Piers Akerman: Bob Hawke’s funeral left us wondering how Australia lost its momentum
There are very few genuine friendships that extend across party lines, and more’s the pity, because Mr Hawke and Mr Howard worked hard to unite the nation on their election, writes Piers Akerman.
Setting aside the emotional outpouring engendered by Bob Hawke’s impressive memorial service, a moment’s reflection upon the former Labor PM’s life and times left many Australians wondering how the nation lost the momentum Mr Hawke encouraged. Not his famed ability to swallow a yard of beer nor his notorious womanising, but his ability to see the need for reform and his determination to fight for what he saw as justice without any ifs or buts.
I was fortunate enough to get to know Bob Hawke when he was still the advocate for the ACTU and I was assigned to the industrial round for the short-lived Melbourne newspaper Newsday. Mr Hawke’s office was across Lygon street from the Trades Hall office I worked out of and we both drank at what was then the Lygon Hotel, now the John Curtin Hotel and a popular music venue.
In the late 60s it was a typical tile-walled inner city pub inhabited by drinkers who choked down their beers as if 6 o’clock closing was about to be reintroduced.
Mr Hawke had attended Perth Modern School, up the road from where I had lived, and WA University and we were both well acquainted with Steve’s, the Nedlands Park Hotel, where the legendary Hazel McHenry looked after her student customers with a motherly concern.
In short, we had some shared history and he was welcoming when we first met and greeted me warmly whenever we subsequently met.
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On occasion, when he had been on the tiles with women he would insist I return to his Sandringham home at some ungodly early hour so he could tell his long-suffering wife Hazel that we had been drinking most of the night and time has escaped us.
In her dressing gown, Hazel Hawke would rustle up eggs and bacon and we would talk about the issues of the day.
I was at the Paddington RSL in late 1969 when Mr Hawke clinched the support of the Left-wing unions in his successful bid to succeed Albert Monk as president of the ACTU, defeating Harold Souter, the secretary who had expected to be promoted as a matter of course. Mr Hawke outsmarted him, the position of president had never before been voted upon, and the young advocate marshalled the numbers, won the day, and a memorable night ensued at an establishment on McLeay Street in the rowdy Cross, courtesy of the Models and Mannequins Guild.
He was a larrikin, a rogue, and a womaniser until he finally married Blanche d’Alpuget, who spoke so eloquently of their love Friday.
That there were four former prime ministers present. Paul Keating, John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott, and a video presentation from a fifth, Julia Gillard, speaks to a decency which has departed parliamentary life.
During the recent election campaign the Labor leader in the Senate and shadow foreign minister Penny Wong churlishly refused to shake the opponent of Senator Simon Birmingham.
The Senate chamber not infrequently echoes with hateful remarks from the Greens leader Richard Di Natale and his colleague Sarah Hanson-Young. The Lower House, too, is not immune from disgraceful interjections.
There are very few genuine friendships that extend across party lines, and more’s the pity, because Mr Hawke and Mr Howard worked hard to unite the nation on their election.
Mr Hawke and his Treasurer Paul Keating are rightly credited with economic and industrial reform but it is rarely acknowledged by the Left-wing commentariat that their reforms were not only unopposed but wholeheartedly supported by the Liberal-National Party Coalition in Opposition.
Could a Hawke be elected today? It would seem unlikely though the ALP clearly has a far greater tolerance for larrikins than permitted in either Coalition party.
If a man whose affairs were as public as were Mr Hawke’s, it is more than likely some aggrieved woman would claim victimhood and the MeToo movement would express its outrage and so on …
His drinking would probably not be as problematic as the ALP elders demanded he give up the grog and he complied, almost entirely, until his prime ministership ended.
But he had little time for trivia, he was a truly big picture man and the ALP today is concerned with nonsensical irrelevances such as gender fluidity and homosexual marriage, quotas for women and the laughable Emily’s List, which has ensured that dud women get priority appointments over clearly competent men — how else could the failed former NSW Premier Kristina Keneally rate a place on the shadow front bench?
He was a giant compared to those jostling for a seat in the Labor sun today, something that some older Labor figures noted after the tribal outpourings at the Opera House which indicated that so many still put their party interests before those of the nation.
What would Mr Hawke have to say about China’s current determination to breach the foundations of its agreements for the status of Hong Kong before the historic handover in 1997, given that after the horrors of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, he permitted 40,000 Chinese to escape the totalitarian regime and settle here?
Mr Hawke was not only a strong supporter of Israel, he drew upon the social democracy for a number of his policies. What would he say to those within the ALP who now spout the rhetoric of the terrorist-supporting Palestinian Authority which encourages the murder of innocent Israeli civilians?
Current Opposition leader Anthony Albanese said Mr Hawke had once rhetorically asked him “Do you know why I have credibility?” And answered his own question “Because I don’t exude morality.”
He didn’t and he was honest enough to admit his frailties. Vale Bob Hawke, mate.
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