Wednesdays with Bob

by Derek Rielly

  The crowd is thrilled when burlesque performer Ms Gypsy Wood, whose appearance has been arranged by naughty Louis and Blanche, steps onto the stage wearing an oversized John Howard mask and performs a striptease to ‘God Save the Queen’ and, later, ‘Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word’.

  Not everyone is pleased. The right-wing columnist Andrew Bolt responds by drawing a parallel with the Footy Show host Sam Newman, who’d been ‘hounded off air’ after he affixed a female sportswriter’s head onto a bikini-clad mannequin.

  John Howard took the performance in good humour.

  ‘I was certainly not offended,’ Mr Howard told the Sydney Morning Herald. ‘It was very gracious of Bob to invite me to his party, and I’m glad to know that after two years I still bug the Labor Party.’

  Eight years later, on birthday eighty-seven, Hawke wakes at 7.30, several hours earlier than usual, and is driven to Sydney University, where he is presented with an honorary doctorate.

  The degree is awarded in recognition of his government’s environmental agenda, and its profound and politically brave economic reforms, as well as significant achievements such as the reintroduction of Medicare.

  The uni’s chancellor, Belinda Hutchinson, describes Hawke as a ‘truly great Australian whose contribution to our nation has been extraordinary and indeed genuinely legendary’.

  Hawke uses the occasion to push his Australia-as-world’s-nuclear-repository idea: ‘We now have the capacity either, on the one hand, to improve the standards and quality of life of all of mankind or, on the other, to destroy life as we know it. Let me assure you,’ he says, ‘that’s not the fanciful imaginations of an old man. The fact of global warming will not go away whether you are president elect of the United States or a humble citizen of Australia.’

  Prior to Hawke, prior to the chancellor, the leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten – who, unlike Hawke, is hardly five-feet-seven of pure heaven – loosens up and delivers an excellent speech on the man whose shadow he is forever caught in.

  It’s a tremendous privilege to say a few words today in honour of a Labor legend.

  And, Bob, I must begin with two very important words: Happy birthday.

  Whenever I go for a jog around Canberra, I run past the statues of three prime ministers. The pace I’m moving at usually gives me time to study them in detail.

  On the path between the old boarding houses of Barton and old Parliament House, Ben Chifley and John Curtin walk side by side. It’s a quiet moment in a busy day. Two friends swapping a story, sharing a laugh. Two giants, sharing the burden of winning a war, securing a peace, building a society worthy of the sacrifice of so many Australians.

  Further down, on the shores of the lake he inaugurated, Robert Menzies walks alone. Prime minister before Curtin, and then again after Chifley. There’s a smile on his face, a glint in his eye. It’s the expression of a man who has known success – and knows it will come again.

  And so, friends, as we gather to celebrate an eighty-seventh birthday and an honorary doctorate, I ask myself – how would a sculptor capture Bob Hawke? Microphone or megaphone in one hand, the other moving in time with his words – rallying, inspiring and delighting a crowd. Perhaps with head cocked, one hand grasping his earlobe, listening respectfully to an Aboriginal elder, a captain of industry, an American president or a local parent out doing their shopping. Or maybe in the stands at Moonee Valley, creased and folded form guide in hand, ticking off another winner – or not. Or in that jacket, mouth open with laughter, dodging the champagne, giving his prime ministerial blessing to a good old-fashioned sickie.

  Whatever pose they opted for, the statue could never be tucked away in a corner of the capital. It would have to be out among the Australian people. The people with whom he shared a connection never seen before in Australian politics. The people whose wisdom he trusted – and whose support he secured more often than any other Labor leader. The Australian people loved Bob Hawke because they could tell he loved them. Australians know he still loves them – and they still love him.

  And, friends, the more I thought about that sculpture, the more I realised no matter how lifelike the bronze, no matter how skilled the hands that shape it, no artist can surpass the monuments Bob has already built.

  If you want to see a tribute to Bob Hawke, look around you.

  This world-class university, where places are earned on merit – not purchased by privilege.

