Wednesdays with Bob

by Derek Rielly

  ‘I remember this one night at the Lodge in Canberra. The prime minister of Singapore at the time, Lee Kuan Yew, came through and Hawke was having a small dinner for him. I was there – because I was Secretary of Foreign Affairs, I suppose – and Bob lit up a cigar in front of Lee and blew out smoke and Lee Kwan Yew went –’ Woolcott gesticulates wildly in front of his face ‘– “I CAN’T STAND SMOKE!”

  ‘You’d expect Hawke would put it out. Instead, Hawke says to me, “Take him out to the courtyard.” It’s the middle of bloody winter! So I had to take Lee out into the courtyard while Bob finished his cigar. In those days, he very much did what he wanted to do.’

  Did he ever receive you in the nude, as is the legend of pool-side cabinet meetings?

  ‘I’ve heard those stories; I don’t know whether they’re true, although Churchill received Roosevelt in the bath. Maybe Hawke drew on that. Roosevelt went to see Churchill when he was in London and when he was shown in Churchill was in the bloody bath! Churchill said, “The British have nothing to hide from the Americans.’”

  Do you believe the secret to Hawke’s success was the charismatic, friend-to-every-man persona?

  ‘What is charismatic, but someone who attracts attention? I suppose so, yes. I’ve known all the prime ministers going back to Menzies and he was always, if he wanted to be, very engaging and happy to talk to people. He had that; he got on easily with people. That was a big advantage.’

  Woolcott adds, ‘A few years ago I was having a drink for my birthday. Here in Potts Point we’re part of Wentworth, which is Malcolm Turnbull’s electorate, so I asked Malcolm, I asked Bob Hawke – because I know him well – and I asked Tanya Plibersek. I didn’t ask Keating, because Keating and Hawke don’t get on.

  ‘And I always remember, Hawke sat on the couch and was very relaxed and, pointing to Turnbull and Tanya Plibersek, he said, “Two future prime ministers of Australia are in the room!” And Turnbull, rather modestly, said, “Oh. Tanya might make it, but I don’t think I ever will.” Turnbull probably didn’t mean it, of course.’

  Woolcott recalls from his time as Secretary of Foreign Affairs that Hawke was open to ‘sound advice’ but would let you know, forcefully, if he believed you were wrong.

  Were there any issues on which his opinion couldn’t be swung?

  ‘Yes, there’s one. The 1989 Tasmanian state election. He took the view very strongly that Antarctica should be totally preserved. Now, there are no trees in Antarctica but he said, “No trees should be cut down!’” Woolcott belly laughs and says he argued that there was already a treaty that covered all that. ‘But Hawke said, “No, no, no, we’ve got to go beyond what the treaty says.” And that was essentially related to Tasmanian domestic policy.’

  You mean to tell me, Mr Woolcott, that Hawke’s successful quest to turn Antarctica into a natural reserve, devoted to peace and science for fifty years, for which he enlisted the iconic French underwater researcher Jacques Cousteau and French prime minister Michel Rocard, was primarily designed as a vote winner in the Tasmanian state election?

  ‘Yeah, he felt that to demand that Antarctica be completely denuclearised and not used for any mineral excavation… it would appeal to the Labor Party in Tasmania.’

  (When I repeat this to Hawke, he says Woolcott ‘absolutely overstates the influence of the Tasmanian state election. It simply wasn’t a factor in my decision. I’m telling you that as a fact!’)

  Political considerations aside, it’s interesting, I tell Woolcott, that in an early exchange with Hawke about his legacy, he tells me that he rarely bites back at Keating’s versions of history, but when Keating said that he was the first to broach the subject of locking up Antarctica, well, he had to do something.

  ‘There’s big argument about that,’ says Woolcott. ‘Hawke says that he was the first to talk to the French about it. Well he wasn’t; Keating was… Bob would still deny that!’

  How would Woolcott describe the dynamic between Hawke and Keating?

  ‘Ah, well… it’s still not all that good, because once Keating challenged him and won, Hawke never really forgave him for that. They still don’t like each other.’

  (To this, Hawke will later respond, ‘Again, it’s overstated. I have an affection for him.’)

