Bob Hawke’s complicated relationship with drinking

He could skol two pints of beer in 11 seconds, but Bob Hawke’s relationship with grog was more complicated than you might think.

Australians are known around the world for their love of a tipple, so it’s perhaps no surprise one of its most beloved politicians did too.

Bob Hawke could drink everybody he knew under the table in his heyday, and he could skol a beer at breakneck speed — a legendary party trick he picked up in his Oxford University days — right up until the final years of his life.

But while Mr Hawke, who died yesterday aged 89, was well-known for his drinking exploits, he didn’t actually touch a drop of alcohol when he was PM.

Alcohol came to be a useful tool for the aspiring politician when he was a rising trade union figure.

“He probably used alcohol more than any public figure, any leader in our history,” former NSW premier Bob Carr told ABC.

Former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke always enjoyed a cold one. Picture. Phil Hillyard

“He was drunk a lot of the time. He obviously used alcohol as a way of bringing down barriers and gaining quick intimacy, steering people toward some emotion-laden compromise.”

But despite this reputation, Mr Hawke gave up the grog altogether when he was prime minister and didn’t start drinking again until 1993 — two years after he was defeated in a leadership challenge and stepped down as prime minister.

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“He gave up drinking in 1980 when he went into parliament, and when he was prime minister he was drinking non-alcoholic wines and all that sort of thing, but as soon as he left office, we went back on the grog,” his political contemporary Graham Richardson told news.com.au.

“He could have never become prime minister if he carried on drinking the way he was.”

Mr Hawke explained why it was so important he gave up the beers.

“I said to myself, ‘If you are going to become prime minister of this country, you cannot be in a position where you can make a fool of yourself in front of the country’,” he said. “I

never had a drop for the whole period I was prime minister.”

Mr Hawke was a legendary drinker in his union days.

Before taking office, Mr Hawke was “drinking all the time” in a way that would “kill any modern-day politician’s career”, Mr Richardson said.

But, at the time, Mr Richardson said Mr Hawke’s reputation as a “larrikin” helped working-class Aussie voters relate to a politician in a way they had never done before.

An ABC documentary, Hawke: The Larrikin and The Leader, which aired last year, showed how the Labor powerhouse’s reputation began in his university days when he set a “world record” by skolling a yard glass — equivalent two-and-a-half pints of beer — in 11 seconds.

“It was very hard to keep up with him because he could do something the rest of us couldn’t. He could just open his throat up,” Mr Richardson said. “His body is a bit different to yours and mine. He had that extra drinking ability that the rest of us don’t have.”

Bill Kelty, a former Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary, backed this up, telling the ABC: “Bob was the world’s number one drinker. He could drink and drink.”

Mr Kelty said this reputation also helped Mr Hawke solidify his position among union officials before he took office.

“The union officials could really drink too, but Bob could outdrink them all,” Mr Kelty said in the documentary.

He added Mr Hawke would often be in the pub by 11.30am, and he would remain there for the rest of the day — sometimes drinking up to 20 beers a day.

The former prime minister even had his own brand of beer. Source: Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images.

“It was not just a drinking hole but a political decision-making hole,” Mr Kelty said. “And he’d be there until 11pm. But, then he’d be the first at the ACTU meeting the next morning as if he hadn’t had a drop to drink.”

“But he didn’t need to spend all day in the pub,” Mr Richardson said. “He’d get rotten pretty quickly, and there were plenty of times I had to carry him to bed. So, he had to give it up, and he that’s what he did.”

Mr Kelty told ABC he drove the former PM home one night after a drinking session, and his late wife Hazel wasn’t happy because Mr Hawke had won a “Father of the Year” community award.

“She said, ‘I don’t know who the judges are, but they must be on opium’,” Mr Kelty said.

However, Mr Richardson told news.com.au Mr Hawke was so driven it was easy for him to knock the grog on the head immediately.

Mr Hawke gave up the booze as soon as he became Prime Minister. Picture: Instagram

“He always knew that he wanted to be prime minister,” he said. “So, when he stopped, he didn’t have a drop for something like 11 years.”

Mr Richardson said Mr Hawke got away with his antics because of the simplicity of the time.

“There was no internet, and nobody taking pictures or recording,” he said. “But today, if you did anything, it would be all over social media in a flash. You could slur your words and fall all over the place, and nobody would know about it.

In the documentary, Mr Hawke said: “I knew I had to change, and the major change, of course, was giving up the grog. I was not prepared to offer myself for leadership in a state where I could disgrace my country.”

However, Mr Richardson believes the squeaky-clean image of modern-day politicians in Australia has had a negative effect on politics.

“These days everybody is so scared of making mistakes,” he said. “The Hawke era was a great era. The standard was just much higher.”

The documentary also follows Mr Hawke’s journey from election night in 1983 when Malcolm Fraser hoped to catch the opposition off guard.

Graham Richardson said Mr Hawke represented a golden age of Australian politics. Source: Ryan Osland/The Australian

However, Mr Hawke had been a familiar face on Aussie TV for decades as a the kingpin of the union movement.

He had studied law and then economics at Oxford University, setting him apart from his union peers, the majority of whom had no tertiary education.

The documentary shows how he used this experience to fight for workers’ wages back in Australia, which at the time played out like a courtroom drama.

Blanche d’Alpuget, Mr Hawke’s biographer who he married in 1995, told the ABC he was a force to be reckoned with while fighting for higher wages in court.

“He was terribly aggressive with the judges,” she said in the documentary. “They were shocked by his behaviour.”

And it worked. In Mr Hawke’s first pay case, he won workers their biggest pay rise in six years.

“I established an enormous reputation immediately, and I was a national figure from then on,” Mr Hawke told the documentary makers.

The first part of the documentary, which airs on Sunday on ABC, highlights how Mr Hawke made a name for himself and won the country’s top job.

Mr Richardson said we may never see a politician like Mr Hawke again.

“For Australian men, he was very much what they wanted to be, and all the women wanted to go to bed with him,” he said. “He had it all going for him.”

Hawke: The Larrikin and The Leader is available for viewing online.