  An Australia where kids from working-class families finish school. Less than three in ten kids did that when Bob came to office – eight in ten when he left.

  A modern, outward-looking, competitive economy, where working-and middle-class people are rewarded for their efforts. A system built on the idea that growth is stronger when it is shared, when wages and living standards rise – and a strong safety net catches those who fall on hard times.

  A country where tourists and locals alike share the wonders of the Daintree or ride the rapids of the Franklin.

  An Australia at home in Asia, a voice heard and respected in the councils of the world. A country that steps up and plays its part – keeping peace in the Middle East, keeping Antarctica safe for science.

  And if you want to see a monument to Bob Hawke, open your wallet or your purse or your bag and look at your Medicare card: a green-and-gold promise that the health of any Australian matters to all Australians. He built Medicare – and last election, he campaigned with us to save it.

  So many of those achievements have earned the ultimate compliment from Bob’s political opponents – they now pretend to have supported them all along.

  As prime minister, consensus was Bob’s watchword. But that didn’t mean taking the soft option, the low road, the path of least resistance. It didn’t mean floating thought bubbles in the morning and popping them in the afternoon. Or blinking and backtracking at the first sign of resistance. Bob – and the brilliant cabinet he chaired so assuredly – built consensus. They understood that consensus meant leading and persuading – not surrender, retreat and division.

  Friends, history can be the most brutal judge. But it is also the most compelling. As president of the ACTU, Bob was the champion of unpopular causes.

  The right of unions to organise and bargain.

  Opposing French nuclear testing in the Pacific.

  Opposing the war in Vietnam.

  Opposing apartheid – and defending Nelson Mandela, when conservatives were branding him a terrorist.

  As prime minister, he was a force for consensus – but on Labor terms.

  Bob was the great unifier – but he was also a great separator. He opposed trickle-down economics – the Reaganite, Thatcherite fashion of the times – now back in vogue.

  In Australian history, in Australian politics, there was B.H. and A.H. Before Hawke – and After Hawke.

  After Hawke, we were a different country. A kinder, better country.

  He worked with Keating and Kelty to negotiate a national [Prices and Incomes] Accord.

  He swiftly and decisively implemented Medicare.

  He worked sensitively and with humility to engage with Asia. Not lecturing from the podium of Australia but constantly working in hundreds of meetings to build relationships with the region.

  Of course, Bob Hawke is special. There will never be another Hawke government – because there will only ever be one Bob Hawke.

  Very rarely, in the world, are countries defined by a leader’s time in power. Before FDR – and after FDR. Before Lee Kuan Yew – and after Lee Kuan Yew.

  It’s rare to say you changed a country and left it different. It’s even more rare to say you changed it for the better. Kinder, more open, more confident. Deakin did it. Curtin and Chifley did it. Gough did it. And so did Bob.

  That’s Dr Robert James Lee Hawke.

  That’s who we celebrate today.

  Bob – that is your place in history.

  — CHAPTER 16 —

  THE STEPSON

  LOUIS PRATT, THE ONLY
CHILD OF BLANCHE D’ALPUGET and Tony Pratt, was conceived in Jakarta, born in Kuala Lumpur and raised in Canberra’s ‘steamroller of banality and domesticity,’ as his mother describes it.

  Louis was four when Hawke and his mother became lovers, six when she was dumped by Hawke and fourteen when she left the family home for good and moved to Sydney. Tony had insisted that, as she was the one breaking up the marriage, she could not take Louis to live with her.

  ‘I remember this sense of sadness that I didn’t know why my mum wasn’t at the house,’ says Louis. There was a brief period when Blanche and Tony attempted a reconciliation. ‘But it was a wounded relationship.’

  Blanche and Louis had a spectacular falling-out.

  ‘We both have fiery tempers and during the argument a tea towel actually burst into flame. Our relationship broke down completely,’ says Blanche. ‘Louis said he’d never speak to me again. I was devastated, and there were very few people I could or would confide in, because to do so my affair with Bob could come out. One person I did tell was Susan Ryan. I used to cry on her shoulder about Louis. “He’ll come back,” she’d say. We had some meetings, but they were difficult… Louis and I had a rapprochement when he was sixteen. An American friend who saw us together said, “He loves you madly.’”

