by Derek Rielly
How hard was it to cut off the woman you love and not make contact?
‘Extremely difficult. It was obviously terribly difficult for Blanche …’
Hawke’s voice trails off.
Did you find it hard knowing that she would eventually see other men?
‘No, I had a totally full life. While the memories were there, I had an enormous amount to occupy my mind and my time.’
In November 1988, you called her. Why?
‘She’d never really been out of my mind,’ says Hawke. ‘I just felt I’d love to see her again.’
In On Longing, Blanche describes their first touch in a decade.
He suggested a time, a place and a way – an exercise that was now excruciatingly tricky, since wherever he went he was under guard and accompanied by officials, not every one of whom he trusted. We met in a confidant’s house in Sydney, both very nervous – but then we rushed into each other’s arms, laughing. We laughed at ourselves, and with delight and with relief that we still loved each other. Our happiness was intensified by the imaginative solutions we had to find to be able to meet: a red wig, a stetson, the kindness of friends. We knew we each had other lovers, and we were not going to be foolish a second time.
‘It was just marvellous to be with her again,’ says the more prosaic Hawke.
Shortly after, while on assignment for the New York Times in northern Queensland, the seven-seater plane Blanche was on crashed into the Pacific. Blanche was uninjured but the phone call to Hawke from the pair’s ‘discreet social secretary’ was crushing.
‘Blanche has been in a plane crash,’ he told Hawke.
‘Oh my god!’ Hawke gasped.
At that moment, he felt as if his world had evaporated. The great love of his life … gone. As Hawke would later tell Blanche, he felt as if he’d died.
Beat.
‘But she’s alright,’ said the go-between.
‘Devastating,’ he says now. ‘He really was a drama queen. Not telling me straight out’.
What do you believe the keys are to a successful marriage?
‘To respect one another. I mean, I admire her. She admires me. It’s not just a physical thing,’ says Hawke. ‘Of course that’s there. And it’s a strong part of it. But we genuinely respect one another and we’re interested in what one another’s doing. I have tremendous admiration for her, at her age, she’s still writing an historical quartet. Fabulous.’
Do you think we’re mature enough as a society to talk about affairs that turn into great loves? About the potential to find true and enduring love through infidelity?
Hawke abruptly shifts gears.
Gone is the lover lost in a waterfall of memory. Even nearly five decades since he first met Blanche, and a quarter of a century since he went public with it, Hawke instinctively knows the concept of finding love through infidelity is a concept few would be able to grasp.
‘I don’t want to talk about it very much,’ he says. ‘These are things which are very intimate and personal.’
It’s hard to argue with that. Once Hawke revealed his affair with Blanche and they confessed their overwhelming love, a triumph of passion over pragmatism, the pair had their heads kicked by the Australian press.
The nadir was 60 Minutes, supposedly the high-water mark of serious journalism, with journalist Charles Wooley asking the pair when they first had sex. Was it before or after Hawke had ended his marriage to Hazel?
Now, twenty years on, the show returns for Bob and Blanche redux, this time with a two-part celebration of the pair’s enduring relationship. Perversely, the old scandal becomes the new interview’s hook, the publicity surrounding its broadcast reminding viewers:
At sixty-four, the former prime minister had announced his separation from his wife of forty years, Hazel, and publicly declared his love for the much-younger Blanche. It was the biggest romantic scandal in Australian political history, with the public turning on our most popular prime minister. Hawke shifted from much-loved leader of the nation to one half of Australia’s most recognised and scrutinised ‘two-timing couple’.
Wooley is once again assigned to the story. He takes the opportunity to amend history and ask what he believes is a much better question.
Wooley: I must say now with the weight of experience and the years upon me, I wouldn’t ask when it began but rather how long can it last?
Bob: Forever!
Blanche: Absolutely! I think the thing for both of us is love means adoration.
Wooley: You’re a believer in romantic love?
Blanche: Yes, I’m a believer in something a bit more than romantic love because as we understand it now it’s somewhat saccharine.
