Labor prime minister enjoyed extraordinary popularity and led one of Australia’s most transformative governments
Bob Hawke was a “common man, an absorber, a listener, and in some mysterious way, a bit of a mirror of the qualities and demands and inputs which Australians project upon him”, the journalist Craig McGregor noted in a profile of Australia’s longest-serving Labor prime minister.
The McGregor profile opens with great verve in 1977, with Hawke ensconced at the Australian Council of Trade Unions, shadowing both Malcolm Fraser as an alternative prime minister, and Bill Hayden for the Labor party leadership. The Hawke of this period “drinks like a fish, swears like a trooper, works like a demon, performs like a playboy, talks like a truckie and acts like a politician”. Hawke, McGregor noted, was the typical Australian but oversized – a relatable quality that connected to him to voters and underwrote his extraordinary popularity as a public figure.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2WHQW50
via
0 Comments