A treaty with Australia’s Indigenous people and addressing climate change were two issues of unfinished business that Bob Hawke saw for Australia, according to one of his oldest friends and most important collaborators.
Bill Kelty, a former head of the Australian union movement who knew Mr Hawke for more than 50 years, told The Age and Sydney Morning Herald on Friday that he had seen Mr Hawke just a few weeks ago.
Bob Hawke chats with former ACTU warrior Bill Kelty at Parliament House in 2011.Credit: Andrew Meares
He knew he was dying, but he was still thinking deeply about the world, Mr Kelty said.
Mr Hawke wanted to live long enough to see a treaty with Indigenous Australians.
"He was so heavily committed to it and we still haven’t got to it," Mr Kelty said.
Mr Hawke also wanted to live long enough to see serious change occur in policies to address climate change.
Kelty at the ACTU Congress in Brisbane last year.Credit: AAP
"When I was talking to him, here was a bloke who recognised he was dying, and these were the major issues to him. Here’s a bloke not well, still thinking to the last minute of his life," he said.
"I saw him and I said I loved him, I did love him, we loved him and he knew Australians loved him," Mr Kelty said, choking back tears.
Kelty gets a hug from Hawke at the ACTU Congress in 1989.Credit: Andrew Taylor
"He said he was dying and was dying with dignity, he wasn’t worried. But he was hoping to hold on to the election."
His legacy was enormous, Mr Kelty said.
"There’s not a person in this country who doesn’t owe him something."
As ACTU secretary through the Hawke-Keating years, Mr Kelty worked closely with the government to transform the Australian economy through the Prices and Incomes Accord - an agreement between unions and Labor that traded off pay rises for social benefits.
Mr Kelty said he had known Mr Hawke since 1966 and that his relationship during the reform years was built on high levels of trust.
"It required us to do some very, very hard things to give up wage increases (for programs such as Medicare).”
Here was a bloke who recognised he was dying, and ... still thinking to the last minute of his life.
Former ACTU secretary Bill Kelty
"It fundamentally refashioned the wages system and you take the pain on the basis of a promise. If you didn’t trust Bob Hawke or Paul Keating how could we have done it?"
Mr Hawke and Mr Keating were the "great change agents for the Australian economy", he said.
Mr Kelty highlighted nation-changing achievements including the introduction of Medicare, superannuation and much higher education completion rates.
"We’ve got a better healthcare system, we’ve got a better society and much better education system and we’ve got a much, much stronger economy."
Mr Kelty said the Australia of today was unrecognisable to that of before 1983 when Mr Hawke was elected prime minister.
"You can’t believe it’s the same nation. There’s simply no doubt history ... will be incredibly kind to Hawke and Keating," he said.
"History will treat Hawke and Keating as two of the greatest political leaders of all time."
Mr Kelty said Mr Hawke took brave stands on issues that at the time were unpopular.
That included opposition to apartheid in the early 1970s when Mr Hawke was ACTU president, and opposition to French nuclear testing in the Pacific and to the Vietnam War.
His legacy was not just as prime minister from 1983 to 1991. "He was a warrior, a great advocate for the ACTU. He was a principled person."
Bob Hawke and Bill Kelty at Parliament House on July 6th, 1979. Credit: Peter Wells