Redemption? Or just a bone thrown to an old philanderer guaranteed to light up the show’s ratings?
When Hazel died in 2013, the Sydney Morning Herald was still plying the ‘brave-wife, wanton-lover’ narrative:
… hovering off stage like some lipsticked wraith was the other woman, Blanche d’Alpuget. Australians knew all this but kept a sort of conspiracy of silence. Instead, as Hazel stood by her man with pluck and grace, people took her to their hearts in a manner never extended to any other prime minister’s wife. Perhaps it was her very vulnerability that made Hazel so beloved.
Lipsticked wraith! It’s such a hoary old line I express my delight to Blanche via email, who responds: Lipsticked wraith! My god, where do you find these things?
It isn’t hard.
Despite her bona fides as a noted writer, as a journalist whose non-fiction work centred on the very unsexy role of trade unions in Australia, Blanche is cast in the country’s cultural history as the dumb, painted whore to Hazel Hawke’s elegant Madonna.
After Blanche’s book Hawke: The Prime Minister was released in 2011, the popular columnist Miranda Devine wrote a piece titled, ‘A Slap in the Face of History’. Devine claimed Blanche stole Hazel’s dream and rewrote Bob’s history to diminish her contribution. ‘Bob and Hazel also had a love story, and in Blanche’s book it was trivialised as a mere bond of convenience,’ she wrote.
After the pair appear on 60 Minutes, the mailbag is swollen three-to-one against the lovers.
In the following week’s episode, reporter Peter Overton appears on the television screen to introduce viewers’ comments.
It’s said if you want a dinnertime, ding-dong, no-holds barred argument, then just talk politics, religion or … sex. Which brings us to your rather ferocious comments about last week’s story with Bob Hawke, our agnostic former prime minister who left his wife for …
(Overton stares mournfully into the camera lens; gravitas pulses from the screen)
… another woman.
Cue short version of episode.
Charles Wooley thought Bob and Blanche’s love story was charming, but at home you have long memories.
* * *
Bob’s betrayal of Hazel all those years ago is never forgotten. Karin, Facebook
* * *
This couple is the Australian version of Charles and Camilla. They make me sick. Tracey, Facebook
There is an interlude showing vintage footage of Blanche rubbing sun cream over Bob’s pectorals and into the upper delta of his hams and loins.
‘I like that!’ says Bob.
Cue excerpt from episode:
Wooley: Blanche, you were portrayed at times as the scarlet woman. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
Blanche: That’s right. The fact that I was a writer with a career, and an international career, was simply airbrushed out of the picture. And I was portrayed as Bob’s much younger trophy wife.
Back to the viewers’ response:
Overton: And still, the outrage flowed.
* * *
Thanks for glamorising extramarital affairs 60 Minutes. Suzi, Facebook
* * *
Overton: But then…
* * *
All these people casting judgement. What’s the saying? Let he who hasn’t sinned ca
st the first stone. Maya, Facebook
* * *
It’s a fine sentiment – even if it is the minority view. For public and private morality are two very different creatures. The celebrity or notable is held to an impossibly pious ideal, while the viewer, whose life is never scrutinised by camera or reporter, can cavort freely.
Hawke’s old pal Colin Cunningham told him if he ever left Hazel he’d be hated by every damn female in Australia.
‘Well, that was a fact,’ says Col. ‘I sat down with him and he said, “I’m leaving Hazel,” and I said, “Oh Jesus, you’ll be hated now. Women will just fucken… hate… you.” He said, “Colin, I don’t care. I’ve been hated before.” He said, “I’m going to spend the next twenty years with the woman I love.” And that was that.’
Because you can’t keep the lid on a beautiful love story.
‘Yeah, and he’s just the same now as if it happened yesterday! I mean, who’s like that? Ah, Jesus, it’s sickening. If you go out he’s holding hands with her, walking down the street and all this. I’ve got a good wife but holding hands? Oh, he’s bloody embarrassing at times!’ Col snorts. ‘He’s just infatuated with the woman. That’s all. Yeah. Infatuated.
