Passionate, vivid and immediate, and full of insights, this is Rob Oakeshott's honest and real story of life in Australian politics. From his apprenticeship in the NSW parliament to the last days of the Gillard government, he tells it as it was.

When the results of the 2010 federal election became known, no party had a majority in the House of Representatives it was the first hung parliament for forty years. So, both the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, set about wooing the Independents - Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott, Bob Katter and Andrew Wilkie - and Adam Bandt of the Greens. In the end, Julia Gillard stitched together an agreement to form government. When it was announced, famously there was talk of a 'kinder, gentler polity'. That lasted for about one day.

Rob Oakeshott, in this very candid and compelling memoir, relates the events leading up to this agreement and what happened thereafter when he and Windsor, in particular, proved themselves to be stauncher supporters of Julia Gillard than many of her party colleagues. He remembers moments of celebration and incidents of perfidy. But above all, we get to meet close up and personal the man who played such an important role in the forty-third parliament.