These are high-flying days for Australia’s Labour Prime Minister

Press, 18 May 1984, Page 13

These are high-flying days for Australia’s Labour Prime Minister

Kirribilli House in Sydney is one of the most desirable residences on earth. It sits on a knoll overlooking Sydney Harbour, deep among tropical flowers and shrubs, with an unmatched view of yachts tacking to and fro on the sparkling waters and of the huge sail-like roofs of the miraculous Sydney Opera House. Inside, there are welltrained servants, old colonial prints and furniture, and silver teapots for afternoon tea. Kirribilli House is now one of the official residences of Bob Hawke, the former grog-artist, womaniser, and Rhodes Scholar, who has lately completed his first year as Prime Minister of Australia — only its second Labour Prime Minister since 1949. In that year, he has made himself the most popular national leader in the Western World and the most popular Australian since Phar Lap, the freak wonder horse of the 19305.

The last poll showed him with an approval rating of an astounding 72 per cent, achieved by attacks on the Left, by substituting “consensus politics” for the “confrontation pol-

One of the British newspapers’ leading columnists, MICHAEL DAVIE of the “Observer,” talks to Australia’s Prime Minister, Bob Hawke.

itics” of his Liberal (Conservative) predecessor, Mr Malcolm Fraser, and by largely ignoring all previvous Labour policies. Yet, four years ago, he was not even in Parliament.

When I last visited Australia, in November, 1982, the country was sour and divided. Now it seems cheerful and buoyant. Everywhere you go, or almost everywhere, people praise Mr Hawke. He is Prime Minister of a Labour Government, but businessmen talk about him with more enthusiasm than they ever talked about Malcolm Fraser. “It’s far better than we had thought,” said Sir Arvi Parbo. Estonian-born, he is head of a giant mining company and president of the eight-month-old Business Council, which consists of the chief

executives of 70 leading firms. “This Government has tried to be rational and practical about the economic side of matters and about the business community.” The unions are equally content, for the moment at least. Mr Hawke, as former president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, knows where every union bone is buried and every lever to pull. He has done a private deal with the unions, whose essence seems to be that he will introduce tax cuts in return for union acceptance of nationally fixed wage awards. He treats top union leaders like members of the Cabinet.

As for ordinary Australians, they approve of and even enjoy Mr Hawke as Prime Minister, because he is (as they think) one of them. In the street, he draws crowds to a

chorus of "Gidday Bobs.” He appears constantly on television, of which he is a master, hogging the limelight at sports events or film awards, and snapping at interviewers.

He projects an air of optimism, but he is more than a crowd pleaser. When his predecessor as Labour leader, Bill Hayden, was first advised to resign his post, on the grounds that he could never win an election whereas Hawke could, he said he could not stand down “for a bastard like Bob Hawke.” The person giving the advice, Senator Button, replied, in writing: “In my experience in the Labour Party, the fact that someone is a bastard (of one kind or another) has never been a disqualification for leadership.” Australians like to think that strong and able people are in charge, so that they can go to the beach with no worries.

Mr Hawke is planning another election late this year. The Opposition is the weakest for decades. Few people doubt that he will sweep the board, and some prophesy that he will be in office for the rest of the decade, like a new and dominant Labour Menzies.

The prospect does not arouse universal delight. Referring to the Prime Minister’s 78 per cent ap-’ proval rating, a wit remarked that the non-approving 22 per cent must be old Labour voters.

There is truth in the joke. Mr Hawke surprised old Labour voters by his extreme moderation as much as he surprised everyone else. They find to their disgust that they have an administration somewhere to the right of the Social Democrat Party in Britain, sadly lacking the old Labour fire and ideology. Mr Hawke’s first action, when he sat down opposite me for an interview at Kirribilli House, was to reach over his shoulder for a cigar. As he lit up, an aide quietly placed a miniature tape recorder on the table between us, putting me on notice.

