 Frank Bongiorno described Hirst as a "creative historian capable of engaging a wide audience, as well as a public intellectual who delighted, infuriated and provoked". He contributed many influential opinion pieces and commentaries to leading Australian newspapers and journals. Jeremy Sammut has noted that Hirst was motivated by an independent mind and a distaste for unthinking conformity. He "defied simplistic categorisation as a partisan because his politics were idiosyncratic". Hirst described himself as an old-fashioned social democrat. To read Hirst is not to encounter a reactionary but "to be delighted as he marshals facts, logic and evidence with unarguable skill and precision to establish the heterodox case, while conveying powerful insights into whatever historical experience or process is discussed". A common theme in the obituaries cited is that Hirst was fearlessly honest, whatever the subject. As Sammut has noted, he was inspired by a commitment to "the rigorous pursuit of historical truth that drove him to explore the deeper patterns and meanings of the past, and the contemporary implications, that others had missed or misled us about".
