Wednesdays with Bob

by Derek Rielly

  Evans says now, ‘That was not the narrative that Paul wants burnished into the public mind. Paul’s a bit grumpy with the world because he never really found a role for himself after and still feels bitter and twisted about losing to Howard… He should have gone off and done something… If I stayed around Australia – well, you’re sort of getting in the way or you’re going to be miserable that you’re not part of it or whatever – so I just went off overseas for a decade and ran another organisation internationally just to get out of the place. I think it would have been very sensible for Paul to do that.’

  But Hawke…

  ‘Nobody has a career that goes like that and then you just dribble off into the twilight of the time of your own choosing. It’s a switch-back ride and the highs are fantastic and the lows are awful. The high can be fantastic again and then most people are carried out at the end of it. I don’t know how many political careers end in triumph and success, with people leaving at exactly the top of their game at exactly the right time. Practically never. Most people just have to be dragged out.’

  Or you die.

  ‘Or you die,’ says Evans. ‘But looking back from the perspective of history, I don’t think too much should be made of that, the fact that Hawke …’ Evans reflects for a beat. ‘He did go, eventually, pretty gracefully, quite frankly. Extraordinarily gracefully. But that’s just the nature of the process. It’s a bloody and dangerous trade.’

  — CHAPTER 13 —

  THE ELECTION OF DONALD TRUMP

  IN NOVEMBER, THE SEVENTY-YEAR-OLD MULTIBILLIONAIRE Donald Trump is elected as the forty-fifth president of the United States.

  A surprise?

  Not to the 62 million Americans Hillary Clinton pasted as ‘deplorables’ and who figured a property developer with an itchy Twitter finger and tiny little hands built for pussy-grabbing made more sense than a former senator and Secretary of State.

  It shocked the hell out of Hawke.

  In our previous conversations about Trump, he’d puked clouds of smoke from his Davidoff but told me not to fret. ‘Trump’s not going to become president.’

  It’s a far more circumspect Hawke post-election. He is five dollars lighter after Blanche correctly called the result, which is a thorn in his side, but the result coincides with a spike in his health. Hawke’s face is brighter, the suntan darker, his posture upright, the eyebrows even more athletic.

  It wasn’t until a gossipy Sunday lunch with Blanche the week before (A gay prime minister? Never-revealed affairs featuring the most unlikely participants?) that I’d found out he’d been loaded up on the super-antibiotic Vancomicyn from September 2015 to October 2016. Doctors reserve Vancomicyn for only the most serious and life-threatening conditions – golden staph and so on. As Blanche tells it, in the middle of 2015 Hawke was lying in bed in Sydney’s St Vincent Hospital, wasting away with a ‘Saudi Arabian stomach bug’. A paralysed intestine. Doctors couldn’t fix it. Filled him with enemas, laxatives. Didn’t do a damn thing. Hawke kept losing weight. Disappearing.

  ‘He was dying,’ says Blanche. ‘He had about three weeks to live. I had to let the kids know without alarming them horribly and at the same time keep it out of the media.’

  Blanche described the symptoms to her own gastroenterologist, Professor Thomas Borody, who is the founder and medical director of the Centre for Digestive Diseases in Sydney’s Five Dock. (The centre describes itself as ‘a unique medical institution offering novel approaches in researching, diagnosing and treating gastrointestinal (GI) conditions’.) The doc prescribed Vancomicyn; the side effects include wheezing and muscle spasms, and it costs $800 for a ten-day dose (though Borody gave Hawke the meds for free by way of a thank you for all the good he did for Australia, a gift for which the former PM is eternally grateful). The drug pulled Hawke out of his death spiral.

  It’s spring. Even in the late afternoon the temperature is thirty-one degrees. A thunderstorm looms out west. Hailstones. Hawke appears energised by the heat.

  He rips the cigar (another Romeo y Julieta, $27) out of its plastic tube. Cuts the end. Cheeks draw. Click. Flame.

  I tell him he’s looking a million bucks.

  ‘Jolly good.’ Hawke grins. ‘It’s just the fucking feet. What are we on today?’

