Wednesdays with Bob

by Derek Rielly

  Do you think politicians are unfairly criticised?

  ‘Yeah, it’s become a popular game to sneer at and denigrate politicians. Some of it’s their own fault, of course. It’s a pity that we’re not getting the calibre of people into our parliaments that we should get. This is a problem particularly for the conservative side of politics. On our side, it’s more ideologically driven. You look at a businessman, successful businessman. He thinks about politics and he looks at the increasing intrusiveness of the media into his private life, not only of himself, but of his family. I think a lot of them are saying, “Bugger it. It’s not worth it.’”

  How would you describe the current state of the Labor Party?

  ‘Still suffering from the awful period we went through, swapping leaders. Rudd. Julia. That was a bad period,’ says Hawke.

  How does the ALP of 2016 differ from the party you led to four election victories?

  ‘It hasn’t got the depth of quality, the people that I was fortunate enough to be blessed with. That’s the big difference.’

  Who among the current Labor MPs would you welcome into a Hawke cabinet?

  ‘There’s none that would replace any of my cabinet.’

  Were you euphoric when Kevin Rudd won in 2007?

  ‘I don’t want to go into my views about Kevin. It was a Labor victory, and of course I was euphoric.’

  Why don’t you like talking about Kevin Rudd?

  ‘Simply because I’d have to say things that he wouldn’t find pleasing. I don’t want to hurt the man.’

  Was it the right decision to bring Rudd back in to try to save a few seats at the 2013 election?

  ‘It’s not one I would have made.’

  Are you kept in the loop by the party when these sorts of big shifts are happening – leadership challenges and so forth?

  ‘Yeah. They still talk to me. Bill [Shorten] was very good to me during his [2016] campaign. He talked to me quite a bit. Asked me if I’d do the advertisement [on Medicare]. I loved getting a taste of that again.’

  How do you believe history will record Julia Gillard’s prime ministership?

  ‘History will be relatively kind to Julia. She governed under the most extraordinarily difficult circumstances. A minority government, and internal problems with Kevin, others. She did some good things in education, the environment.’

  How does it feel, as a sitting PM, to be rolled by your own party?

  ‘It was hurtful. Of course it was hurtful. As I’ve said publicly on many occasions since, and I repeat it now, I’m eternally grateful that it happened. If it hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to marry Blanche. We just celebrated our twenty-first wedding anniversary a week ago.’

  Well, congratulations.

  ‘We’ve had the most marvellous time together,’ says Hawke dreamily. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to have that if it hadn’t happened. Thank you, Paul.’

  Did it take you long to get over it?

  ‘No. I don’t live in the past.’

  What part did the desire for fame play in your decisions?

  ‘I can honestly say I wasn’t seeking fame,’ Hawke replies. ‘I’m not saying that I didn’t enjoy it. I did. It would just be a straight-out lie if I said anything else. But it wasn’t a driving thing with me. I just had the feeling of satisfaction that at each stage of the career I was able to help people. Within my student life, I was president of the Guild of Undergraduates at the University of Western Australia. I was a student leader and I achieved considerable reforms there. The ACTU is obvious. As advocate I was responsible for some very significant decisions which lifted the standard and quality of life of all Australians. Then, as president, I was able to also do some important things – not least of which is one that is probably forgotten now, but it was terribly important, and that was the issue of retail price maintenance. Australian manufacturers would not supply retailers with their products unless they agreed to sell them at a fixed price. This was costing Australians billions of dollars. I said to the [McMahon] government, “This is just ridiculous. You’re demanding that unions go through a price-fixing process for the tribunals, yet you allow this to go on at great cost to the country.” And they wouldn’t do anything about it.’

  In a bold bid to smash retail price maintenance, the ACTU partnered with the Melbourne discounter Lionel Revelman in establishing a retail store. For the ACTU it was also a chance to open up a significant income stream.

  Hawke threatened companies with union boycotts if they didn’t supply Bourkes–ACTU. In response, Prime Minister Billy McMahon accused Hawke of ‘lawlessness’. Eventually, says Hawke, ‘we abolished retail price maintenance and we saved the country literally billions of dollars.’