  As someone who served them both, who was the better prime minister? ‘Well, Keating was a very good treasurer and Hawke was a very good prime minister.’

  How do they differ as men?

  ‘Well, Keating was essentially a fairly conservative Catholic in many ways. Bob Hawke, while his father was a clergyman, was certainly less religious than Keating.’

  And Hawke as prime minister, compared to Menzies?

  ‘Bob was a better prime minister. I mean, Menzies was a good prime minister but he didn’t have to deal with any real problems in those days…’

  Still, I point out, there was Korea, 22 per cent inflation, the spectre of communism.

  ‘Yeah, but life became more complicated later on and I thought Hawke handled the prime ministership better than anybody – certainly better than Malcolm Fraser. It was strange. Malcolm, he had control of both –’ Boom! Woolcott slams his fist on the table for emphasis ‘– the Reps and the Senate –’ Boom! ‘– and I’ve never known why he didn’t use it. He could’ve been producing the reforms that Hawke and Keating did, but he didn’t do it.’

  And how about Hawke at eighty-six?

  ‘I think he’s gone downhill a bit in the last few months. He walks with a stick, he’s a bit deaf in one ear, so it’s not as easy to talk to him as it used to be. He keeps his hair in good shape, does a lot of this I’ve noticed…’ Woolcott pats his hair theatrically. ‘And some people think he’s vain…’

  Is Hawke vain?

  ‘Well, he’s interested in how he looks, but he’s not necessarily vain. He certainly likes to keep himself looking tidy.’

  Woolcott says if he had to describe Hawke to someone who didn’t know him, he would say he was ‘a guy who had the capacity once he set –’ Boom! The fist comes down again ‘– the goal -‘Boom!’-of going into politics, of becoming a prime minister, he did everything he needed to do to achieve that.’

  And he’ll be remembered well?

  ‘Hawke showed that he could give up the grog and perform as prime minister. It was an amazing act of survival.’

  — CHAPTER 6 —

  FINDING LOVE THROUGH INFIDELITY

  PERSISTENT RAIN. A SALLY BACK AND FORTH WITH A partially deaf former prime minister on the intercom. Hawke has been given the duty of vetting guests as Blanche trains with Ryan Barraclough, the champion rower turned personal trainer whose calves I’ll be invited to comment on later.

  Hello?

  Eh?

  Bob!

  Who is it?

  Derek!

  Eh?

  The front gate, which is on the third level, is wedged open. I forget the intercom and walk in. It ain’t exactly Fort Knox here. But, then, security has never been on the top of Hawke’s requirements.

  When the Palestinian journalist Munif Mohammed Abou Rish plotted to assassinate Hawke in 1974 over his support for Israel (Munif was killed by Israeli security forces before he could complete the hit), Hawke refused to hide behind a phalanx of bodyguards.

  John Singleton says that when he gave Hawke the keys to his Birchgrove house in 1991 after his pal had lost the leadership, ‘he probably slipped the guard a hundred bucks to fuck off. Bob was never one for security. He had whatever he had to have.’

  I see more of the Northbridge house this time. On a raised platform on the second level is a jarrah dining table that seats twelve, probably fourteen at a pinch. Custom-made by an Italian craftsman, it has hosted various Chinese businessmen, Arab sheiks, Rhodes Scholars, politicians and American billionaires.

  A vertical aquarium is built into a wall and multi-coloured tropical fish languidly flap up and down. There’s a photograph stuck to the fridge called Bob on Toast; taken by the Sydney photographer Si
mon Bernhardt, it shows Hawke holding a slice of toast smeared with Vegemite under his nose, his brilliantined hair glossy under studio lighting. Also affixed to the fridge is a small sculpture of lips in chains by Hawke’s stepson Louis.

  On a banquette in an informal dining area that opens to the second-floor terrace is a copy of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a book on economic inequality by the French economist Thomas Piketty. Hawke made his reputation in 1958 as an advocate for the ACTU, winning an unheard of fifteen-shilling increase in the basic wage. Piketty beats a similar tambourine.

  ‘When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income,’ writes Piketty, ‘capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.’

