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Bob Hawke

Robert James Lee Hawke AC GCL (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 Australian Labor Party (ALP), having previously served as the president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions from 1969 to 1980 and president of the Labor Party national executive from 1973 to 1978.

Bob Hawke

  • Lionel Bowen
  • Paul Keating
  • Brian Howe

Bill Hayden

Paul Keating

Malcolm Fraser

Bill Hayden

Robert James Lee Hawke

(1929-12-09)9 December 1929
Border Town, South Australia, Australia

16 May 2019(2019-05-16) (aged 89)
Northbridge, New South Wales, Australia

4

Bert Hawke (uncle)

Hawke was born in Border Town, South Australia.[a] 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.[2] 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 implemented a significant number of reforms, including major economic reforms, the establishment of Landcare, the introduction of the universal healthcare scheme Medicare, brokering the Prices and Incomes Accord, creating APEC, floating the Australian dollar, deregulating the financial sector, introducing the Family Assistance Scheme, 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.[3]


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.[4][5] Hawke is frequently ranked within the upper tier of Australian prime ministers by historians.[6][7][8][9]

Early life and family[edit]

Bob Hawke was born on 9 December 1929 in Border Town, South Australia,[10] the second child of Arthur "Clem" Hawke (1898–1989), a Congregationalist minister, and his wife Edith Emily (Lee) (1897–1979)[11][12] (known as Ellie), a schoolteacher.[13] His uncle, Bert, was the Labor premier of Western Australia between 1953 and 1959.[14]


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.[14] 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.[15] At the age of fifteen, he presciently boasted to friends that he would one day become the prime minister of Australia.[16]


At the age of seventeen, the same age that his brother Neil had died, 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.[17][18] He joined the Labor Party in 1947 at the age of eighteen.[19][20]

Member of Parliament[edit]

Hawke's first attempt to enter Parliament came during the 1963 federal election. He stood in the seat of Corio in Geelong and managed to achieve a 3.1% swing against the national trend, although he fell short of ousting longtime Liberal incumbent Hubert Opperman.[49] Hawke rejected several opportunities to enter Parliament throughout the 1970s, something he later wrote that he "regretted". He eventually stood for election to the House of Representatives at the 1980 election for the safe Melbourne seat of Wills, winning it comfortably. Immediately upon his election to Parliament, Hawke was appointed to the Shadow Cabinet by Labor Leader Bill Hayden as Shadow Minister for Industrial Relations.[50]


Hayden, after having led the Labor Party to narrowly lose the 1980 election, was increasingly subject to criticism from Labor MPs over his leadership style. To quell speculation over his position, Hayden called a leadership spill on 16 July 1982, believing that if he won he would be guaranteed to lead Labor through to the next election.[51] Hawke decided to challenge Hayden in the spill, but Hayden defeated him by five votes; the margin of victory, however, was too slim to dispel doubts that he could lead the Labor Party to victory at an election.[52] Despite his defeat, Hawke began to agitate more seriously behind the scenes for a change in leadership, with opinion polls continuing to show that Hawke was a far more popular public figure than both Hayden and Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. Hayden was further weakened after Labor's unexpectedly poor performance at a by-election in December 1982 for the Victorian seat of Flinders, following the resignation of the sitting member, former deputy Liberal leader Phillip Lynch. Labor needed a swing of 5.5% to win the seat and had been predicted by the media to win, but could only achieve 3%.[53]


Labor Party power-brokers, such as Graham Richardson and Barrie Unsworth, now openly switched their allegiance from Hayden to Hawke.[53] More significantly, Hayden's staunch friend and political ally, Labor's Senate Leader John Button, had become convinced that Hawke's chances of victory at an election were greater than Hayden's. Initially, Hayden believed that he could remain in his job, but Button's defection proved to be the final straw in convincing Hayden that he would have to resign as Labor Leader.[54] Less than two months after the Flinders by-election result, Hayden announced his resignation as Leader of the Labor Party on 3 February 1983. Hawke was subsequently elected as Leader unopposed on 8 February,[55] and became Leader of the Opposition in the process.[54] Having learned that morning about the possible leadership change, on the same that Hawke assumed the leadership of the Labor Party, Malcolm Fraser called a snap election for 5 March 1983, unsuccessfully attempting to prevent Labor from making the leadership change.[56] However, he was unable to have the Governor-General confirm the election before Labor announced the change.


At the 1983 election, Hawke led Labor to a landslide victory, achieving a 24-seat swing and ending seven years of Liberal Party rule.


With the election called at the same time that Hawke became Labor leader this meant that Hawke never sat in Parliament as Leader of the Opposition having spent the entirety of his short Opposition leadership in the election campaign which he won.[57]

1979: Companion of the Order of Australia (AC), "For services to trade unionism and industrial relations"[153]

Australia

Hawke–Keating government

First Hawke Ministry

Second Hawke Ministry

Third Hawke Ministry

Fourth Hawke Ministry

 – Time, 14 March 1983

"Hawke Swoops into Power"

Archived 14 February 2022 at the Wayback Machine – Australia's Prime Ministers / National Archives of Australia

Robert Hawke

Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre

on C-SPAN

Appearances