  How important is your legacy?

  ‘I don’t think about it. The first thing to say is I’m very proud. I don’t apologise in any way for being proud, because it’s a good record. My mind goes back to my parents. I owe everything to them.’

  I ask Hawke to give me his opinion of significant leaders of the previous 150 years. First, the British-born African imperialist Cecil Rhodes, whose legacy scholarship got Hawke to Oxford. Earlier in the year, the hashtag #rhodesmustfall had been doing the rounds as black and ethnic students led a campaign to remove the statue of Rhodes at Oxford, labelling him a ‘racist mass murderer of Africans’.

  ‘By our standards today, he was not a good man. He exploited African natives to make a fortune,’ says Hawke. ‘Against that, the legacy left with the scholarships is a lasting benefit. I’m indebted to it. The most recent thing about tearing down his statue I think was just silly. You can’t go back a century or more and expect the people then should be acting according to the values you’ve established today.’

  Menzies?

  ‘First thing you’ve got to remember was he got thrown out by his own party at the beginning of the war. Then his government got thrown out because they were incompetent. He didn’t come out of that well at all. He inherited a strong economy when he got in in ’49. The economy basically looked after itself because, as I said before, the world was paying everything for our products. His anti-communist referendum was just frightful. You’ve got to give him credit for lasting as long as he did. Of course, he had it on a plate because of the split in the Labor Party. It was a very long period in office. Got to give him credit for that.’

  Twenty-three years at the wheel ain’t bad.

  ‘He took advantage of the circumstances,’ says Hawke.

  John F. Kennedy?

  ‘He was a very considerable figure. A charismatic bloke. He wasn’t a bad president.’

  JFK’s brother Robert?

  ‘He’s a different character. I was no fan of Robert Kennedy. I don’t think he had outstanding values. He … uh… the poor bugger, he got shot, too. I don’t rate him highly.’

  What about Harold Holt?

  ‘A very ordinary prime minister. Say this to his credit: he embraced the immigration program that Labor had introduced. I respect that. Very sad demise.’

  John Gorton?

  ‘Arrogant.’

  Malcolm Fraser?

  ‘The one thing I always say about Malcolm, whenever it comes up with people who denigrate him, I say, “You remember this: he had an impeccable record on issues of race. He was absolutely outstanding on that. He should always be remembered with the utmost respect for that.’

  Where do you think he got his empathy for minorities?

  ‘Well,’ says Hawke, ‘people ask me that and I’ve thought about it. And this may be the explanation: he came from a very privileged, wealthy background. His early education was at home and then he went to Melbourne Grammar. Then he went straight from Melbourne Grammar to Oxford. And I reckon he was probably very lonely at Oxford and he probably palled up with a lot of coloured students. I think that was the beginning of it.’

  As a prime minister, however, ‘he was hopeless. His handling of the economy was hopeless.’

  Margaret Thatcher?

/>   ‘Margaret and I had a love/hate relationship. You know, I was the leader within the Commonwealth Heads of Government that led the fight against apartheid and Margaret was supporting the South African government, so we used to have terrible bloody fights.’

  Even so, when Hawke visited London in 1987 only a couple of months after one of their great fights, ‘she couldn’t have done more to make our visit successful. She instructed every minister to clear their schedules and make time for us. She was not small-minded.’

  Do you regard Thatcher as a great leader?

  ‘Yeah, but…’

  A laugh. Is it absurd for union man Hawke to remember, positively, the Tory prime minister?

  ‘I disagreed with so much of what she stood for and did, particularly her anti-union tactics. But she was, according to her beliefs, an outstanding leader.’

  What was curious about Thatcher, Hawke remembers, was the level of antipathy she felt for Germans.

  ‘I always remember when we were at Gallipoli, we were sitting down having a talk, the two of us, and I was amazed at the hatred she had for the Germans. Oh, it was visceral.’

  Bill Clinton?

  ‘Generally speaking he was a good president.’

  Hillary?

  ‘She’s a very cold person. I think she’s very capable. She’ll make a good president.’