  Trump.

  ‘Let’s wait a minute,’ he says. ‘We won a cricket match today.’

  It isn’t a glorious win. Australia’s only victory in the three-test series against South Africa. Dead rubbers are worthless. It’s an accepted fact of test cricket that the losing side picks up the final match, a crumb licked off the floor while the other side paddles your arse.

  It’s not exactly a golden period of Australian cricket, I say.

  ‘It sure isn’t,’ says Hawke. ‘You can hardly get interested in it these days.’

  Hawke switches to the right-wing machinations within the Liberal party aimed at destabilising the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull. Each day brings a new swing from Tony Abbott, the sitting prime minister he sank. It has echoes of Keating in 1991; of Rudd in 2012.

  ‘Malcolm’s got a problem – a real problem,’ says Hawke. ‘He was thinking about joining the Labor Party when they lost the referendum on the republic … He’s not by conviction a Liberal. To get the leadership he had to give up some positions he really believed in. I’m not trying to denigrate him. My view of Malcolm is he’s ashamed of himself for what he’s done in terms of compromising his beliefs to get the numbers against Abbott. And if you’re ashamed of yourself that’s not a very good basis for leadership. It’s a very difficult position to find yourself in.’

  Hawke smacks a cloud. Leans back.

  ‘So many people in the Liberal Party, both in the parliament and outside, just don’t regard him as a Liberal. I don’t say this with any pleasure or animosity at all. Just an objective statement. If there was someone standing there I think they’d knock him off. But they just don’t have the depth of talent.’

  Julie Bishop?

  A possibility, but ‘her weakness is economics and that’s disastrous in a prime minister’.

  Like Gough?

  ‘The one great flaw with Gough was his lack of interest in economics.’ Hawke agrees. ‘He almost had sort of fear of it.’

  Just before the 1972 election that ended twenty-three years of conservative rule, Hawke pulled Gough aside and said, ‘Mate, you’re going to win and you’re going to do some great things socially and internationally.’ But. ‘Your government will live or die on how you handle the economy.’

  Hawke offered to arrange for Australia’s best economists from the ANU to give the new prime minister a crash-course in economics over a few weeks. Hawke knew a man of Gough’s intellectual heft could easily absorb complicated theories. And as he told Gough, ‘The basics are not terribly difficult.’

  So what happened?

  ‘Once he got in, I couldn’t get him,’ says Hawke. ‘He just wouldn’t do it. And so you had the fiasco of the loans affair and all that nonsense. That was a great tragedy because he was a great, great leader in so many ways, did so many great things, but my prognosis was absolutely right. His absence of interest in economics was, in the end, what brought the government down.’

  As a man who loves Australia, do you believe we are being competently led?

  ‘No… Education is fundamentally important. The Liberals are not sufficiently committed to the necessary levels of expenditure and prioritising. This is fundamental in determining the future quality of the country.

  ‘If you go back just a few years, I’ve mentioned Iraq. This was a terrible decision. All the United States intelligence agencies said that it was one of the worst decisions that had ever been made by an American president. We just went along with it automatically as we had with Vietnam, which made such a joke of the myth which they seek to perpetrate. [The Liberals] are the ones that you can trust for looking after the security of the country? They got thrown out at the beginning of the Second World War because they couldn�
�t handle the defence of the country. They did Vietnam, didn’t learn from that, and then they did Iraq. The world is still paying an enormous price for that ghastly mistake. I don’t want to be a knocker. Again, that’s not basically my nature. I try to be objective about these things. I think when you look at education and social welfare, equality of opportunity, I think these things are not as strong in our national structure now as they have been and should be.’

  If Beazley had won in 2001, would Australia have gone to Iraq?

  ‘No!’ snaps Hawke.

  (Beazley is more pragmatic. ‘The question would have arisen, what do you do? The decision’s been taken, you’ve opposed it, but the Americans are going to go anyway. What do you do?’ he asks rhetorically. ‘You stand down? I probably would have just said, “We’ve got a couple of ships in the Persian Gulf, they’re now rebadged. They are escorts for whatever American carrier battle group is there and that’s it.” I don’t think I would have left the Americans with absolutely nothing and just hanging out to dry.’)

