Peter Reith was a senior federal Cabinet minister from 1996 to 2001. He was the face of the Coalition government's tough waterfront reforms, a major contributor to the Fightback! policy, a potential leader of the Liberal Party, the architect of sweeping industrial laws and defence minister during the time that it was wrongly claimed that asylum seekers had thrown their children overboard. He was a key player in the introduction of the GST and influential as a republican in the 1999 referendum. A serious diary keeper, Peter Reith maintained extensive records of those tumultuous years through the 120 notebooks he filled with conversations of colleagues, Cabinet discussions and his uncensored thoughts and predictions.