things down.

I love Mr Tulk, the cafe downstairs, so I’d often have coffee there then walk upstairs through the Cowen Gallery, where I’d stop to look at the paintings just to get a sense of history. Somehow getting that sense of history helped me focus on the work; deepened my approach to the work.

The dome is such a beautiful place, I like the old chairs and the beautiful green lights and the curve of the room and the light. I really like the contrast between the city outside and the quiet in the dome. It’s like when you go into a church; it’s that sort of holy quiet. It’s great to have that in the middle of the city. There’s so much here, it’s like a city within the city.

The Library has changed with the times in a really interesting way – the addition of Readings bookshop, the Wheeler Centre coming, the cafes. I just think that a lot of creative intelligence has been applied to this city block. With the exhibition spaces it all comes together as a terrific precinct. I run into people here quite a lot. Libraries attract eccentrics and people who are engaged in intense and sometimes excessive projects of learning and I like that too. I like the different kinds of people you see in the Library.

Nowadays I work as the communications manager at the Grattan Institute, which is an independent nonpartisan think tank in Carlton. We’re trying to influence politicians, public servants and the public to think differently about a range of issues – school education, higher education, health, cities policy, productivity growth and climate change. We’re independent, nonpartisan, we really seek to produce high quality evidence-based proposals for reform.  Every year we hold an event called the Prime Minister’s summer reading list; we pick a bunch of books that we think the Prime Minister should read over the summer. We hold this event here at the Library.

I’m thinking about writing other books so I hope to end up here again.