In A View from the Horizon one of South Australia’s most influential political reformers tells his life story with frank disclosure. Five years after he graduated as a lawyer, aged 28, Peter Duncan entered the South Australian Parliament as the member for Elizabeth. In just his first year in parliament, the young reformer introduced a Private Members’ Bill, which later prompted former Chief Justice Michael Kirby to describe him as ‘the father of homosexual law reform in Australia’. Three years later, in 1975, he became Attorney-General in Don Dunstan’s socially progressive Labor Government. Amid controversy and negotiation, he initiated a raft of reformist legislation, notably the abolition of capital punishment and the criminalisation of rape in marriage. Peter Duncan resigned from state politics in 1984 to take on the new federal seat of Makin for the Hawke Labor Government. He became one of few politicians who have served as a minister in both a state and the federal parliament. As parliamentary secretary to the Attorney-General in the Keating Government, he worked on the Disability Discrimination Bill, passed into law in 1992. He describes this as the achievement of which he is most proud. His post-parliamentary life is distinguished by successful ventures and disappointments along the way. He’s had his share of tragedy, with the premature death of his wife, journalist Julie Duncan, in 2005. Now in his 70s, Peter Duncan’s passion for justice and fairness in an unfair world remains undiminished. He lives in Lombok and with his partner Puspa runs a popular hotel. As his former political comrade and longtime friend Lyynn Arnold writes, Peter Duncan’s A View from the Horizon is ‘funny, sad, insightful, totally honest, idiosyncratically Australian and unambiguously authentic’.