  Back to Hawke. How would Australia be different if we hadn’t gone to Iraq?

  ‘It’s not just Australia, it’s the world. We lost lives. Any life lost on a bad political decision is disastrous,’ he says. ‘An enormous amount of money was spent, which could have been otherwise spent on education, for instance. The world would be a more secure place if we hadn’t gone into Iraq. They strengthened the hand of the terrorists beyond measure.’

  Hawke bends the conversation back to the Liberal leadership. Is there a possibility that Abbott might return? I ask.

  ‘They won’t go back to Tony. He’d like to. I like Tony personally, but he was somewhat bizarre as prime minister. That problem with Prince Philip [when Abbott granted the Queen’s husband a knighthood]. Just unbelievable. Where did that come from?’

  He is trying hard, though, Mr Hawke.

  ‘Yeah, he’s fucking around behind the scenes.’

  Hawke grabs his large cappuccino, foam generously decorated with three hits of powdered chocolate and some crushed Flake, and takes a swig. The plastic lid isn’t fixed properly and he winds up with drops of coffee on his pale blue button-up. For a moment, he has the sartorial flair of his former defence minister Kim Beazley.

  ‘I made a nice mess of my shirt,’ says Hawke.

  He tips the rest of the coffee over the edge of the balcony. ‘Handy bin this.’

  ‘Now,’ he says. ‘Let’s get started.’

  Trump, I say. Is it an American tragedy?

  ‘I do cryptic crosswords and I said, it’s the beginning of the end, the end is rump. Trump. Look, if he were to govern according to his campaign performance it would be an unmitigated disaster, but he won’t. There’s an enormous obligation upon leaders in the rest of the world to hold their hand out and try to cooperate with him.’

  What relationships are most important to the United States?

  ‘The most important relationship in the world is between China and the United States. I’ve spent a lot of time with the Chinese, you know that. I’ve told you about the China Institute for International Strategic Studies, which is under the auspices of China’s PLA [People’s Liberation Army]. I speak with them a lot, lecture to them. I told them in discussions that Hillary would win and that I’d written to Hillary wishing her luck and told her about China. I told her I hoped to speak to her about it. She indicated she would like to. I obviously can’t do that now, but I’ll see if I can organise a meeting with Trump. Greg [Norman, the golfer who organised a call between Turnbull and Trump immediately post-election] is a friend of mine.’

  You and the Shark swing clubs together?

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve played golf with Greg.’

  (An aside: Hawke tells me he has nailed three holes-in-one in thirty years of strolling the greens. Two at Bonnie Doon, one in Canberra.

  Any witnesses?

  ‘Plenty of witnesses,’ says Hawke.)

  Back to the new president.

  ‘I’m going to try to talk to Trump and reassure him about the Chinese. The Chinese are not a hegemonic power. They have not been historically and they’re not now. They don’t make any claims to the South China Sea. What I’ve suggested to them is that they should convene a meeting, which they would chair, of the interested parties in the South China Sea and try to establish a regime for joint development.’

  How do the Chinese feel about it?

  ‘They’re responsive to the idea.’

  The Chinese, I believe, value predictability. Do you think the capricious nature of Donald Trump will pose a problem?

  ‘Of course it does,’ says Hawke. ‘It depends upon his intention. If I can persuade him that it’s in his interest and America’s interest, and that he could achieve something that’s never been done before, well, this could be attractive to him.’

  Do you think it’s the end of the United States’ role as the world’s super cop? Trump’s been isolationist in his policies, on the stump at least. Is it the end of Pax Americana?

  ‘Pax Americana has been a bit of a myth for a while now,’ says Hawke.

  Still, Bush had his dream of spreading the glories of democracy to the Middle East and Obama kept at least one hand on his pistol: drones over Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan; a presence in Afghanistan. What would be the repercussions if America pulled back from NATO, from Japan, from South Korea?