  ‘You know, I take marriage very seriously,’ says Louis. ‘Going through a divorce as a child at that age, it fucks you up a bit. You somehow think it’s your fault or you were involved in it. Because that’s your world, your family. And then when it all starts to fall apart, you’re like, “What have I done? Have I done something?”’

  Louis is forty-four years old now and has inherited the miraculous genes of his mother and grandmother. He hovers a little over six feet, has wide blue eyes, pale and mostly unlined skin and a relatively stubborn carpet of dark red curls constrained by a small-brimmed hat perched kippah-like on his crown.

  He wears the uniform of the inner-city creative: a slim-fitting, scoop-neck white T-shirt, black jeans and work boots. A scarf loosely circles his neck. Call him thirty and you’ll get fewer raised eyebrows than the reveal of his actual vintage.

  Louis survived the divorce, as children mostly do, and flourished. He completed three degrees: a BA in graphic design, a BA in visual arts (first-class honours) and a Masters of Fine Arts, majoring in new technology. He was a lecturer at Sydney’s College of Fine Arts from 2003–2015, teaching metal casting, 3D animation, 3D printing and using technology to make art. Now, with commissions piling up for his 3D-printed sculptures, and with his work bought for private collections in Australia, Switzerland, China, Germany, England and America, Louis has become that rarest of birds, the self-sufficient artist.

  The first time I wanted to interview Louis he was busy with a sculpture for the Bendigo hospital, a $300,000, six-tonne work called Alchemy.

  Could I call back in a few weeks? A month?

  Three months later, the work is about to be installed in the hospital’s therapeutic garden. Louis is leaving for Bendigo the following day, but I ask if I can swing by and inspect his art at his studio in Marrickville, in Sydney’s inner west.

  The first item to draw the visitor’s gaze is the almost-life-sized sculpture of a couple locked in a carnal embrace. The man, whom we presume to be nude, angles his pelvis upwards. The woman completes the docking sequence by tilting her pubis downwards. The scene is made surreal by heads of polygon planes and bodies of sharp angles. The lovers are wrapped in gold flake and mounted on a mirrored plinth. Louis thinks he’ll call the work Corrupt File because of his ‘fascination with the human body and also this concept of personal data and pornography and the dehumanising nature of both,’ he says.

  To create the lifelike forms, Louis either buys data or scans a model or a friend. He uses a hired structured light scanner and then manipulates and reduces the data to create the effect he seeks. The 3D printers he owns and maintains himself.

  Beside Corrupt File is a gold apple with a blackened core, the size of a baby hippopotamus. It’s one of a prize-winning, politically motivated series about coal and energy that ‘draws upon the biblical motif of the apple, of original sin, that there are consequences of using coal,’ he says. ‘Of course we needed at a certain stage to burn coal to generate electricity to generate technology to get where we are. But there are consequences.’

  The large apple you can buy for $6666, smaller versions for $666.

  ‘Making a pact with the devil,’ he says.

  Louis keeps regular enough hours at the studio and has just bought a small apartment in nearby Newtown. Not that he’s going to be dragging his bags into the city anytime soon. He expects he’ll be living for a while yet in the harbourfront boatshed he’s called home since 2009, when the lease on a sprawling house he shared with three friends in the beachside suburb of Bronte ended and the group couldn’t find a joint to fit them all in. If you’re in a jam, come and throw your gear in the boatshed, Blanche suggested. It wasn’t a difficult sell. The small wooden structure has a loft-bed built into its vaulted roof, a bathroom and a jetty in front where he and Bob can snatch the occasional fish.

  Bob is the stepfather Louis didn’t eyeball up close until he was twenty-three, just before his mother’s 1995 wedding at the Ritz in Double Bay. The first Louis knew of the lovers going public in 1994 was when he saw it on the news while holidaying in Port Douglas.

