MPs unite to remember Hawkey, Labor’s most beloved leader

In Canberra today you were in the minority if you didn’t have a colourful anecdote about Hawkey.

Anthony Albanese and Scott Morrison during the condolence motion. Picture: Kym Smith

Penny Wong recalls going to see Bob Hawke after Labor’s 2013 loss.

“He said ‘how are you love?’ and I said ‘oh you know, it’s pretty hard being in opposition’. He said ‘oh well I wouldn’t know’. Not much more to say really.”

Hawke served as Leader of the Opposition for just 36 days — 3 February 1983 to 11 March 1983.

“No doubt a great mercy,” Scott Morrison mused. “In a coincidence, the current Leader of the Opposition equals that record [tomorrow — today — on Thursday]!”

“Are you saying something?!” Anthony Albanese bellowed from across the chamber, as newly demoted Ed Husic chanted from the backbench, “election now!”

The day set aside to pay tribute to Labor’s most beloved and longest serving leader was always going to be entertaining. You’re in the minority it seems, if you don’t have a colourful anecdote about Hawkey.

MORE: MPs remember Hawke

“He would hand the microphone to everyone when it came to the choruses but the moment it got to the verses he would seize it back, because only Bob was allowed to sing the verses,” Labor frontbencher Tony Burke said about Hawke’s infamous renditions of Waltzing Matilda and Solidarity Forever.

“If anyone, even though they didn’t have the microphone, tried to join in, they’d get a sharp look and they’d be told that was for him.

Tony Burke recalls BYO beer. Picture Kym Smith

Christian Porter remembers a DOA television. Picture: Kym Smith.

Burke — a coeliac- recalled how the former PM’s eyebrows sharpened with shock and disbelief when he refused a Bob Hawke branded beer. From that day on Burke always made sure to bring his own gluten-free beverages to the notorious long drinking sessions.

Nationals leader Michael McCormack recalls being at the Sydney Cricket Ground not that long ago when Hawke skolled a beer and “the crowd just went off”.

Josh Frydenberg recalled how he helped secure Hawke’s portrait being hung at Oxford University, where the former PM completed a Rhodes Scholarship and entered the book of Guinness World Records in 1963 for downing a yard of ale in 11 seconds.

But when the bill for portrait came in, the Treasurer was left wondering how to pay it. Until a horse owned by Hawke and John Singleton had a win at the track.

“The next morning, I called Hawke and said is there any chance your friends can tip some money into it? He said ‘I’ll see what I can do’.” And, lo the deal was done.

“It struck me, at the end of the day, he was just delighted to be Bob Hawke,” Marles said.

Head in his phone, Bill Shorten barely raised an eye as he waited for his time at the lectern. But he did offer a single chuckle when Warren Snowden declared Hawke era as “the days when the Left had a position on the Budget”.

Shorten spoke about the last time he met Hawke at his home in Sydney, where the former PM sat on his balcony with a crossword, strawberry milkshake and cigar.

Bill Shorten speaks during the condolence motion. Picture Kym Smith

In his first public speech since leading Labor to an election loss, Shorten didn’t offer up any words about recent history. Later in the corridor he was overheard telling someone that offered up their condolences, “every time I feel a bit down, I think about those kids in the cancer ward.”

But back to Bob, who saved Mathias Cormann from a potential public relations nightmare when Sir Peter Cosgrove produced three cigars during a function.

“As I was thinking about the mobile phones with cameras on the other side of the window and what I should be doing, the other two cigars disappeared in Bob’s pocket,” Cormann said. “The political dilemma was averted for which I’m eternally grateful.”

Morrison spoke about Hawke’s “great romance” with the Australian people, including that infamous day on 26 September, 1983 when the PM was a mere teenager.

“The gaundy red, white and blue jacket emblazoned with the word ‘Australia’. How good was that! Sadly they don’t make prime ministerial jackets like that anymore.”

Morrison stopped short of declaring that Hawke “had a go and got a go”, but the sentiment was implied.

Labor frontbencher Mark Butler said he was overjoyed in his last meeting with Hawke over the summer, when the former PM told him he had finally “broken bread” with Paul Keating.

Attorney-General Christian Porter says he realised the breadth of the appeal of Hawke when he witnessed his grandmother Norma throw a vase at her TV when Keating was PM circa 1992/93. The TV was DOA.

When Porter asked the life-long Liberal voter why, Norma said: “They should bring back Bob Hawke. He was a much better bloke — and at least he liked cricket”.

Incidentally, Norma is the genealogical link that makes Porter and Bob Katter family relatives. But that’s a story for another day.

Porter also threw in a West Australian tale for good measure. In 1952, Hawke was a gardener at the University of Western Australia campus rose gardens hauling manure by horse and cart.

“The horse decided it wasn’t much interested in completing the remainder of the work,” Porter said. “Bob approached this problem in a conciliatory way attempting to have a word with the horse to see if he couldn’t persuade it. The horse wasn’t convinced — bolted. The cart ripped open Bob’s thigh. On that same day the South African cricket side was playing the Governor’s XI at James Oval at UWA. Bob stumbled onto the field where he found the South African middle-order batsman Roy McLean. Roy promptly clasped his hands on Bob’s thigh to stop the bleeding until the ambulance arrived.”

Even Malcolm Roberts confessed that he voted for Labor in the 1984 election and was teased about it for years by his father. Alas, like a tree falling in the woods, there was no one was there to hear it as the chamber emptied when the One Nation Senator rose to his feet.

“I always felt like he treated me as a comrade and that meant so much to me, to be treated as a comrade,” former Labor deputy Tanya Plibersek said.

A sentiment that wasn’t shared by all. One Labor member refused to offer himself up to the Church of Bob because, “I actually knew him, unlike the other platitudes”.