It is no doubt a little presumptuous for someone who was very much part of the action to claim that the Hawke government was as good as it ever gets in Australia. But there are plenty of objective reasons to support the claim that the Hawke government of 1983-91 – and indeed the Keating government that succeeded it until 1996 – was “gold standard”.
The Howard-led Coalition government, which followed from 1996 to 2007, has its supporters for that accolade, but more for its longevity than for any excitement generated by its leadership, or for the strength, depth and diversity of the talent in its ranks, or – some excellent measures like gun control notwithstanding – for the range or quality of its achievements.
The Hawke period was successful on all these fronts not because it lacked the kind of internal tensions – between old bulls and younger bulls, and multiple strong personalities with competing egos and ambitions – that have roiled so many other governments, not least our Rudd and Gillard Labor successors. It was because those tensions were successfully managed, with a high level of mutual respect between cabinet members and commitment to the common cause, always operating as a brake on self-indulgent personality politics.
There are six main factors that enabled the Hawke government to maintain a strong reformist momentum for as long as it did, and to deliver as much as it did, with as much discipline and coherence as it did.
1. Quality of leadership – the PM himself
Bob Hawke had four exceptional strengths: his ability to craft a grand narrative, to connect with people, to operate collegiately and – most unexpectedly for those who knew only the earlier larrikin – to maintain personal and institutional discipline. No government survives long without a clearly communicated philosophy and sense of policy direction, and Hawke understood this from the outset.
Our capacity to sell wage restraint, deregulation and tough economic reforms generally depended on Hawke’s ability, much assisted by Bill Kelty and the Australian Council of Trade Unions, to persuade both the party and the wider community that our education, health and superannuation reforms provided a compensating “social wage”.
Hawke’s ability to make others warm to him was a huge strength throughout his career, and his consultative and collegiate instincts served the government well. Externally, his trademark enthusiasm for summits – gathering all the major interest groups to wrestle with big national problems – did not always produce consensus but it did generate respect. Internally, so long as ministers weren’t screwing up, or deviating too far from the government’s collective storyline, he let us get on with the job and make our own running in the media and parliament as we saw fit. And within cabinet, everything was contestable, and very often contested.
Neither Hawke nor Paul Keating, who followed his example in this respect, always loved the reality of cabinet peer-group pressure. But both accepted that they were running a Westminster, not a presidential, executive system.
Had serious concerns arisen about dysfunctional internal process, on the scale they did in the first Rudd government, it is inconceivable that we would have been inhibited about confronting the leadership with them. Were our successors to have operated in a similarly robust environment the course of Australian political history could well have been very different.
One cannot talk about the leadership quality of the Hawke government without giving almost equal weight to Keating’s role.
Throughout his political career, Paul was a larger-than-life and, I suspect, globally unique combination of statesman, aesthete, showman and streetfighter. He was and remains a very engaging human being, not remotely as arrogant as his public image – in many ways warmer and funnier than Hawke, and more genuine in his friendships.
Paul’s two greatest strengths as a political leader were his clear sense of strategic direction and his unrivalled capacity to communicate. He could be uproariously earthy with his colleagues. But he could also be solemn, statesmanlike and deeply moving.
Even his cruellest lines had wit and elegance about them. Think of his description of Malcolm Fraser in 1982 as an “Easter Island statue with an arse full of razor blades”; or his reaction to Andrew Peacock returning as Liberal leader in 1989 – “Can a soufflé rise twice?”; or his response to John Hewson asking him in 1992 why he would not call an early election – “Because I want to do you slowly.”
In a line that, sadly, does not seem to have made its way into the public record, I remember Paul once describing (I think) Howard – although it could have been any of a number of other Tories – as having “all the charm of a used suppository”. He has been, and will remain, a hard act to follow. And his partnership with Bob, for all the years it lasted, was and remains the most productive in Australian political history.
