HUNTING THE FAMOUS: BOB HAWKE

Hunting the Famous by William John Stapleton will be available through Amazon and other major digital publishers shortly. This is is an extract.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

W.H. Auden

Former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke Courtesy NNDB Tracking the Entire World

Everyone loved Bob.

Bob Hawke, Australian Prime Minister from 1983 to 1991, enjoyed for a sustained period of time enviable approval ratings – during the 1980s the highest ever for an Australian Prime Minister. He led the Australian Labor Party to four successive election victories and to this day remains the left’s longest serving leader.

“Hawkie”, as he was often known, was the Sydney taxi driver’s politician of choice.

He wasn’t just another working class hero, many of the Australian population genuinely felt that Hawke was one of their own, an ordinary person with their interests at heart. And such a person, after a string of upper class residents, was finally living in the official residence, The Lodge.

There were celebrations across Sydney when Hawkie trumped the opposition with a lightning dash, becoming Prime Minister less than four weeks after overthrowing former Opposition leader Bill Hayden.

The Liberal leader’s attempt to exploit disarray in the Labor Party by calling a snap election backfired and the charismatic former union leader led his party to a landslide victory.

Like many a journalist I somehow thought of the taxi drivers of the city as the voice of the common man.

I wasn’t the first and certainly wouldn’t be the last reporter, lazy or pressed for time, to grab a quote from the taxi driver on the way back from a job. And then include the quote in the story so it sounded like I had just surveyed half the country and discovered the common sense voice of the working man.

Bob was clever in a nation which regarded cleverness with suspicion.

Hawkie had won a prestigious Rhodes’ Scholarship to Oxford University in England as a young man and risen rapidly through the union and political ranks, leapfrogging off his decade long tenure as President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions to become PM within three years of entering Parliament.

But often enough you would never have known Bob had any more neurons than the Average Joe.

Australia is a country where cleverness is confused with pretentiousness and Hawkie wasn’t about to let the voters know he had ever read a book or could see straight through them in a micro-flash.

Instead he adopted the camouflage of the good bloke, an Australian male of working class origins.

It was part act, part truth.

Bob Hawke smoked, drank to excess, loved a party, a brawl, a fine curvy woman, he swore like a trooper and bulldozed his way through any given situation. Like many Australian men.

And he almost always got what he wanted.

Australians loved him. That he was clever was forgiven or forgotten.

The most urbanized country in the world, Australia is essentially a land of suburbs. Hawke was famous for going to the shopping malls of the country’s outer areas and shaking hands with anyone and everyone he met. And if someone wanted to verbally attack him over some real or perceived injustice, as invariably happens when politicians expose themselves to the public in unscripted scenarios, Bob would stand his ground, promise to look into it or swear to their face he would take on board what they were saying.

Hawk’s successor Paul Keating always dismissed Bob Hawke’s “shopping mall” antics as cheap, tawdry populism. Unlike Bob, Keating also made the mistake of ridiculing the media as a bunch of low life grubs. Partly as a consequence, Keating experienced some of the lowest popularity ratings of any Australian Prime Minister on record.

Hawke’s shopping mall circuses were a vital part of how he won elections; a fact Keating never grasped.

Successive Prime Ministers would emulate Hawke. None were ever as successful.

When Bob Hawke committed troops to the first Iraq War, a controversial move in a country which had seen too many of its young men die in distant wars for the benefit of other nations, he slickly purloined what was an electoral risk into an issue of national pride.

To question the country’s commitment to Iraq was to denigrate, as the spin went, some of the world’s finest soldiers.

Having neatly survived the country’s natural anti-war sentiment post-Vietnam - and as common Australian decency would dictate -Bob Hawke went down to the docks on the day the first troops were being sent off to war, ignoring the band of protestors outside the naval yards.

Hawke lingered on the ship for hours, shaking the hands of every soldier he laid eyes on and wishing them all good luck.

After the official proceedings were over, Hawke wandered the battle ship decks, cheerfully posing with the proud families of the soldiers.

I followed the Prime Minister, his circling minders and his ever despairing security around the battle ship.

In that Arcadian world prior to the Twin Towers turning security worldwide on its head, Hawke wasn’t the type of Prime Minister to hide behind a screen of Federal Police and National Security personnel.

Follow in Hawke’s wake as a reporter and virtually all one ever found were fans. And so it proved on the day the country sent the first contingent of soldiers off to Iraq. Nobody had the common touch like Bob.

