Pelican
UWA Student Newspaper

With Bob Hawke?

Perhaps one of the most enduring images from the eighties is that of a drunken Bob Hawke, clothed in a jacket emblazoned with Australian flags, slurring out a suggestion that every Australian should take a sicky the next day. Whether it be former Governor Generals questioning his penis size or revelations of extra-marital affairs, Bob Hawke always seemed to be beyond his office. He pushed himself forward as a personality, not just a politician, and now seems to have been rewarded by becoming an icon for Australiana. Pelican caught up with the former UWA Guild President, Rhodes Scholar and one time Half-yard drinking champion, and got chatting about life, politics and what happens when machines go bad.
At UWA, you are probably about as famous for your drinking endeavours as you are your political pursuits. I was wondering if you could verify certain claims about your exploits; firstly that you sculled three schooners in 9.3 seconds in 1952?

I don't remember that. As I understood, my big drinking prowess was at Oxford when I sculled 2.5 pints in 11 seconds.

UWA has a proud history of breeding Labor leaders. Do you think that there is any reason for this?

One of the reasons is that in post-war culture, UWA was the only free university in Australia (that is, there were no fees). In that sense you really had a greater opportunity of getting to university if you had talent than you did in other states. Correlated with that was the fact that Western Australia was a small economy. That meant that on one side you had a relatively large supply of competent people being trained academically in Western Australia and a relatively small employment opportunity, so a lot of competent West Australians left WA. It's very hard to generalise these things, but I think that John Curtin was a very big inspiration to those in the Left in Western Australia, having his political base there.

What do you think it means to be an Australian?

It basically means living in a country which is open to the concept of a fair go, but under this government it's getting very faded. It means being a country which has undertaken one of the most remarkable transformations of any country in terms of changing its composition in a very small time period. I'm referring of course to the immigration programme. We bought in almost 6 million migrants and the best part of a million refugees and people on other humanitarian programmes. So what developed was a remarkable country where the fundamental values that we got from those who founded us rule of law, a democratic parliamentary system have been added to, and enriched by the cultures and traditions of people from all of the world. They too have embraced those values so we have been culturally enriched in a way that still keeps a distinctive Australian characteristic committed to those fundamental values and to the concept of ... aargh... that no Australian is intrinsically better than another. We don't have a social class system here. Certainly there are income variations but there is no sense that a person is better because of who he's born to. That bred an Australian rashness, a cock-a-hoopness to the rest of the world.

Where do you think Australia is now situated in terms of the global economy?

Well, statistically we're the eleventh largest economy in the world, the third largest economy in Asia after Japan and China. With a population of 19 million that's quite remarkable. We've diversified our economy quite a great deal from a point where ­ if you look back to Australia's last Olympics in 1955/6 90% of our products were agricultural or mineral processed or unprocessed. Now we are much more diversified where manufactured goods form a larger percentage of our exports than do our primary product. We've become a much more diversified economy, a stronger one, but we certainly can't rest on our laurels.

In terms of Australia becoming the 'clever country,' do you think Australia will soon see a brain drain much like New Zealand has experienced, with the reduction in public education spending?

This Government is criminally neglectful in the whole area of education and development. The world is changing and education and development are becoming more and more important. This Government is running down expenditure in these areas in a way that is putting the future of this country at risk. We've shown that we have got the innovative capacity in many areas to match the rest of the world. You can't do that unless over time you invest in the basic research infrastructure we're running that down. That's got to be reversed or we'll pay a very high price.

Most people can understand it if we look at the recent Olympics. We did incredibly well, we got the fourth highest tally in the world, nearly equal third with China. It's an interesting fact that three out of four Australian medallists either currently are in, or have been through, the Australian Institute of Sport. In other words, our enormous success against the rest of the world in sport is overwhelmingly a product, not only of natural ability but the fact that Australia in the eighties and nineties has invested an enormous amount into the infrastructure which is necessary to produce results in sport. We've shown in that area that by putting in the right levels of investment, we can produce highly competitive international results. The same is true of the economy. Unless we invest in education, research and development, we won't get the results.

Australia has a proud tradition of protest, from the Eureka Stockade to the Shearer's strikes in Queensland and even over the Franklin Dam; all of which had a big impact on the development of the Labor party as well as Australian consciousness. How then would you respond to John Howard labelling the S11 protests 'un-Australian'?