Like other Cabinet colleagues — largely a new breed of universityeducated professionals — the Prime Minister wears imported suits. He was dressed in dark blue, a white shirt bearing his initials on the breast pocket, a sober tie and

black shoes of soft leather. His hair is greyer than it used to be and the lines on his face deeper, but he is tanned, businesslike, and confident, probably the only man in Australia not astonished by his own ascendancy.

A common view used to be that he could win an election for Labour, but would be out of his depth, being a tyro, running a government. His sceptics admit their error.

I asked first whether he thought Australia was of its nature a country peculiarly susceptible to his idea of consensus politics, and he said he thought not. What made Australia in 1983 ready to accept consensus politics was that it followed seven years of Malcolm Fraser’s confrontation politics. A

new atmosphere was needed and wanted.

“I have tried to explain to the major economic elements, in business and the unions, that while each of them has a legitimate aim to pursue — business in being profitable and the unions in maintaining and improving their standards of living — they are more likely to achieve their aims if they work together, without needless fighting.” Their objectives should not necessarily be seen, he said, as contradictory. The seven Fraser years, he went on, had been years of “ad hoc-ery”: no vision of Australia’s future, no coherent notion of what sort of country Australia was trying to be, no picture of Australia’s place in its region.

Before that, from 1972 to 1975, the Whitlam Labour Government’s effort to produce a cultural resurgence — “a rather joyful task” — had coincided with an international economic cataclysm. So the Whitlam Government “got lost, swamped.”

“I want Australia now to understand,” he said, “that it has been part of a world that in recent years has seen the most rapid and dramatic changes in the recorded history of mankind. There used to be some validity in the description of Australia as the lucky country. But in the 1970 s the succession of fortuitous circumstances ceased. The country should be brought to realise that it is no longer lucky. It has to do its own thinking and planning.”

His economic policies were intended to ensure, he said, that Australia takes advantage of the rapidly growing economy of the region. It must be helped’ to do so through changes in education, job training, and in the labour force. "And we've got to show these countries we are with them.” Socially, he wanted equality of opportunity, so that every child had the chance to develop its talents. What about the old Australian ideal of egalitarianism (now disappearing into the mists of the past, as the rich get richer, partly through spectacular tax dodging, and the poor get poorer)” He said he saw egalitarianism in terms of opportunity. not as “a grev uniformity of incomes or standards." Then, thinking of the British Labour Party. I asked about his Left-wing. What did he think its role should be? Was it to act as the conscience of the party? At that. Mr Hawke slipped into a higher and more aggressive gear. The Left loved to talk about themselves as if they were the only people who had consciences. "It’s a lovely position to take unto yourself, but it’s an absurdity."' The active ideologues, he said fiercely, should understand that the party did not exist simply to do the will of the small number of people who were its members.

“As the instrument of government it has to give government a direction and shape consistent with what the people desire. It is a perversion to say that it is elected to do the will of a very small group in the party. That is the path to the wilderness."

Finally I asked about his sensitivity to criticism. "He wants everyone on side," one impartial political correspondent haa told me. "He manipulates the media and it is quite dangerous.” Certainly he is on excellent terms with two Right-wing media bosses. Mr Kerry Packer and Mr Rupert Murdoch, whose news organisations give him strong support. But he is on bad terms with the ABC, the Australian equivalent of the BBC. partly because ABC interviewers persist in pressing him about what he calls, in defiance of his Leftwing, Australia’s “moral obligation” to mine uranium. He conceded that he was sensitive to “sloganism and mindlessness," perhaps because of his training as an advocate and researcher. But he liked and encouraged reasoned argument: that was the way he conducted business with his staff. “I find that sort of argument delightful.”

Hawke’s formula has been to excoriate the Left, square the Centre and Right-wing unions, make business feel confident, play to the gallery, project hope, deplore confrontation, be humane, back off quickly from mistakes, and appear to know where Australia should be heading. Are there no tips here for other Labour would-be prime ministers?