His father was the Academic Registrar of the University of Adelaide, and his mother was a teacher and a presenter of the ABC's radio program Kindergarten of the Air.

[1] Peter avoided conscription by studying law and history at the University of Adelaide followed by a Commonwealth Fellowship to earn a D.Phil.

from the University of Hong Kong which, beyond fulfilling his natural predilection for research, delayed induction into the Australian army until national conscription was abolished.

His Ph.D. thesis was published by Oxford University Press as Unequal Treaty 1898-1997 (1980, revised in 1998) and became a resource for the discussions that took place from the 1970s through the 1990s on the future of Hong Kong.

Its subject is a young East Timorese refugee, Francisco Baptista Pires ("Quito"), a sufferer of schizophrenia who was found hanged in a Darwin hospital.