Bob Hawke

Robert James Lee Hawke (9 December 1929 – 16 May 2019) was an Australian politician and trade unionist who served as the 23rd prime minister of Australia from 1983 to 1991. He held office as the leader of the Labor Party (ALP), having previously served as president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions from 1969 to 1980 and president of the Labor Party national executive from 1973 to 1978.

Hawke was born in Border Town, South Australia. He attended the University of Western Australia and went on to study at University College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. In 1956, Hawke joined the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) as a research officer. Having risen to become responsible for national wage case arbitration, he was elected as president of the ACTU in 1969, where he achieved a high public profile. In 1973, he was appointed as president of the Labor Party.

In 1980, Hawke stood down from his roles as ACTU and Labor Party president to announce his intention to enter parliamentary politics, and was subsequently elected to the Australian House of Representatives as a member of parliament (MP) for the division of Wills at the 1980 federal election. Three years later, he was elected unopposed to replace Bill Hayden as leader of the Australian Labor Party, and within five weeks led Labor to a landslide victory at the 1983 election, and was sworn in as prime minister. He led Labor to victory a further three times, with successful outcomes in 1984, 1987 and 1990 elections, making him the most electorally successful prime minister in the history of the Labor Party.

The Hawke government oversaw one of the largest overhauls of Australia's political economy in its history. A defining feature of the Hawke term was the close co-operation between business, the government and trade unions via conferences such as the national economic summit, the tax summit and the accord.

Key reforms implemented by the Hawke government included widespread deregulation, dramatic cuts to tariffs as well as business subsidies, the introduction of universal healthcare under Medicare, increased federal expenditure on education, creating APEC, floating the Australian dollar, enacting the Sex Discrimination Act to prevent discrimination in the workplace, declaring "Advance Australia Fair" as the country's national anthem, initiating superannuation pension schemes for all workers, negotiating a ban on mining in Antarctica and overseeing passage of the Australia Act that removed all remaining jurisdiction by the United Kingdom from Australia.

Instead of supporting the public ownership of government industries, the Hawke government sought to redistribute money from the wealthy to the poor via direct fiscal transfers and training programs to help people find employment. Measures implemented by the Hawke government towards this end included the creation of programs such as Newstart, commonwealth rent assistance and the Family Tax Benefit as well as increased progressiveness in taxation. The Hawke government privatised state-owned enterprises such as Qantas.

In June 1991, Hawke faced a leadership challenge by the Treasurer, Paul Keating, but Hawke managed to retain power; however, Keating mounted a second challenge six months later, and won narrowly, replacing Hawke as prime minister. Hawke subsequently retired from parliament, pursuing both a business career and a number of charitable causes, until his death in 2019, aged 89. Hawke remains his party's longest-serving prime minister, and Australia's third-longest-serving prime minister behind Robert Menzies and John Howard. He is also the only prime minister to be born in South Australia and the only one raised and educated in Western Australia. Hawke holds the highest-ever approval rating for an Australian prime minister, reaching 75% approval in 1984. Hawke is frequently ranked within the upper tier of Australian prime ministers by historians.

Early life and family

Bob Hawke was born on 9 December 1929 in Border Town, South Australia, the second child of Arthur "Clem" Hawke (1898–1989), a Congregationalist minister, and his wife Edith Emily (Lee) (1897–1979) (known as Ellie), a schoolteacher. His uncle, Bert, was the Labor premier of Western Australia between 1953 and 1959.

Hawke's brother Neil, who was seven years his senior, died at the age of seventeen after contracting meningitis, for which there was no cure at the time. Ellie Hawke subsequently developed an almost messianic belief in her son's destiny, and this contributed to Hawke's supreme self-confidence throughout his career. At the age of fifteen, he presciently boasted to friends that he would one day become the prime minister of Australia.

At the age of seventeen, Hawke had a serious crash while riding his Panther motorcycle that left him in a critical condition for several days. This near-death experience acted as his catalyst, driving him to make the most of his talents and not let his abilities go to waste. He joined the Labor Party in 1947 at the age of eighteen.

Education and early career

Hawke was educated at West Leederville State School, Perth Modern School and the University of Western Australia, graduating in 1952 with Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws degrees. He was also president of the university's guild during the same year. The following year, Hawke won a Rhodes Scholarship to attend University College, Oxford, where he began a Bachelor of Arts course in philosophy, politics and economics (PPE). He soon found he was covering much the same ground as he had in his education at the University of Western Australia, and transferred to a Bachelor of Letters course. He wrote his thesis on wage-fixing in Australia and successfully presented it in January 1956.

In 1956, Hawke accepted a scholarship to undertake doctoral studies in the area of arbitration law in the law department at the Australian National University in Canberra. Soon after his arrival at ANU, he became the students' representative on the University Council. A year later, he was recommended to the President of the ACTU to become a research officer, replacing Harold Souter who had become ACTU Secretary. The recommendation was made by Hawke's mentor at ANU, H. P. Brown, who for a number of years had assisted the ACTU in national wage cases. Hawke decided to abandon his doctoral studies and accept the offer, moving to Melbourne with his wife Hazel.

Australian Council of Trade Unions

Not long after Hawke began work at the ACTU, he became responsible for the presentation of its annual case for higher wages to the national wages tribunal, the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. He was first appointed as an ACTU advocate in 1959. The 1958 case, under previous advocate R.L. Eggleston, had yielded only a five-shilling increase. The 1959 case found for a fifteen-shilling increase, and was regarded as a personal triumph for Hawke. He went on to attain such success and prominence in his role as an ACTU advocate that, in 1969, he was encouraged to run for the position of ACTU President, despite the fact that he had never held elected office in a trade union.

He was elected ACTU President in 1969 on a modernising platform by the narrow margin of 399 to 350, with the support of the left of the union movement, including some associated with the Communist Party of Australia. He later credited Ray Gietzelt, General Secretary of the FMWU, as the single most significant union figure in helping him achieve this outcome. Questioned after his election on his political stance, Hawke stated that "socialist is not a word I would use to describe myself", saying instead his approach to politics was pragmatic. His commitment to the cause of Jewish Refuseniks purportedly led to a planned assassination attempt on Hawke by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and its Australian operative Munif Mohammed Abou Rish.

In 1971, Hawke along with other members of the ACTU requested that South Africa send a non-racially biased team for the rugby union tour, with the intention of unions agreeing not to serve the team in Australia. Prior to arrival, the Western Australian branch of the Transport Workers' Union, and the Barmaids' and Barmens' Union, announced that they would serve the team, which allowed the Springboks to land in Perth. The tour commenced on 26 June and riots occurred as anti-apartheid protesters disrupted games. Hawke and his family started to receive malicious mail and phone calls from people who thought that sport and politics should not mix. Hawke remained committed to the ban on apartheid teams and later that year, the South African cricket team was successfully denied and no apartheid team was to ever come to Australia again. It was this ongoing dedication to racial equality in South Africa that would later earn Hawke the respect and friendship of Nelson Mandela.

In industrial matters, Hawke continued to demonstrate a preference for, and considerable skill at, negotiation, and was generally liked and respected by employers as well as the unions he advocated for. As early as 1972, speculation began that he would seek to enter the Parliament of Australia and eventually run to become the Leader of the Australian Labor Party. But while his professional career continued successfully, his heavy drinking and womanising placed considerable strains on his family life.