A Eulogy for Bob Hawke

Bob Hawke was a rare individual who made tremendous contributions to the tribe. He deserves to be honoured at this time of his passing, and for that reason we are holding this wake and I am saying a few words.

I think it is appropriate that we begin by acknowledging Bob’s failings, as he would have. In many ways, Bob Hawke was a conventionally flawed male. Egotistical, wildly ambitious, womanising, hard-drinking, and prone to bouts of fury. All this he wore on his sleeve, unlike today’s disingenuous politicians. In many ways, Hawke offered the Australian people a compact: if you can put up with my occasional excesses, you’ll get all the brilliance that they go hand in hand with. Such straight talk was a common theme of his years in office, and something that I think we all miss sorely today.

Hawke willingness to talk straight undergirded his policy reforms, which are his greatest legacy to Australia. Before Keating so eloquently spoke of “The Myth of the Monoculture” and “the lie that we can retreat to it”, Hawke was deepening multiculturalism in Australia. Most famously, he unilaterally offered visas to 20 000 Chinese students studying in Australia after the events in Tiananmen Square. He described it as an act of love. Less famously, he strengthened the foundations of Australia’s system of points-based, targeted migration, effectively ending the white Australia policy.

These actions are an example of Hawke’s leadership in opening Australia up to Asia and the rest of the world. They were only possible because Hawke and his cabinet were committed to convincing the Australian electorate of what needed to be done for their own good. Unlike the governments of today, Hawke’s was not craven. He did not seek to “give the people what they want” even when what they wanted was to stick their heads in the sand.

Hawke led Australia out of the cave; with honesty, competence, and compassion. The people loved Hawke because they could feel that he loved them.

Australia’s opening up under Hawke and Keating went far beyond immigration. It included steady reductions in foolish tariff protections and subsidies. It included licensing foreign banks to inject competition into a stagnant, rent-seeking sector. It included floating the dollar, an ambitious policy that has paid enormous dividends since, especially following the Asian and then Global Financial Crises.  

The Hawke government was an economically literate one committed to the structural adjustment policies that were in vogue at the time. The welfare state had saved capitalism from itself in the aftermath of the Great Depression and the Second World War, but it had now run aground in stagflation—a direct result of excessive government involvement in ways that were harmful rather than helpful, notably price controls and centralised wage fixing.

The Hawke government liberalised the economy, but unlike the neoliberal administrations of Reagan and Thatcher who were ideologically committed to markets, it kept a firm eye on the role of the state to correct market failures and ensure a fair go. This is why we got medicare entrenched, the HECS system of higher education financing, and The Accord. This is why Australia has had nearly continuous growth with equity for 30 years.

For first generation migrants like myself it can be hard sometimes to really appreciate the value of Australia, but in Bob Hawke you had a representation of it that was so strong one couldn’t help but recognise.

Bob Hawke was the best of Australia: educated and sophisticated but unpretentious. Industrious and ambitious but also charitable and never cruel. As at home sailing the harbour as he was smashing tinnies with the workers. He was genuine and willing to cop it sweet. His farewell speech to parliament was perhaps the most generous, warm and gracious speech to ever be made in that institution.

In that spirit, let’s pour one out for Hawkey, and remember a great man. May there be many more like him. 

To Hawke!