  The declaration is prophetic. But not in the way Hawke thinks.

  — CHAPTER 10 —

  SINGO

  FUCK ME DRUNK!’ SAYS THE MULTI-MULTIMILLIONAIRE John Desmond Singleton, Hawke’s pal for close on forty years, telephone pressed against his ear. ‘Hawke’s changed his fucking number.’

  Singo receives me in his penthouse eyrie. Dianna, his secretary of thirty years, leads me into a wood-panelled office outfitted with two gifts from rugby league identity Jack Gibson (the little eight-bar xylophone used until 1970 to announce the news and Jack’s old desk microphone), a vintage typewriter that was Singo’s copywriting tool until relatively recently, oil paintings by Arthur Boyd (Parrots and Figure Near the Homestead) and Barry Humphries (John Olsen in the Flinders) and a formidable desk wider than a big man’s arm.

  For a man of seventy-five who’s seen it all and done it all – six wives, seven kids, connected to every significant business and political leader over five decades, owner of pubs, horses and radio stations – Singo looks strong, fresh.

  A little surprised by his rude health, I’m reminded of the stoush he had with his pal Hungry Jack’s founder Jack Cowin at a Sydney waterfront restaurant in 2015. Depending on your interpretation of the paparazzi photos, Singo was either about to slice off Cowin’s ear with a broken bottle or engaging in an awesomely authentic piece of street theatre. I saw the photos and laughed. How could a man of such vintage be considered threatening?

  Then I meet him.

  Even in the winter of his life (he’s the oldest Singleton ever, which ‘fucking gives you pause for reflection, mate,’ he says), he’s still a good six foot in the sneakers he pairs with R.M. Williams moleskins and a flawlessly pressed button-up shirt, a corduroy jacket draped over his high-backed chair. Singo’s hair is cut close to the scalp, grey but not white, and the cartoon features – the Joker smile, Bugs Bunny teeth and golf ball cheeks – combine to create a compelling and, yeah, attractive face.

  It isn’t a stretch to call Singo a national treasure. In a country where ‘true blue’ has atrophied into a nasty little racist stereotype, Singo is the take-no-shit, tell-it-like-it-is-and-don’t-cry-about-the-consequences Aussie. Rafferty. Hogan. McKenzie. Singleton. Hawke. When Singo dies – which he eventually will, despite his aura of immortality – a part of the Australian character will disappear with him.

  It’s why he liked Hawke and it’s why their friendship flourished, despite their cavernous political differences. As he’ll tell me later in the interview, ‘Somehow or other, mate, we built a relationship without ever saying it to one another. He just became a mate and I felt that even though we were on so-called different sides, we were on the same side. We were on the Australian side. We just had different ways of scoring a try.’

  When I enter, Singo is examining his phone. It takes a little to convince him that the book I’m writing on Hawke is authorised and, twenty minutes later, as if to flush me out as an imposter, he pulls out the phone again, eyeballs me and says, ‘I’m ringing him up.’

  Of course, Mr Singleton.

  ‘I’m just going to ring him to ask him if there’s anything he doesn’t want me to say. See how long he’s on the phone for.’

  After punching in the wrong numbers (‘fuck me drunk’ etc.), Singo works out the right sequence and the call lands.

  Hawke’s secretary: ‘Good afternoon, Mr Hawke’s office.’

  In comic politesse, vowels drawn out in Menzies-esque exaggerated tones: ‘Good aaaafternoon, it’s John Singleton for the prime minister, please.’

  Hawke’s secretary: ‘Hello, he’s actually in Melbourne at the moment. He’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. Can I get him to call you?’

  John Singleton: ‘Yes, tomorrow afternoon will be fine. You shouldn’t let him travel so often.’

  Hawke’s secretary: ‘He’s very stubborn.’

  John Singleton: ‘Stubborn? Really? You surprise me. Alright, darling, I won’t trouble him down there. Get him to call me though, love. Thanks, love.’

  Singo looks back at me, and my confidence seems to convince him. I tell him I want to hear the story of Hawke moving into Singo’s harbourfront palace when he got rolled by Keating in 1991.