‘He’d take a bullet for her. Fair dinkum. If someone fired a gun at her he’d jump in front of the bullet.’
— CHAPTER 7 —
ON SONIA AND ISLAM
WITH THE DOOR TO HIS GREAT LOVE AFFAIR CLOSED, I present the previous day’s news to Hawke for examination.
The TV host Sonia Kruger had said on the talk show Today that she wanted Australia’s borders closed to Muslim immigrants; she said she wanted to feel safe when she celebrated Australia Day.
It’s the sort of talk that kills Hawke. He helped establish the International Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding in South Australia and believes one of the great dangers confronting the world is the lack of understanding in regards to the Muslim world.
What would you say to someone like Ms Kruger, shaken by the notion of Muslims at the gate? I ask.
First, Hawke calls Kruger’s posit ‘frightful’ and says it’s a little rough to start closing the door to ‘a nation which has been built on immigration’. He believes in a sturdy and non-discriminatory immigration policy. Curtin’s decision to open the door to the world, says Hawke, is why we punch above our weight.
‘This has made Australia. It’s strengthened us economically and culturally enriched us. For people to be speaking against any nationality, race, creed and religion is a contradiction to what Australia is about. I just wish that these people would sit down and think about it more rationally. There’s no doubt that fanatical Muslims are dangerous. So are fanatical Christians. So are fanatical Jews. I was talking to a Jewish friend of mine relatively recently and he was going on about the –’
Suddenly, Blanche appears from behind a sliding door, clearly post-workout given the sheen on her cheek, and squeezes her hands along the length of her husband’s trapezius.
‘Who’s this beautiful thing?’ says Hawke, leaning into his wife’s still-enviable chest, his face turned upwards.
So, your Jewish friend, I remind him.
‘He was attacking Muslims and I said, “You mustn’t do that.” Fanatical Muslims are obviously to be despised and dealt with. I said, “I just ask you to remember one thing: it wasn’t a fanatical Muslim who murdered the Israeli prime minister [Yitzhak Rabin] – it was a fanatical Jew. It was the fanatical right-wing Christians in America who encouraged Bush to go into Iraq.” As I said, it’s the fanaticism of any religion which is a danger. Islam has been a great religion over the centuries; they’ve been able to live peaceably with other religions. And we’ve just got to do all that we can, political leaders and ordinary people, to be open and discuss issues and reject fanaticism from wherever it comes.’
Kruger also said, ‘It’s vital a democratic society be able to discuss these sorts of issues without being labelled a racist.’ It’s a reasonable request, I suggest.
‘Well, just to shout “racist” is not appropriate,’ says Hawke. ‘We should condemn those who act racially themselves. But we don’t achieve anything by being counter-racist – racist the other way. I hold the view that we are all brothers and sisters, and people must be dealt with on their merits, not on the basis of some prejudiced, preconceived notion about the religion to which they belong or belief that they hold.’
Still, I push, in light of attacks in New York, Bali, Jakarta, Madrid, London, Nice, Orlando, San Bernardino, Paris, Berlin and Sydney, and beheadings on the streets of London to a church in Normandy to an Ikea in Västerås, Sweden, as well as the myriad bombings in Iraq, Jordan and beyond, not to mention the Shia–Sunni conflict, can you understand why people might feel as if the levers of government were being pulled without due acknowledgement of their concerns?
‘Of course I can understand why people are concerned. Any sensible person is concerned about the dangerous state of the world,’ says Hawke. ‘In the Cold War, which was a very dangerous period, you had the situation where your enemy was in identified areas. You knew where they were. With terrorists, the opposite is true. You also had the distinction that the Russians didn’t want to die themselves. For the terrorists, on the contrary, they think death is glorious, so you’ve got a much more difficult situation… This is all the more reason why we should call upon people to behave decently and rationally, and not on the basis of prejudice. I can’t say it more clearly than that.’
But Hawke says there isn’t a damn thing anyone can do about Islamic terrorism until Israel and Palestine are two separate states.
‘That’s why I’m working with the Chinese to try to get them to talk about it,’ he says.