I wouldn't say un-Australian. The concept, as you say has a proud history in Australia. When you look back, generally and in retrospect, protests have been right. Certainly when you look back at the strikes of the nineties, they were right. It wasn't fair that workers were denied the right to organise and be represented by Unions and that was part of the vision of Australia in the twentieth century that they should have that right. The Eureka protesters were right, the Vietnam protesters were right. My concern about the S11 protesters is that they are basically wrong. People are not wrong to have concerns about globalisation and the technological revolution because there are down sides, there are things that have to be considered, such as creating a more equitable distribution of the fruits of globalisation. But these people who want to stop the world with their latter day luddism, they're wrong in their concept. I think Jim Wolfe, the head of the World Bank, got it right. He sympathises with the concerns of the people, but he says the protesters are wrong in saying that there cannot be an improvement from globalisation. The protesters that do have this concern must accept that if properly handled, globalisation can be an instrument for the uplifting of mankind.

Do you think that there is such a thing as being 'un-Australian'?

Ohh... well, what, aargh, you can say is that people act in a way against what would tended to be regarded as the Australian character. I said earlier that I think the concept of a fair go is part of the Australian character , but unfortunately we're seeing things happen which I think are un-Australian because they operate against that principal. For instance these proposals by the government which will put so much money into the rich schools at the expense of the poorer schools, I think that's un-Australian.

You were leading the charge with the Bicentenial celebrations. We're now coming up to a century of federation. Do you think that it's more important that we celebrate 200 years of colonisation or 100 years of being a nation?

I don't think it's one or another. I think it was right to celebrate our Bicentenary but to do it in a way that recognised the forty thousand years of Aboriginal civilisation that was there before European settlement. I think it's right that we celebrate 100 years of Australia as a unified nation, I think that it's appropriate, in that celebration we should remember the still-unresolved reconciliation with the Aboriginal population.

I would like to know, firstly, what your stance is on Reconciliation and secondly, what do you think is stopping the Howard Government from apologising?

The facts are indisputable. We did terrible things to the Aboriginals over many many years of our history. I simply cannot understand a Prime Minister who says "we're not associated with those, that was other people." At the same time he's prepared to identify Australians today with the glories of the past. He glories in it and asks Australians to draw inspiration from past glories. Now you can't have history that way. You can't take just the good things and ignore the bad things. It's illogical and immoral. We've got to have a Prime Minister (and I don't think this one will do it) who will unreservedly say sorry and make sure that we co-operate with the Aboriginal people. We need to genuinely say sorry, they need to genuinely accept our apology and then we can all go about participating in Australia's growth.

Has the Prime Minister refused to apologise out of sheer bloody-mindedness or is there some other reason?

Well, there are some people who have a view about Aboriginals which I find unsavoury. They don't feel comfortable. In Howard's case however it's just stubbornness. He's stated his position and he's sticking to it.

On a more personal note, you're seen as driving the Labor Party in a shift from the Left to the Right. Do you think that this has seen some sort of loss in choice in the Australian electorate where before we had a more obvious left and right wing dynamic?

No, no, I think that's a load of bullshit. There are still very fundamental differences between the Coalition and the Labor Party. We've been talking about one education. There's a fundamental difference there. When we came to office in 1983 after an inordinately long period of Tory Government with just a brief Whitlam respite, just a third of our kids completed secondary education. We fixed that by quite deliberate decisions to give financial support to low and lower middle income families and the completion rate went up to over three quarters. The Labor Party policy still is, while you won't get equality of outcomes, you still should have equality of opportunity. Now these people simply don't believe in equality of opportunity.

More generally, when we came to office, there had been a real reduction of about forty percent on real expenditure on research and development outlays. We turned that around and had it up to the levels of the OECD. Since they came back in 1996, they've turned that right around. There are fundamental differences there.

In terms of health, they are moving more towards an American style system. We believe that the concept of universal coverage and an adequate public health system that will mean no person or family will have to suffer in a financially unacceptable way from ill health.

You can go to other areas. The Labor Party takes a clear view that Asia is an area of opportunity. The Tories still seem to be more apprehensive about Asia.

If you look externally or internally there are still fundamental differences.

Do you think Kim Beazley can lead Labor to win the next election?

