The former PM turned 80 last week. Glen Williams looks at the remarkable life of one of Australia’s most popular leaders.
He has been called the heart and soul of Australia. Silver haired, charismatic, fiery tempered, a man of easy tears, champion of the worker, Australia’s mate, a Rhodes Scholar, the lovable larrikin.
Whatever label is pressed to the man, the fact remains, Robert James Lee Hawke is the most popular Australian Prime Minister of all time. A lover, a fighter, a hedonist – the labels are endless, but all serve to heighten public intrigue and interest in the man whose mum, Ellie, instilled in him a strong sense of self from the moment he was born in Bordertown, South Australia, on December 9, 1929.
Ellie, a school teacher and champion of women’s rights, sowed the belief in Bob from a tender age that he would one day grow up to become Prime Minister.
His father, Clem, a Congregationalist minister, doted on his son and could see his charismatic spark, telling all, “Bobbie had an outflowing magic about him.”
Raised in Perth, at 15, Bob took up his mother’s belief, boasting he would one day be PM. He joined the Labor Party in 1947.
Academically brilliant, he was successful in applying for a Rhodes Scholarship at the end of 1952. By 1953 he was ensconced at Oxford University completing a Bachelor of Letters. But his serious academic life was offset by regular, high-spirited carousing.
Bob set a new world speed record for beer drinking, an achievement he would later say contributed to his political success by endearing him to a nation of beer lovers.
For that is the magic of Bob – his ability to appeal to the everyday, battling Aussie.
He married Hazel at Trinity Church, Perth, in 1956, and in 1957, while studying arbitration law at the Australian National University, Canberra, accepted a job with the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) as a research officer.
Moving to Melbourne, he proved triumphant with the ACTU, gaining for the Australian worker a 15 shilling ($1.50) – roughly 10 per cent – wage rise. He became a champion of the worker, and was elected president of the ACTU in 1969.
Bob was brilliant at negotiating and was greatly liked and respected by employers as well as unions. But as his career flourished, and speculation began that he’d soon enter politics, his personal life was clouded with rumours of womanising and heavy use of alcohol.