  ‘I hope he doesn’t push ahead with the concept of Japan and South Korea getting nuclear arms. We don’t want to see the spread of nuclear weapons. Another thing I would like to tell Trump is that the critical factor in containing North Korea is China. It’s a matter I think it would be worth him talking with the Chinese about.’

  If you were the prime minister, would you have immediately engaged like Turnbull?

  ‘Yeah, immediately. Every world leader should say, “We didn’t support your campaign, but you are the democratically elected leader of the second-biggest nation in the world, the second-biggest economy now. What you do and how you behave is important for everyone and we want to help you.” That’s what the approach ought to be. That’s certainly what I would do.’

  What’s your opinion of Hillary’s campaign?

  ‘Trump tapped into a mood. She didn’t really tap into anything. The thing that surprised me is that so many American women could have voted for Trump after the things he said about women.’

  It’s interesting, I note, that Trump’s campaign was regarded as divisive and yet Hillary threw down the identity politics card which, by its nature, is archly divisive.

  ‘She didn’t distinguish herself,’ says Hawke.

  How would you have campaigned?

  ‘I certainly would have gone to more states and I would have acknowledged the fact that America has become a very unequal society and I’d promise to do something about that.’

  Do you believe Hillary lacked the ability to create a narrative Americans could relate to?

  ‘Yeah, I do. She didn’t have the narrative that great leaders have. Trump’s narrative was Make America Great Again. And he repeated it over and over again.’

  How did you feel, watching the election on television and seeing the needle swing towards Trump?

  Hawke sighs. He puts down his cigar. The wise grandfather explaining to the naive boy one of life’s truths.

  ‘The thing is,’ says Hawke, ‘there’s no point in getting upset and –’ he waves his arms theatrically – ‘oh shit… It’s a fact of life and you’ve got to deal with it. It’s very simple. You’ve got to be pragmatic.’

  How would you compare the election of Ronald Reagan, who was also ridiculed for being a right-wing simpleton, to Trump?

  ‘Reagan was a very considerable man,’ says Hawke. ‘I told you the story of our first meeting with the cards?’

  He had. But it’s a doozy. Tell me again.

  ‘It’s worth telling.’ He laughs. ‘The first congratulatory message I got from any international leader when I won was from Reagan. And that was beca
use George Shultz, who was his Secretary of State, was a very close friend of mine. George told Reagan that I was a great guy. And so Reagan said he wanted me to come over as soon as I could.’

  This was June 1983. Reagan and Hawke met in the White House. They sat opposite each other, Hawke with his people on one side, Reagan with Shultz and the rest on the other.

  Reagan welcomed Hawke, told everyone he was a hell of a man, then said, ‘Well, Bob, perhaps you’d like to start off the discussion.’

  America was just coming out of a mild recession so Hawke asked what the likely rate of economic growth was over the course of the next couple of years.

  Reagan had a stack of cards in his hands. He flicked through until he reached one that said ECONOMY. He turned to his Secretary of the Treasury, Don Regan, and said, ‘Perhaps you’d like to take this up with Bob.’

  The president said nothing while Hawke and Regan engaged. When the conversation wrapped up, Reagan said, ‘That was mighty interesting, Bob. What would you like to ask next?’

  Hawke told him he wanted to discuss international affairs.

  Reagan riffled through the stack for the card that read INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, turned to George Shultz and said, ‘Perhaps you’d like to take this up with Bob.’

  ‘And so the whole thing went on,’ says Hawke. ‘The most powerful man in the world sits there and says nothing. But what would you rather have? A bloke who doesn’t really know anything about the subject rabbiting on or a serious discussion? He must always be remembered as a very considerable president because he didn’t pretend to be well-read and well-versed in all the things he had to deal with, but he picked good people and he relied on them. In all my visits – I made about five visits – not once did I meet anyone on either side of politics who didn’t like him personally. I was meeting with the speaker of the house. He said, “I see you’ve been down to the White House already.” I said yes, I had a meeting with Ron. He said, “He’s the most conservative bastard that’s ever been in the White House but you can’t help liking the guy.” Which was indicative. Within his intellectual limitations he was a considerable leader.’