“Hawkie shook my hand, he touched me here, he kissed me on the cheek, I’m not going to shower for a week,” one of the mothers clutching children gushed.

“He asked after my grandmother, he remembered her from the teachers union, and said he was sorry to hear she had passed away,” another would throw in.

“He wanted to know the names of my children. He posed for a picture with them. When I told him one of the kids was sick, he said he knew an asthma expert, and would get one of his staff to send me the details.”

All of this and more from the devoted constituents left in his wake. Hawke didn’t win four elections in a row without a natural gift for electioneering.

Outside the heavily fortified Australian Navy docks at Woolloomooloo protestors waved placards and chanted anti-war slogans- to little affect.

Journalism dignifies the extremities of any debate, often quoting the opposition view to achieve a semblance of balance, even if that view is only held by a handful of lunatics.

Often enough the holders of extreme or minority views are quoted simply because they add color and tension to a story.

During the days when Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras was still controversial rather than the city institution it is today, we would always quote the Reverend Fred Nile for example for his consistent attacks the parade.

In fact Fred Nile’s views, far from being widespread in the community, were representative of the few thousand members of the fundamentalist Christian tradition to which he belonged.

Critics like to dismiss Australia as a country of rednecks and homophobes. But most Australians couldn’t care less who was doing what to whom, as long as it’s not to them. The anti-war protestors weren’t getting a say, however, on the day the soldiers were sent off to Iraq. Despite their spirited efforts they got almost zero media coverage. Hawke had starved them of media oxygen and once again stolen the limelight.

The fact that he was sending soldiers to a dangerous and far off place where Australia had little business being was lost in a wave of engineered nationalism.

That Hawke may have been risking the lives of his country’s own citizens purely to support the American Alliance – at a time when much of the population actively disliked the braggarts across the pond - was lost. Opposition to the war subsided in the polls.

The manipulation of public opinion was just one of Bob Hawke’s many talents.

He had long been renowned as a heavy drinker. His academic successes at Oxford University were complemented by the setting of a world speed record for beer drinking, a feat for which he gained entry into The Guinness Book of Records.

Australians loved their Hawkie even more when he told the nation in the lead-up to the 1983 election that if he became Prime Minister he would stop drinking.

The Australia of the day lived by the motto: “Never Trust a Man Who Doesn’t Drink.”

Heavy drinking was part of the culture and part of the Australian way of life.

In what other country would a promise of abstaining from excessive consumption made by someone running for the highest office in the land be regarded with such admiration?

It was a promise Hawke would keep, much to some people’s amazement.

Australia being essentially a nation of beer drinkers, the dust stained workers perched on the bar stools after work took to commenting on how clever Hawkie was; how he had a Rhode Scholarship or something; but even so he was a decent bloke, the highest compliment one Australian male can pay another.

There was speculation that Hawke attended closed Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for high ranking government officials during his time in the nation’s capital.

True or not; his anonymity was respected. His confessions, if he ever made any, did not become the subject of common gossip.

Years after he ceased being Prime Minister, a photographer and I were sent to cover a function in Eastern Sydney for the launch of something or other, a book, a restaurant chain, a new line of doilies, an inoffensive new charity for the ladies who lunch. In the end the launches merge into one another.

It was one of those leisurely, well catered for events where someone had thrown $50,000 on the table for expenses and considered it easy money well spent.

Everyone was well dressed. Except of course for the journalists and the photographers; the city’s riff-raff.

Hawke, like many politicians, knew half of Sydney’s media pack by name, he made a point of it, and even now, years after he lost the leadership, he knew exactly how to play them.

After the launch of whatever it was, lunch was served. The media were placed at a table well away from the main guests so they wouldn’t spill anything on the neatly starched table cloths or overhear a confidence no one wanted to be read in the next day’s papers.

Bob as always was prominently situated near the podium.

As far as pulling a living legend was concerned, having Bob at your function was about as “good a get” as a society hostess could pull off.

And as always, Hawkie knew everybody and was perfectly at home in the upper echelons of Australian society.   

This was the refined, clever, upper crust Hawke the general public never saw.

This was the man the nation’s taxi drivers, builders laborers, electricians and hard-working masses didn’t vote for; because they thought they were voting for one of their own kind.

With all the charm and discretion for which the media are known, the Sydney Morning Herald photographer pulled off a string of shots of Bob drinking what looked suspiciously like alcohol.