  Hawke was schooled in inequality when he visited India for the 1952 World Christian Youth Conference.

  ‘And it was Christmas,’ Hawke had told me in an earlier interview. ‘There was this big feast put on at the home of one of the wealthy Christians there. I remember they were singing, The world to Christ we bring. Christ to the world we bring. The world to Christ we bring. They were in this palatial place, big gates, and all these poverty-stricken Indians were hanging on the gate and looking in.’ Hawke shook his head. ‘I thought, my god, this is ridiculous. So I left the feast and went back to my digs and got some warm clothing I had and came back and found a couple of kids sleeping out in the open who were obviously very uncomfortable. I gave them the clothing and left.’

  In 1987, more than half a million Australian kids lived at or below what constituted the poverty line. At his campaign launch at the Sydney Opera House that year, Hawke famously (over)promised: ‘By 1990 no Australian child will be living in poverty…’ It was an impossible, reckless pledge, even with the raft of benefits the government would soon pay via rent assistance, family benefit and a child disability allowance.

  Still, ‘A number of women came up to me in the street with tears in their eyes and told me it made all the difference in their lives,’ says Hawke.

  The printed speech actually read ‘no Australian child need live in poverty’. But Hawke being Hawke – Brotherhood of Man and so on – left out the qualifier. He was Australia’s master communicator, after all. He would prevail.

  He didn’t. Twenty years later it was three-quarters of a mill.

  Still, he feels that poverty and its effects are catastrophic. An unequal distribution of wealth, he says now, is the root cause of terrorism and Europe’s dramatic swing to the far right.

  On the Palestinians: ‘You’ve got to create an economically viable Palestinian state. You’ve got no jobs, no growth. Young people are going to be attracted to violence.’

  On the west’s swing to the right: ‘The situation in America is frightful, and in a lot of other countries. Unless people feel they’re getting, in the Australian idiom, a fair go, they’re going to find it attractive to follow those who get up and preach extremes. Creating a fair society is the sine qua non for dealing with these sorts of problems.’

  In his 1994 memoir Hawke wrote, ‘Unashamedly, I love Australia with a passionate intensity.’

  Why?

  Because ‘the fair-go concept is not just words,’ Hawke will tell me. ‘It’s still part of the Australian ethos – perhaps not burning as brightly as it did earlier, but people are regarded on their merits, not where they were born, what level they are on the socioeconomic structure.

  ‘This is real. We were amongst the earliest movers in the world in decent legislation regarding the women’s vote and pensions and social welfare provisions. They’re much more part of the Australian ethos than in so many other countries. The concept of the rule of law, some of the very good things we’ve got from our British heritage, and parliamentary democracy, all that’s been enlarged and strengthened culturally, and with cultural enrichment that’s come with the influx of people from overseas. I don’t think it can be said too often that the transition and the ethnic composition of Australia has been, in terms of the scale of it, the most peaceful anywhere in history.’

  And now, on a July afternoon in Sydney, a cold south-west wind whips the back of the old patriot’s house. But here on the terrace, with the sun sparkling off the white hulls of the yachts below, it could be August in Antibes.

  Hawke wears a white shirt and striped tie, a Nike jacket and fitted grey sweatpants. The tie’s a leftover from a lunch event at which American vice-president Joe Biden spoke on the US–Australian alliance.

  He greets me with the now-familiar: ‘Did you bring a cigar?’

  It’s warm enough, but Bob switches on the outdoor heater. He cuts the new cigar (Romeo y Julieta, from Cuba, $22).

  Small talk. Attempts at lighting with a plastic lighter.

  You like going to functions?

  ‘Not particularly. The one I went to today, they were the best part of two hours late … oh fuck –’ the cigar doesn’t light ‘– and not a word of apology.’

  The flint is worn. Hawke grabs a box of matches.

  How was the speech?

  ‘It was a good speech. But the welcoming applause was less than overwhelming. People were shitty!’

  Is America still our greatest friend?

