Hawke Swoops into Power

By Pico Iyer

Voters bet on a chummy, charismatic new leader

Barely a month ago, Robert James Lee (Bob) Hawke, 53, was a fledgling parliamentarian with a mediocre record as his party's spokesman for industrial relations. Last weekend he was elected Prime Minister of Australia, leading to victory a listless, often divided Labor Party that has held power for just three of the past 34 years. Claiming about 74 seats in the 125-seat House of Representatives (an approximate swing of 22), Hawke and his Laborites ended the 7 1/2-year reign of Incumbent Malcolm Fraser and his Liberal/ National Party coalition. Fraser, a three-time winner whose majorities in 1975 and 1977 were the largest in Australian history, tersely conceded defeat. Then, pale and close to tears, he stunned supporters by announcing his immediate resignation as Liberal leader.

Hawke, meanwhile, followed the results from a hotel suite in Canberra, from which he could see, less than half a mile away, the white-painted Parliament House where he will now govern. Shortly after midnight, he drove to the huge National Exhibition Center to greet 1,500 cheering well-wishers. When he entered, champagne corks popped, hundreds chanted "We want Bob!" and tables and chairs were knocked over as the throng mobbed its next Prime Minister. Hawke celebrated his remarkable victory with measured and modest optimism. "This is going to be a government for all Australians," he declared. "We have a wonderful country. If we all work together, I can see no bounds to what we can do."

The exuberant festivities suited a man who has long entertained great expectations. The son of a country parson in South Australia, Hawke was 15 when he first boasted that he would one day become Prime Minister. Throughout a long and highly visible career, he has enjoyed the image of an accomplished but eminently human character: in his past are both a Rhodes scholarship and a drinking problem. At Oxford he wrote a thesis on Australian labor relations and swaggered into the Guinness Book of World Records by gulping down 2 1/2 pints of beer in 12 seconds.

After first running for Parliament unsuccessfully in 1963, Hawke spent the next 17 years commanding attention and consolidating political power indirectly: as president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (A.C.T.U.) from 1970 to 1980, as president of the Labor Party (1973-78), and as the hand-picked protege of Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. By the time he joined Parliament in 1980, Hawke was already Australia's most popular public figure. His bid for leadership seemed only a matter of time.

Hawke doubtless profited from a campaign that focused less on issues than on personalities. Sometimes brawling, sometimes brilliant, he was thoroughly in his element, always ready to win friends with a slap on the back or to convince voters with his eloquent rhetoric. Above all, he spoke to the common man. As the Melbourne Age put it, "He is the best communicator in the country, capable of reducing complex arguments to simple sentences, at times punctuated with the odd expletive." Hawke seized the momentum when the campaign began and never relinquished it.

By contrast, Fraser was generally on the defensive. In calling elections seven months early, he had hoped to limit the political damage of a worsening economy and to run against Bill Hayden, Hawke's lackluster predecessor as head of the Labor Party. The maneuver backfired when, on the very day Fraser called the election, Labor dumped Hayden and turned to the charismatic Hawke. Fraser responded by reminding Australia's basically conservative electorate of his own 27 years in Parliament, compared with Hawke's two years. But more often, he devoted too much energy to disparaging Hawke's politics and too little to detailing his own. Having accused Hawke of "socialism by stealth," Fraser somewhat hysterically warned voters that under a Labor government "savings would be safer under your bed than in the bank." His alarmist charges succeeded mainly in bewildering the banking community and alienating voters. At one point, Hawke retorted archly, "You can't put your savings under the bed because that's where all the Commies are."

In the end, however, Fraser was largely defeated by Australia's economic woes. Unemployment is at 10.1%, the highest since the early 1930s. Inflation is 11.2% annually, and economic growth is only 1%. The recession has been exacerbated by the worst drought in 40 years and by bush fires that swept through southeastern Australia three weeks ago, claiming 72 lives and destroying 2,500 homes. Further reports of sharply declining productivity in a wide variety of consumer goods reached the candidates as they campaigned. But where Fraser advocated prudent economic conservatism, Hawke called for an ambitious $2.65 billion public works program designed to create half a million jobs during the next three years. He also promised to increase pensions and reduce taxes for low-and middle-income wage earners.

Hawke's prospects as Prime Minister now depend upon his ability to raise the money for his program, while containing inflation and conciliating his former colleagues in Australia's strike-prone unions. He has already conferred with labor leaders and produced a 37-page policy statement linking wage increases to rises in the cost of living. He further plans to combat divisiveness by holding a national summit in which government, union leaders and employers will discuss Australia's fiscal problems.

Once known as the "Mr. Fixit" of Australia's stormy industrial relations, Hawke has emerged as something of a miracle worker in the Labor Party. But it is one thing to call for "national reconciliation, national recovery, national reconstruction," and quite another to deliver. The engaging but untested new Prime Minister now has his chance.

--By Pico Iyer.

Reported by John Dunn/ Melbourne

With reporting by John Dunn This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.