He was no longer Prime Minister, having been replaced by the knife edged Italian suits draping Paul Keating’s elegant form, but to everyone’s knowledge he had maintained his pledge of abstinence.

Hawkie holding a glass what looked like white wine was the first public sign that The Big Dry had ended.

All of those lay-it-on-thick sympathy articles in the Women’s Weekly or wherever for his long suffering wife Hazel, who was admired more than any other Australian Prime Minister’s wife before or since, went down the tube.

The country’s women sympathised with Hazel for all those long nights alone caring for the children, waiting for her husband to come home from the office or whatever function Bob happened to be attending – including all those boozy late night Australian Labor Party dinners where drinking to excess was more or less compulsory.

And Hazel was much admired for her dignified look-the-other-way response as Hawke’s womanizing became the subject of gossip.

The story of Hazel’s quiet heroism and Bob’s self-sacrifice disappeared with the first photograph of Bob holding a glass of “piss”, as Australians so elegantly call wine.

The Sydney Morning Herald where I then worked loved the story of the end of The Big Dry.

A common place launch of nothing in particular I was hopeful I wouldn’t have to file a single word on suddenly turned into a front page story - thanks to an enterprising photographer.

Wrung out from so many other hundreds of stories, I wished the photographer had kept their lens cap on.

In a dreary afternoon under fluorescent lights I was obliged to ring everyone even remotely connected to the story and the luncheon, from experts on alcoholism to the event’s caterers.

Hawke’s press person declared that he had no idea where Bob was and that as he was no longer Prime Minister and now a private citizen his location wasn’t a reporter’s concern.

The helpful little press person promptly turned off his phone after I barraged him with calls.

Former Australian Prime Ministers receive ample benefits costing the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, but don’t expect them to answer any questions in return.

The pictures of Bob drinking white wine, spread across the top of the front page proofs, looked fantastic.

The problem, the editors declared, was it could possibly be non-alcoholic white wine. It seemed unlikely. It was certainly news to me that there was any such a thing.

I rang the caterers. They weren’t prepared to discuss. No, they couldn’t possibly put me on to the waiter who had been serving Hawke - they were casuals and had dispersed.

No, the head waiter could not comment and no, they couldn’t possibly pass on any of the staff’s numbers, a question of confidentiality.

The emphasis on individual privacy as a right and its progressive enshrining in legislation has become the bane of working journalist’s lives, making their jobs more difficult over time.

The restaurant delivered up the same story as the caterers:“Sorry, everybody’s gone home now. No, I don’t have anyone’s number. No, I’m so sorry, I would like to help but I just can’t. Best of luck with it.”

Non-alcoholic white wine!?

Would someone like Hawke even drink such a thing? Was it even available in Australia? And if it was, what a nightmare assignment for some marketer that must have been!

Prior to the advent of Google, there weren’t any lightning fast computer searches which would reveal every major reference to such an oddity as the sales of non-alcoholic white wine in Australia in 0.24 seconds. The only references I could find were obscure.

The principal wine merchants were all bemused. Some suggested they had heard of such a thing but had no idea where to buy it.

As day turned to night there was only one thought on my mind – “I want to go home”. Lunch was an increasingly long time ago.

Journalism might seem like an interesting line of work, but just being under the fluorescent lights of a news room and the marauding layers of Chiefs of Staff, Editors in Chief, news editors and night editors, to name a few, increases stress levels magnificently.

Journalism is a high burnout high turnover profession and only the naturals, misfits or hardheads survive past the first three years. The rest of the annual throngs of eager young cadets soon leave for bigger offices, more respect and considerably better salaries in corporate public relations.

As night fell outside the Fairfax building – which to the amusement of the journalists working there never made it onto the SMH’s annual the list of Sydney’s Ten Ugliest buildings - and the brewery on the other side of eight lanes of traffic lit up for the night shift, the editors continued to wring their hands over the possibility of being sued if the paper went with the Bob Drinks Again story.

Hawkie might have been all bonhomie to the nation’s working journalists, a seasoned master at manipulating the media who played such a crucial role in the stratospheric popularity he enjoyed for so many years.

But in fact Bob was no lover of the Fourth Estate.

Since his retirement Hawkie had lined his pockets with more money than he ever made as Prime Minister by suing the news’ organisations which had dared to malign, slight or allegedly defame him during his time in power. 

