RJ Hawke has left us.
Kris Kristofferson once wrote a song about Johnny Cash, and it included the couplet, 'He's a walking contradiction; partly truth and partly fiction.' When it comes to reflecting on the life, legend and legacy of Bob Hawke, that line covers a lot of ground.
Hawke became Prime Minister in 1983. I was six years old. So, in all meaningful ways, he was my first Prime Minister. And I suppose, as all children do, I really did think of him as mine. It was only when I was a great deal older that I came to understand that millions of Australians, of every conceivable age and every conceivable walk of life, thought exactly the same way. Hawke was the everyman who rose to the top. He was our leader, and yet he was one of us. We liked him. Many of us, especially as he became an increasingly silver fox in his later years, realised that we loved him.
It's difficult to put into words just how rare and extraordinary this is. Because for all of his bonhomie, Hawke was always exceptional. He was a Rhodes Scholar. And he was probably the only Rhodes Scholar whose scholastic aptitude was outstripped by his beer-downing talents.
The only person I can think of who embodied Hawke's incredible duality is Adam Gilchrist. A superlative batsman and keeper, and yet, a cricketer who never seemed to be playing as though he was anything other than a boy in his backyard, gleefully trying to slog it over the fence. A world-class talent who your grandmother loved. That was Gilly. And that was Hawkey. In the same way that Gilchrist set for all of his successors an impossible benchmark, so too, did Hawke. In the decades subsequent to his tenure, we've never come remotely close to having a Prime Minister with his charisma. In truth, perhaps we never will.
But of course, despite the worrying trend of elections becoming increasingly presidential in style, we don't (at least we ought not) elect a Prime Minister based on the criteria that he is loveable, or even likable. And leaders are often supposed to make decisions that are in the national interest, which requires them to withstand considerable unpopularity for the greater - or the moral - good. In this area, Hawke did not disappoint.
He took a firm stand against a rising anti-Asian sentiment that was being promulgated by the historian, Geoffrey Blainey and the then-Opposition Leader, John Howard. Hawke was warned by his Cabinet that pushing back against this sentiment could be a highly unpopular move, as many in the community were supportive of this racially-targeted reduction of immigration. Hawke simply asked them to get to work on equipping him with whatever facts and arguments were required to change the public's mind.
It would not be the only time he took such a strong stand against racism. At CHOGM in 1987, he delivered what was later described (by the then South African Foreign Minister) as 'the dagger in the heart' of Apartheid, by carefully and covertly ensuring that South Africa would be hit with an unsustainable barrage of tariffs and sanctions until it was disbanded. Hawke didn't have to do this. It was not, in any way, in Australia's national interest. It was simply in the moral interest of humanity. Hawke took charge. Quietly. Without fuss. And the job got done.
Bob Hawke knew that we simply cannot stand both apart and together simultaneously. One of his greatest strengths was his desire and ability to find common ground with people. He had charisma to burn, but he was a listener. He could charm people, but he did so with the goal of bringing them together, not to divide them. Put simply, Bob Hawke liked people. It shouldn't be a rare quality in politicians, but increasingly, it is. It was Hawke's ability to negotiate that created the landmark Accords. This involved getting Unions to accept less than they desired, which in the eyes of many in the Union movement, could easily have been seen as the ultimate betrayal, given his tenure as head of the ACTU. But Bob made it work. It's never worked quite so well since.
Student retention rates. Economic Reform. Medicare. His list of achievements is a bloody long one. But that's not what I remember. For me, two things stand out.
I remember his tears.
Hawke was not afraid to show emotion. He was as Aussie a bloke as Aussie blokes come, and yet, he shed tears. Bob made it ok to feel. His joys were real, beaming out of him when we won the America's Cup. His grief was real, when speaking on the death of his beloved father, Clem. And the anguish, sorrow, and anger in his voice, with tears running down his face, when recounting the depth of atrocity committed in Tiananmen, is as moving today as it was at the time. Hawke reminded all of us that to live truly is to feel fully. And he made us better as a result.
My other abiding memory is of Hawke saying 'No Australian child will be living in poverty by the year 1990'. Many saw that statement as a noose around his neck; ideological claptrap. To me, it was one of the most powerful statements of intent and aspiration I'd ever heard. Think of where we'd be as a nation, as a peoples, if we'd achieved it. After all, was the goal itself flawed? Should we aim to have some children living in poverty? Would this be an acceptable objective? I hardly think so.
The giving of voice to aspiration is avoided by the majority of would-be leaders, because it is so easy to tear it down. It's always been easier to wreck than to build. Negative campaigning is potent. It can be bloody effective. But it's not governing. Hawke might have failed to fulfil this promise, but not for lack of trying. And has Bernard Shaw once said, “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”
Hawkey was that bloke that everyone liked. You never felt like he was better than you, but secretly, you knew that he was, and you were bloody grateful. He was the mate who'd beat you in a race to the pub, only to be standing there hold the beer he'd just bought you.
Cheers, Bob. You were our leader.
And you were our friend.