  ‘I guess,’ he says. ‘It’s got so many weaknesses, but it’s still our most important ally. As far as the relationship between America and China, it’s absolutely crucial. That’s why one of the reasons is that apart from the intrinsics of the Israel–Palestine dispute, if we could get them working together on something like that, that would be a hell of a good thing for the relationship generally.’

  At this point, Blanche brings the couple’s trainer to meet me. Earlier, she’d told me about a whale-shaped foam device called an ‘Oov’ that had been delivering fantastic results. The Oov extends the spine during exercise, which stimulates ‘healthy intervertebral disc lubrication’.

  I mention I’ve also seen a VibroGym in the house, a vibrating platform whose high-speed up-and-down movements promise ‘a tremendous amount of muscle activity’.

  ‘I hate it,’ says Blanche.

  Hawke is wounded. ‘Why did you decide you hated the VibroGym?’

  ‘I hate it. You know I never go on it.’

  ‘I didn’t know you hated it.’

  Blanche and the trainer leave for her afternoon’s workout.

  Hawke draws hard on the Romeo y Julieta. It’s my signal to begin.

  I want to talk about the joy of love. Last week, when I asked about your dream of happiness, you spoke about the joy you have found with Blanche.

  ‘It’s just impossible to describe adequately the happiness that we get from our relationship,’ he says. ‘It’s a paradox in one sense. We share a number of interests and we also have divergent interests, which is a recipe for a good relationship, because you can learn from the interests of your partner. And in the things that you really share an interest in, you can spend a lot of time talking and considering those issues. To be specific, we’re both very interested in politics, domestic and international politics. And we spend a lot of time talking about these issues, watching television together on political subjects. There are those shared interests which bring you together, and then… Blanche’s writing is something which gives her enormous fulfilment… I know I’m terribly proud of her qualities as a writer and the commitment she exhibits in producing her books. While we don’t talk at length and in detail, she always gives me early drafts to look at, so I have an involvement.’

  Of course, this was the first woman you’d met who wanted to talk about the machinations of wage-fixing within the Arbitration Commission.

  ‘Intelligently,’ emphasises Hawke. ‘This is on the non-sexual side of things, the interests; it’s very important to have the shared interests and the difference in interests. That’s something that is very important in our relationship. Of course, we have just been physically attracted to one another from the
very first time we met at that engagement in Jakarta.’

  When you have the great physical attraction matched with a great intellectual attraction, is that when you think those great loves develop?

  ‘Physical attraction is one thing, and it’s a fairly common thing,’ he says, ‘but to have a huge physical attraction associated with intellectual companionship is extraordinarily stimulating.’

  Blanche said that after meeting you, and when you started a relationship, that everything shimmered with life and more life, I tell him. She writes, ‘Researching was a joy. Writing was a joy. Everything was a joy.’ Was it obvious, the effect you had on her?

  ‘Well, it was mutual. It wasn’t just my effect on her. It was a mutual effect and we lifted one another.’

  You’ve obviously read On Longing, Blanche’s book on your great affair. She describes your life at the time as a ‘freewheeling, decentralised harem with four or five favourites, and a shoe-sale queue of one-night stands’.

  Was that true? Were you really that much of a stud?

  ‘Well, it’s not entirely untrue,’ says Hawke echoing an interview with Michael Parkinson, who asked on his eponymous television show if the National Times’ claim that he ‘performs like a playboy’ was true.

  ‘I have my moments,’ Hawke had said with a grin to rapturous applause.

  Now, he does supply the caveat: ‘But I think she’s taken it to the limit.’

  In 1978, I say, you told her that you had been struggling to choose between your Swiss lover, nicknamed Paradiso, and Blanche. You had a dream that they were both on a roulette wheel and when the wheel was spun the ball came to land on Blanche. You took that as a sign that you were meant to marry her. Do you remember that dream?

  ‘Just vaguely,’ Hawke replies, dodging. ‘I can’t make much of that.’

  Then, in 1979, you broke off the relationship. How was your emotional state at the time when you decided to split?

  ‘I was extraordinarily upset. I was on the verge of making the decision about moving into parliament and … divorce from the marriage would not have been an optimal sort of thing to be doing at that point. It was an extraordinarily difficult decision that I took.’