He can and I'm sure he will. One of the things you've got to remember is that in the eastern states we now have competent and popular Labor Governments. In 1998 I don't think Bob Carr was as popular as he is now. That is going to make a very big difference. Also, the effect of the GST will have an impact. The Liberal Party's stronghold, small business, is increasingly concerned over the negative impact. The inflationary impact of it is still to be felt at its fullest. If you look at all those facts it is easy to be confident that Beazley will win. He certainly deserves to.

Do you have a favourite anecdote you'd like to share?

Oh there's so many. I think that one of the funniest things that happened to me in my time in the labour movement was in 1969. I was the research officer of the ACTU and was standing for the Presidency. The Biannual congress of the ACTU was being held at the Paddington Town Hall. At the congress, the election was being fought between myself and Al Suder, who was the secretary at the time. The Paddington Town Hall was opposite the Paddington RSL and all the delegates were made honorary members of the RSL for the duration of the congress. I remember I went across before the vote to the RSL and there was this bloke, Terry Gawd, who was the Federal Secretary for the Shipping, Painters and Dockworkers Union. He was a big Scot and an arch-Communist. He was playing the pokies and he had a run, all these coins in the tray. Things were looking marvellous for him, so I went back over to the town hall. I came back about an hour later and Terry was down to his last couple of coins. His previous jolly countenance was replaced with a very dark visage. He put his last coin in, got no result, he was skint so he shook the machine and yelled (puts on Isle of White? accent)

"filthy rotten capitalist contraption."

(dead silence)

It was rather amusing.

I bet it would be.

(dead silence)

Did you always want to be Prime Minister?

Not always. Not when I was four or five (laughs). I went to school and uni and started to get more interested in political matters. When I went to UWA I did a Law Degree, but with no intention of becoming a lawyer. I thought a Law Degree would be useful with whatever I did and certainly that proved to be true. I was never actually sure in those early days what I wanted to do. As I began to get more politically involved I knew that I would at some stage get into Parliament, I wanted to get to the top. I always liked to do as well as I could with whatever I did, whether it was study or sport. As my ideas started to firm up about going into Parliament I thought I'd certainly like to get to the top.

Do you think your ideology changed as the years went by?

I think it's a very remarkable person who isn't more radical when they are younger. In some senses it was a much more ideological world in those days too. As I went through the trade union movement, moved through from research officer to President in the sixties and seventies and then moved into Parliament, the world was going through the most dramatic changes in history. It was absurd and unintelligent in the extreme to think that as the world changed you could necessarily travel by the same route you might have thought was correct earlier. I think it's the mark of an intelligent person that you keep the same values I don't think my values have changed at all. But my concepts about how you give effect to those values has changed over time.

Where is Bob Hawke going to be ten years from now?

The fates be willing I'll still be drawing good health. I hope to still be involved in the same charitable and academic work, but not at the same intensity. I hope I'll still be making some contribution in ten years from now.

Credits for this Edition

Editors: Gawain Davies and Henry F.Skerritt Advertising: Ben Hammond Arts Editor: Gababrielle Holly Film Editor: Simone Mossenson Music Editor: 'Fancy' Dave Bower Eardrum Bleeder: Marty Blum Women's Editor: Emma Wynne Sub-Editors: Alison Jensen, Gretta Luow, Nick Tapper, Kirstyn Lee and Alistair Duncan of which none are to blaime Web Master: James Devenish Design: Kirstyn Lee, Dave Bower, Marty Blum, Simone Mossenson, Gabrielle Holly, Carly Smith, Emma Wynne, Cliodhna Quigley, Nick Tapper, Edward J. Grug III, Gawain Davies and Henry F. Skerritt Artwork: Catherine Traicos, Edward J. Grug III, Lucas, Annemarie Blades, Victor Wycocomo, Peter Blake, Tom Cleave and Jimmy. Photography: Gabrielle Holly (who had the "privilege" of taking the editors' naked photos. We are assured she will make a full recovery), Gawain Davies and Nicola McDougall Thankyou: to Lee Hislop, Caroline Moss, Tim Huggins, Arnold Lee, Jennifer Moore, Christine Goh, Nick Stevenson, Anna, Adam Booth, Kate Rundas, Catherine Green, Nelson Loh, Renata, Ullrike Schumacher, Paul Kilmurray and Lana Whittleton for their various contributions in all forms to this edition. There are other people we should thank such as anyone who has had anything to do with PELICAN this year including you, the reader. Maximum respect to our main man, Noel Holly, for his wonderful cover photos throughout the year. Thanks y'all for putting up with us.