He’s referred to this idea briefly before, but now I ask him to expand on it.
‘Well, I’m very close to the Chinese and to their top security and intelligence people. I’ve said to them that now that they have to take a real interest in the Middle East. They had the Israeli prime minister and the head of the Palestinian Authority there in China. I’ve urged the Chinese… to offer to sit down with the Americans in talks with Israel and Palestine, because it’s my judgement it would change the chemistry of the situation.’
According to Hawke, the Palestinians and the Arabs don’t trust the Americans to be impartial. The Arab world sees the US as protectors of Israel and not much else. But China is a superpower without a stake in the game, apart from spreading its wings economically.
‘If you had China and the United States acting as negotiators, there would be a very real chance of getting a result, and that’s what I urge them to do… It would change the chemistry entirely,’ Hawke says, adding he’s ‘been in touch’ with Hillary Clinton to push his idea.
‘When she becomes president, as I believe she will, I’ll talk to her about it,’ he says.
What are the steps to achieving a solution to the Israel–Palestine question and what does that solution look like? I ask. More to the point, why would a Hawke plan succeed when everyone from Kissinger to Clinton has failed miserably?
‘Well, just two or three things. Firstly, as part of the resolution, both China and America together should say to the parties that they are committed to creating an economically viable Palestinian state. You’ve got no jobs, no growth. Young people are just going to be attracted to violence, so I’ve formulated many years ago what I call the Powell Plan for Palestine. This was when Colin Powell was the Secretary of State. He supported it absolutely.’
The PPP, says Hawke, was a twenty-first-century version of America’s Marshall Plan, whereby the equivalent of $120 billion (in 2016 dollars) was pumped into Europe after World War II – to rebuild the joint, sure, but mostly to stave off the influence of the Soviet Union.
‘Western Europe was very much in danger of falling to the Communists, so the Marshall Plan poured money into Western Europe to revive their economies. It was one of the great acts of statesmanship,’ says Hawke.
In
2003, Hawke, along with Blanche, even met with then chairman of the PLO Yasser Arafat at his Ramallah compound to sell the idea.
As Blanche describes in Hawke: The Prime Minister:
A pall of misery and despair hung over the towns and villages of the West Bank in the autumn of 2003. The few food shops that were open had scant supplies: limp carrots, tinned milk, some apples, bags of rice. Israel was already building the Separation Wall … Hawke was driven on to Ramallah, which seemed a ghost town. There was a high wall around Arafat’s compound and Israeli soldiers on top of all the buildings that overlooked it. Inside the compound a number of buildings had been bombed and lay in ruins, as did the entrance to Arafat’s house. Hawke was ushered through khaki canvas flats, which now served as a door, up a flight of stairs where a wardrobe and sandbags covered a bomb-hole in the wall. Hawke had detested Arafat for decades as the embodiment of violence. It was only his conviction that the international situation was increasingly dangerous that had brought him this far.
The chairman of the Palestinian Authority had been the world’s foremost political trickster for more than thirty years, its Great Survivor, the Br’er Rabbit of international affairs: smart, cunning, funny, charming, lucky. And a killer. But when he entered dressed in his military uniform, surrounded by aides, he was a pitiful figure, a warlord defeated, depressed and enervated. The dream he had pursued for decades lay in rubble.
And yet here was Bob Hawke, a former prime minister of Australia and great friend to Israel, offering hope, a way out of the dirt.
‘I expounded the Powell Plan concept to him,’ says Hawke. ‘And he was very, very positively responsive. I said to him that he would have to understand that the attacks on Israel would have to cease and I said everyone will understand that you can’t absolutely control every single person, but you’d have to use your influence to stop those attacks. I said also, you’d have to understand that the huge amounts of money that are going to be involved cannot be handled directly by you. It must be handled independently so there’s no corruption, and all the money is used for the right purposes. I mentioned Jim Wolfensohn, who was then president of the World Bank, and a good friend of mine over many years. Arafat said yes, he knew Wolfensohn and respected him, and then he absolutely agreed to that.’