This is my time in jail, I often thought, as I crossed the lanes of ceaseless traffic on the strip of Parramatta Road known as Broadway. Here soot covered camellias lined the edge of the highway, remnants of some optimistic council project aiming to bring beauty into an unbeautiful spot. It didn't work. The plants and their usually much admired flowers were covered with black dust and the pollution of the thousands of cars passing every day.

This Broadway had none of the lights, glamour or entertainment of its New York counterpart; and I would sometimes feel all was lost, lost, as I gazed up at that concrete building and knew I was a stranger in a strange land, that I would be lucky to make it through the day.

When I first started work at Fairfax the place resembled a self-contained factory with management on the top level, editorial in the middle, and production downstairs.

The place smelled of ink. When I arrived for work on a Sunday morning the docks were full of drifting paper left over from the hundreds of thousands of copies of The Sun Herald which had been loaded onto trucks and dispatched around the state.

When the printing machines started up the entire building shook.

Technology has changed everything, not just the nature of journalism and newspapers, but the atmosphere of the buildings themselves. The smell of ink no longer permeates newspapers offices. Printing takes place tens or even hundreds of miles away from the editorial offices.

And many a proud production career has disappeared with the evolutions in printing technology. The same was true of editorial. The librarians who once meticulously ran the daily clipping services and saw it as an honorable role to help journalists find information and fact check details all disappeared with computer technology which allowed such information to be accessed in seconds.

With instantaneous electronic communication, newspaper offices are no longer creative ferments full of people shouting ideas at each other, arguing with Chiefs of Staff and smoking furiously at their desks as deadlines approach. Now the air is free of cigarette smoke and the desks occupied by bright young things with bottles of mineral water in their gym bags.

Once upon a time no journalist would ever be seen dead with a gym bag. Wouldn’t have even known what one was.

I had already reached the allotted hour for being swamped bymy daily feeling of burnout. Other pleasures lay outside the newspaper’s precincts.

I might have been working since early morning, but my bosses weren’t about to hand this story over to the night reporter, a backstop position not always held by the most experienced of hands.

“Ring him and ask him,” I was ordered.

“I don’t know where he is,” I replied.

“Do your job,” came the frustrated response. “Ring everybody you can think of who knows him and don’t stop till you’ve got him. Because you’re not going home until you do.”

Finally I tracked the quarry down to the bar in the Duke of Stamford hotel in Double Bay. It was the Sydney’s hotel of choice for the affluent and influential wanting discretion, good taste and top of the range service.

“He’s not in his room, he’s in the bar,” I told the Chief of Staff, hoping I could wriggle out of making the phone call and knowing perfectly well Bob wasn’t going to take kindly to this sort of invasion.

“Ring the hotel and ask to be put through to Bob in the bar, it’s that sort of hotel and they’ll know exactly who you mean,” the Chief of Staff ordered.

“Ugh” I responded, grumbling as I went back to my desk.

I rang the Duke of Stamford hotel and explained to the man on the switch what I needed.

We had bonded over the previous hour of multiple calls when I dropped the hint I might “bat for the other side”.

The switch-bitch was all aflutter at the gossip that one of the reporters on the city’s Bible of the Chattering Classes aka The Sydney Morning Herald might be gay. Who knows what stream of stories might change the way conservative Australia thought about sexuality; if only he was kind enough to help out a reporter with a little show of brotherhood.

After a little prevarication the telephonist did exactly as I asked.

I could hear the muffled flurry in the expensive padding of that exclusive watering hole hidden behind the moderately less imposing public bar as the barman said quietly: “Phone call for you Bob.”

And I could almost hear Hawkie’s self-important “harrumph harrumphs” as he excused himself from the group he had been entertaining and went to take the call.

Once I had that instantly recognizable and most famous of Australian voices on the line and had apologised for interrupting him I explained to Bob that the editors were a pack of idiots with no respect for other people’s privacy, but they wanted to run a picture of him, probably in the gossip section at the back of the paper, probably not at all.

And they just wanted to know if what he was drinking in the photographs at that day’s function was actually white wine.

“Oh for Goodness sake,” Bob snapped, slamming the phone down.

The story, including his response, along with a string of prominent photographs, was strapped across the top of the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald the next morning.

Bob was never, to my knowledge, ever seen drinking in public again.

Or more precisely, he never let a news photographer catch him in the act.