  When they did meet, Hawke told him straight up, ‘I just want you to know I think of you as my own son.’

  ‘He was very open and generous from day one,’ says Louis.

  The living arrangement suits Hawke and Blanche as much as it does Louis. In return for a rent-free existence in his little perch on the water, Louis will cook dinner, buy the shiraz blends Hawke prefers and nail any odd jobs. More importantly, given Hawke’s inquisitive intelligence and his need to comprehend the shifting nature of work and living, Louis has become Hawke’s connection to the world of new technologies.

  ‘I’m very tech-savvy. I use a lot of software and machines. We talk about automation, artificial intelligence, technological singularity [the hypothesis that AI will lead to unimagined consequences] and how it all works today. How it’s changing the face of the job market,’ he says. ‘It’s probably what has kept wages quite flat. All around the world is a flattening of wage growth. Lots of jobs are disappearing.’

  Wage growth and a shifting labour market. Oh, tell me that wouldn’t be right up Hawke’s alley…

  ‘Well, yeah,’ says Louis, ‘because he saw that the best way for a society to improve was to get jobs for everyone and raise the minimum wage. If you raise the minimum wage you are just putting more money back into the economy. All these people think you have to screw down the minimum wage because it’s going to hurt business. It’s not true because you are going to get rid of customers who have the money to pay for things.’

  Wait until jobs are increasingly automated, says Louis. ‘Things are going to be problematic if we create this whole useless class of people. What’s a truck driver going do when trucks are robot-driven? And it’s going to happen soon.’

  Louis tells me that Hawke has set up a research project into the effect of artificial intelligence, how it will shape the job market and how society can negotiate it.

  ‘You don’t know its capabilities or even its ethics,’ he says. ‘Maybe it has profiles in there, such as no human can be harmed, but maybe to save the human race from itself it thinks, I have to kill three million people to do it. Bob really wanted to get his head around AI so I dug up some Harvard papers on the decimation of the workforce. They’re saying that in the next twenty years, 41 per cent of jobs in America are going to be under threat.’

  Until Hawke’s feet gave out and the one-drink-a-night-rule came into effect (‘That’s Mum putting the fun squeeze on him,’ he says), Louis and his old pal would have boozy nights wiping out whole bottles of Scotch and playing snooker.

  ‘We would carry on, a lot of yelling. He’s very funny,’ says L
ouis.

  These days they watch the golf and bet on putts. Louis digs their time together but he misses the ambulatory Hawke.

  ‘It’s an unfortunate thing to happen, because once you stop walking there’s so many things you don’t do. And then you become more sedentary and so it exacerbates the original problem. When they get to that age, they’re sort of … [long pause]… drifting away from you. It’s sad. And I can see my mum – you know how vital she is and she’s really fit. So it’s a problem.’

  Louis acts as an unofficial minder for his stepdad at functions. He’ll hang in the background, keeping an eye on Hawke, making sure he’s okay.

  ‘I know him so well I know if something isn’t right,’ he says.

  How did you feel when the press sunk the boot into Hawke and Blanche?

  ‘She really was the scarlet woman,’ says Louis. ‘I remember Mum saying she lived in a hotel for a while trying to hide away from it all. Falling in love and committing was always a risk. And it affected Mum more than Bob. Hazel had a special place in the Australian psyche, and they didn’t want to see her being treated badly.’

  But, he says, Hawke and Blanche ‘offer an inspiration to lots of people as they get older. That it is possible to fall in love. And when they were just getting married Mum was like a teenager again.’

  Hawke at eighty-seven?

  Louis describes him as a pacifist, still driven by a sense that what matters, above everything, is the Brotherhood of Man.

  ‘He has a love of helping people. He thinks of other people first and you can see that was what drove him as a politician. It’s just really the generosity of his sprit. The continual fight for Australians. Or anyone. It’s rare that you meet someone that’s happy to get out there and fight for another person – and then do it phenomenally well.’

  Do you regard Hawke as a friend or a father figure?

  ‘A friend, because I was brought up by my dad and we met as adults,’ Louis says.