  Labor senator and member of the socialist left John Faulkner (‘One of the brightest guys I’ve met in my life in politics… a genius… could’ve been prime minister,’ says Singo) had met Singo at Aussies Café in Parliament House in December 1991 and told him Hawke was about to be challenged by Keating for a second time – and this time he was going to lose. Could Singleton tell his old pal the news, maybe convince him not to challenge?

  ‘Why would you want me to tell him?’ asked Singo.

  ‘Because you’re the only one he’ll listen to,’ said Faulkner.

  Singo made the call.

  ‘So I said to Hawkey, “Look, I need to see ya… [it’s] personal.’”

  ‘What about?’ said Hawke, who was busy studying the form guide (race five, Rosehill).

  ‘I said, “Mate, there’s going to be another bloody move to replace you and you’re gonna lose. And that comes from John Faulkner.”

  “‘Why did he get you to tell me?”

  “‘Good fucking question. Why don’t you ask him?”

  ‘“I’m not talking to that cunt.”

  ‘I said, “Well he probably feels the same. That’s probably why I’m the middleman here. I don’t like it.’”

  ‘Oh… fucking… he’ll never beat me, he’ll never…’

  ‘Well, you’re probably right, you’ve never been beaten. Okay, I’ve passed on the message.’

  That afternoon, as Singo was on his way home from Canberra, he realised – and he can’t remember the exact circumstances of the realisation; maybe he called Faulkner, maybe Faulkner called him – that if he was any good as a mate, he’d help Hawke make the next step, the transition from being most important man in the country to unemployed sixty-two-year-old senior citizen.

  Singo called Hawke again.

  ‘I said to him, “Mate, you hate hypotheticals, I know that’s a good way to dodge questions on TV, but here’s a real question … I have double-checked and I too believe you’re going to get rolled. Listen, just say you get beaten. Faulkner’s a cunt, we all know that. All the left’s a cunt. Keating’s a cunt, we all know that. But say he does win? You get thrown out of the Lodge. You’re not going to get beat, but other prime ministers, when they have got beat, how long do they have to get out of the Lodge? Do they go and live in a Holiday Inn? What do they fucking do? They have a plan B. You are going to get beat and the day after you get beat I happen to be going to America for six weeks.
You’ll have nowhere to go, and you’ve been to my joint …’

  Here, Singo digresses into an oral tour of the house: ‘You could drive into my joint, straight into the bedrooms upstairs, living room, and downstairs with a pool. Waterfront, wharf, boat, a Scarab [gaudy eighties cigarette speedboat]. Plenty of space for Bob to sunbake’.

  ‘I said, “Mate, you can stay at my joint for six weeks.” … Sure enough, the next day he was out of a job, nowhere to live. And he moved in.’

  How was Hawke’s state of mind post-defeat?

  ‘Mate, unlike Paul, instantly on to what’s next. He learned a lot there. He learned how to buy milk and everything. You give them money, they give you milk.’

  Singo compares Hawke’s response favourably to John Howard’s dignified ‘the things that unite us are more important than the things that divide us’ speech, after being brought down in the election of 2007, including the ignominy of losing his own seat.

  ‘No quivering of the bottom lip like that wuss Fraser. No self-important speeches like with Gough and these other cunts. Fucking cop it on the chin and move on.’

  Four years earlier, Hawke had cemented their friendship when he employed John Singleton Advertising to run the Labor Party election campaign, a switcheroo for a gun who’d created anti-Labor ads in 1974 and who was the driving force behind the ferociously right-wing Workers’ Party.

  But Hawke, who’d kept the bulk of the bureaucrats who served Fraser when he won office in 1983, was never one for cheap payback. He instinctively knew a good leader checks his spite at the door. Hawke wanted excellence at every tier of government if he was going to govern well and convince the electorate that Labor, and not the conservatives, was the natural party of government. And by the time of the 1987 election – Hawke’s third as leader – when Labor was sliding in the polls, Hawke wanted the best, even if it meant consorting with the enemy.