Hawke delays bid for House

Press, 16 September 1976, Page 8

Hawke delays bid for House

SJZPA Melbourne Mr Robert Hawke, president of both the Australian Labour Party and the Australian Council of Trade Unions, has called a news converence to announce that he would not be seeking a seat in the Australian Parliament for the time being. He had long been rumoured as the probable successor to the Leader of the Labour Opposition and former Prime Minister (Mr Gough Whitlam). Mr Hawke said “I wish to announce that I will not be a candidate for preselection in any Victorian ballots.

“The Federal elections for which these processes are revelant need not occur until the end of

197?. If I were a preselected candidate at this stage it would create, I believe, a lame duck presidency of the A.C.T.U. for a two-year period, which would be intolerable.” Nominations for Labour Party candidates in Victoria for the next Federal elections, due in 1978, close on September 30. Left-wing members of the party in Victoria had said earlier this week they would oppose the middle-of-the-road Mr Hawke, a former Rhodes Scholar, if he were nominated for any seat in the state. Mr Whitlam has said that he plar, to lead the party in the 1978 election despite his crushing defeat last November by Mr Malcolm Fraser’s Liberal-Nat-ional Party coalition.