He worked as a journalist and with Freedom from Hunger before becoming a secretary to Labor Party leader Gough Whitlam.

Following the Labor Party's victory at the 1972 federal election, he became an advisor in Aboriginal Affairs and then in Secondary Industry.

[1] In 1976, Neville Wran, the Premier of New South Wales, appointed Hall to the Cultural Affairs Advisory Body, where Hall and Donald Horne founded the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards.

Hall also ghost-wrote two books, for Labor politicians Jack Hallam and Mick Young, and also wrote biographies, political non-fiction, and two crime thrillers.

In 1994, he won the first James Joyce Foundation Fellowship and consequently spent time at Trinity College, Dublin.