`The Hawke Memoirs': Story of achievements

The Hawke Memoirs By Bob Hawke Published by William Heinemann Australia 618 pages, $49.95.

MELBOURNE (JP): Having read Blanche d'Alpuget's Robert J. Hawke in 1982, The Hawke Memoirs was like picking up the thread of Australian history emanating from inside Hawke's head.

While Robert J. Hawke made interesting and pleasant reading, The Hawke Memoirs was a struggle. When I say a struggle, I do not mean it is a badly written book with hardly anything to tell. On the contrary, it is quite powerful.

All through the 618 pages I had to fight the feeling of being dwarfed by Hawke's sense of superhuman giftedness, compassion and quasi evangelical drive to save the world. And I have a confession to make: I had to struggle to maintain the emotional distance a reviewer is required to keep from her subject, in this case, the book as well as the man.

In Robert J. Hawke the reader comes to know Bob Hawke as a human being with his fair share of faults and shortcomings, albeit unusually charismatic and marked out for something special, leadership for example. In his memoirs, the reader learns almost right from the start that this is going to be the story of extraordinary achievements on the global scale. And this feeling of anticipation bores through the often overbearing tone of self-importance that underlies the entire book.

The recounting begins with a dramatic scene at a private Perth hospital in 1979. Nearly 50 years of age, Hawke was seated at his dying mother's bedside, whispering words of gratitude and tenderness in her ear. To his amazement, his mother, who had been in a coma for months, uttered these last words, "It was a pleasure, son."

Anyone familiar with the Australian political arena and the nation's relations with the world in general, cannot deny Hawke's claims of achievements. There is no doubt, throughout his active political life, that he has shown a magnificent gift for establishing affinity with people from across the political spectrum. And Australia, as a nation, has reaped untold benefits from this gift.

After winning a Rhodes Scholarship in 1952, Hawke studied philosophy, politics and economics, and wrote his thesis on the development of the federal conciliation and arbitration system. The research he did on this thesis, combined with his basic degree in law, equipped him for his future careers, first as advocate for the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), and later as Prime Minister of Australia.

One of his major achievements as ACTU advocate was winning for Australian workers the Basic Wage Case and the Margin Case in 1959. In 1953 the government had abolished the automatic adjustments of the basic wage. Hawke was able to have the basic wage increased to above what it would have been if the adjustment system had still applied. Then he also won a 28 percent increase in the award payments above the basic wage paid for various levels of skill and experience.

Hawke brought the Australian Labor Party to power in 1983 with a sweeping victory over Malcolm Fraser of the Liberal-National Coalition Party. His generosity in victory is evident in his treatment of Fraser. He does not vilify the man personally. His assessment of Fraser's style of leadership is generally sober, though not entirely without humor. He describes Fraser as having a fine mind though aloof and ill at ease with people. "I recall seeing him at the annual Australian Rules Football Club, so unable to sustain a conversation that people just wandered off. Even utterly gregarious types who could amuse themselves talking to trees if need be would run out of things to say in Malcolm's presence."

Hawke's perceptiveness of people's qualities and his capacity to look beyond political differences was evident when he later appointed Fraser to important international positions within the Commonwealth.

Though present Prime Minister Paul Keating is now leading Australian business into Asia, it was Hawke who started the trend. His style of international diplomacy was both ideological and personal. He struck friendships where his predecessors would not or maybe did not consider likely, such as with Malaysia's Mahathir, China's Zhao Ziyang and Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew. His move towards Asia was more of an expansion of diplomacy rather than a shift, because he never stopped cultivating Australia's relationships with the United States, United Kingdom and Western Europe.

Winning four successive elections during recessionary times was no mean feat. It was testimony of Hawke's extraordinary qualities as a person and a leader. He was loved by his electorate and he knew it.

While he was able to defeat his political opponents one by one at the polls, it was, ironically, his fellow Labor politician, his former treasurer, who finally unseated him. Paul Keating, in his second leadership challenge, finally wrested the prime- ministership from Hawke. And these memoirs, filled as they are with his achievements and praise for his family, friends and fellow politicians, became marred by bitterness toward the end.

His description of Keating is by far the least generous of all, but no doubt Keating is sufficiently tough to weather whatever public perceptions come of it. After all, only someone of strong character could unseat a prime minister.

-- Dewi Anggraeni