Only one messiah for Labor

BOB Hawke's ruthless elevation to the ALP leadership was a turning point for politics and the nation.

Bob Hawke and Bill Hayden

IT took just 15 minutes for the Labor caucus meeting on February 8, 1983, to formally elect Bob Hawke to become the party's 13th federal leader after the resignation of Bill Hayden.

"It hurts and it is still hurting," Hayden told his colleagues. After announcing his resignation five days earlier, he went into the bathroom and wept.

In his autobiography, published 13 years later, he wrote: "It hurt like hell revisited several times." It probably still hurts.

Labor's decision to terminate Hayden's leadership and install Hawke 30 years ago was ruthless. But it was managed efficiently and compassionately and it paid a political dividend: electoral victory.

"I felt elated," Hawke tells Inquirer. "But I also understood how Bill felt. There was a sense of sadness as Bill had done so many good things for the party. But I was absolutely convinced that I had a better chance of winning the election, and that was a view shared by a majority of my colleagues."

There was no other candidate. Hawke was the clear choice. Few harboured doubts that he could turn what was perhaps a likely victory into a near-certain one at the next election.

"The feeling inside the party about Hayden stepping down was emotionally mixed," says Kim Beazley, a Labor MP at the time and now Australia's ambassador to the US.

"Hayden was well liked in the party and his effective leadership in the 1980 election was appreciated. However, there was total confidence that Hawke coming in would see the party to victory."

It was one of the most dramatic developments in Australian politics. The impact of that decision reverberates to this day. It caught prime minister Malcolm Fraser by surprise, as he had requested an early election without knowing Labor had switched leaders. He would not have done so had he known he would be facing Hawke.

For Hawke, becoming leader was a step closer to what he believed was his destiny: to become prime minister. Four weeks later, he led Labor to a landslide victory.

The leadership change was largely seamless. The party bonded during the trials of an immediate election campaign and made a compact with Hayden to minimise any fallout.

Despite the objections of deputy leader Lionel Bowen, Hayden asked for and was given the shadow foreign affairs portfolio. He set aside his personal anguish and became an effective foreign minister.

"I believe that a drover's dog could lead the Labor Party to victory the way the country is," Hayden said at a press conference. "A bit of defiance before the axe fell was justified," he reflected years later.

A reminder of the brutal nature of politics occurred that night when the ABC's Richard Carleton asked Hawke if he felt embarrassed at "the blood on his hands". It earned one of Hawke's typical rebukes.

Today, Hawke's supporters are unrepentant. "I was a strong Hawke supporter," former senator Gareth Evans says. "While not undermining Hayden, for whom I shared respect and affection, I had worked actively to position Hawke for the leadership should Hayden falter."

"I was delighted to see Hawke becoming leader," recalls Beazley. "He had an extraordinary blend of charisma and electability, and great policy and administrative competence. I could not think of anyone better prepared for the prime ministership."

But, for Hayden's supporters, the leadership coup still rankles.

"The events of 1983 are a moral turning point in the history of the federal Labor Party," says former Labor MP Neal Blewett, "marking as it did the triumph of the 'whatever it takes to win' philosophy. Never before had a successful Labor opposition leader been denied his opportunity to become prime minister."

Despite his comments, Blewett recognises Hawke's unparalleled success in winning elections and the substantial achievements of the government he led.

Hayden was widely respected within the party. During the Whitlam government he had overseen the introduction of Medibank, the forerunner to Medicare. As treasurer in the final year, he worked tirelessly to restore the economic integrity of the government and produced a responsible budget. After the Whitlam government's defeat in December 1975, Hayden rejected Whitlam's offer to take over the leadership. (So did Hawke, who was not then in parliament.) As the only Labor MP to hold his seat in Queensland, Hayden was shell-shocked. He refused to serve in the shadow ministry.

But in May 1977 Hayden challenged Whitlam for the party leadership. He narrowly lost, 32 votes to 30. He eventually became leader when Whitlam resigned after the 1977 election drubbing.

Hayden became a champion of internal party reform, he revitalised Labor's policies, rejuvenated the frontbench and remade the party's image in the post-Whitlam years. He narrowly lost the 1980 election --the election that saw Hawke elected to parliament.

To settle the endless speculation about Hawke's leadership ambitions, amid widespread leaking and undermining, Hayden called a ballot in July 1982 to flush Hawke out. Hayden defeated Hawke by 42 votes to 37.

Despite the setback, Hawke's leadership ambitions intensified. Concern about Hayden's leadership continued to grow, especially after Labor's failure to win the Flinders by-election in December 1982. Yet by the time the leadership issue exploded in January 1983, Labor led the Coalition in the Morgan Gallup poll by 48 per cent to 43.5 per cent. Internal Labor polling showed Hayden was likely to win the 1983 election, but switching to Hawke would make it almost certain.

Hawke was a tantalising choice for Labor. He was the most popular person in Australia. He had been in the public eye since the 1950s and 60s as advocate and then president of the ACTU. He was known as the great conciliator for his ability to resolve industrial disputes. He promised to "bring Australia together" through consensus politics.

A Rhodes scholar, an Oxford graduate and a Reserve Bank board member, he managed to combine intellect and ability with a larrikin image. He held the Oxford drinking record. A pub was named in his honour. The Bob Hawke Drinking Song raced up the song charts.

He was unlike any other politician. He possessed a unique understanding of the electorate and it embraced him warmly. He was charisma personified. His popularity, harnessed for political purposes by his colleagues, always lay in the public, not the party.

In contrast, Fraser was a divisive and unpopular prime minister governing during recession and drought. He faced instability when his leadership was challenged by Andrew Peacock in April 1982 but defeated Peacock by 54 votes to 27.

Amid growing doubt over Hayden's leadership, and Labor's prospects for electoral victory, senior party figures gathered in Brisbane in early February 1983.

They came to bury former Labor head - albeit acting - Frank Forde, who had become prime minister after the death of John Curtin in 1945. They left having buried two leaders.

When the shadow cabinet met on February 3, Hayden had already decided to resign. He had met senator John Button several times, who urged him to resign and argued for it in a long and heartfelt letter.

Blewett recalls that he had conveyed to Hayden that he and others would support him. When he learned about Button's intervention, he was angry and told him. Blewett recalls Button saying: "Without me there would have been blood everywhere."

Not knowing Hayden had made way for Hawke, Fraser visited the governor-general, Ninian Stephen, and requested an election. Later that day, Fraser said: "It will be the first election when two Labor leaders were knocked off in one go." It was characteristic of his defiant hubris.

Hawke's ascendancy was like no other in Labor history. No leader had been so brutally forced to stand aside by his colleagues. Hayden had defeated Hawke in 1982. Whitlam had beaten Hayden in 1977. Whitlam had defeated Jim Cairns in 1968.

The lesson for Labor was that leadership change can achieve victory. This was confirmed when Paul Keating tore down Hawke in 1991 - the first time a Labor prime minister was challenged - and led Labor to victory in 1993. Since then, however, leadership changes have produced mixed results.

"The abandonment of a tradition of loyalty to leaders," Blewett argues, "marked a moral deterioration which has cursed the Labor Party ever since - as witness the leadership shambles of the first decade of the present century."

Hawke says this view is overstated. "After all, political parties are not there simply to provide opposition forever," he says. "Political parties are about winning government. It would be a dereliction of their duty if they failed to do all they could to win an election. That would be a negation of everything that politics is about."

All political parties are vulnerable to the idea of a leader as a messiah. Leaders do matter. But there was only one messiah and his name was Hawke.