2. We never let politics drown good policy
The Hawke government’s essence was to be dry in our economic policy, compassionately moist in our social policy and liberal internationalist in our foreign policy, with the “social wage” – delivered mainly through health, education and superannuation gains – being at the heart of our capacity to sell wage restraint, deregulation and tough economic reforms to the wider community. We never – or almost never! – let politics drown good policy, certainly in the crucial area of economic policy, because we were confident of the strength and coherence of the decisions we were making.
The Rudd and Gillard governments struggled to recreate anything as compelling, torn between old industrial labour preoccupations, the new environmentalism and capitulating to populist anxiety on issues including asylum seekers. The Albanese government is doing better but is still working on finding its collective voice.
3. Determination to avoid dysfunction
We had a decent governing process, and stuck to it. Hawke was determined to avoid the manifest dysfunction of the Whitlam government and good cabinet process, including prior consultation with all relevant portfolios and interests, was rigorously followed. Outcomes were practically never stitched up in advance (albeit not, in many cases, for want of trying). The contrast with the later Rudd government is instructive.
The Rudd administration brilliantly navigated the fast-moving global financial crisis, with the prime minister and a small inner group bypassing traditional cabinet processes. But, with the crisis over, the bypassing continued – increasingly by the prime minister alone. Genuinely collective decision-making can be painfully difficult but, in government as elsewhere, there is wisdom in crowds. The Albanese government, to its credit, seemed at the outset to have internalised that message and it’s important that it continues to do so.
4. We debated everything
We operated internally on the basis of argument rather than authority. We debated everything out, often fiercely (and in language reflecting the strength of the views held), and did not just succumb passively to the exercise of leadership authority. The prime minister was first among equals – but only just.
5. We welcomed the advice of the public service
We really did listen to and consult with relevant stakeholders on every major policy issue, starting with the famous summits of the early years. I cannot help but compare and contrast the lengths we went to get up the petroleum resource rent tax, and the resource rent royalty which I negotiated, with the history of the mining tax under our Labor successors.
We respected and welcomed the advice of the public service, not just in policy implementation but in conceptualisation and design, and had at least as many public servants seconded to our ministerial offices as political and personal staff.
6. We explained and argued the case
Finally, we explained and argued the case for everything we did, with Bob and Paul both outstanding communicators, and Paul in particular absolutely remorseless in his determination to ensure that the major opinion-moulders knew what we were trying to do, why and how. If the focus groups told us we had a problem, that was the beginning of the public argument, not the end of it.
It is reasonable to ask whether the Hawke and Keating government experience is repeatable today. It is true that we did not have then some of the technology-driven, 24/7 media pressures that present governments face. Nor did we have to contend with populist sentiment of the kind that has exploded in Europe and the US, and is becoming increasingly visible in Australia, or negotiate with quite so numerous and flighty a set of crossbenchers. In all sorts of ways, it is clearly now tougher than it has ever been for governments to deliver good policy outcomes.
We can’t just assume away some of the profound differences between the current political environment, both domestic and international, today as compared with 40 years ago. New listening is required to understand why people are reacting as they are. New thinking is required to craft policy approaches to the issues that are resonating with the disaffected – above all, being seen to seriously address the central concern that no one be left behind. And new acting is going to be required, bringing a style to the business of politics that is less brazenly confrontational, more cooperative and consultative, but also more courageous.
If close attention is paid to all the reasons that, in my judgment at least, made the Hawke government the success that it manifestly was – quality leadership, clear philosophy, decent formal governing process, real internal contestability, genuinely consultative style and effective communication – the cause of consolidating a genuinely functional liberal democracy of which all Australians can be proud is not lost. But I would say that, wouldn’t I?
This is an edited extract from from Gold Standard? Remembering the Hawke government, edited by Frank Bongiorno, Carolyn Holbrook and Joshua Black (NewSouth Publishing, $39.99).
A previous version of this article incorrectly linked the wrong Gareth Evans as the writer
