John Howard remembers Bob Hawke: "Undoubtedly a very fine Prime Minister"
Former and current Australian leaders have shared their memories of Bob Hawke following the former prime minister’s death on Thursday at the age of 89.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Hawke was a “political legend” and Labor’s greatest prime minister.
“Profoundly Australian, Bob Hawke was a conviction politician who became a political legend,” Morrison said in a statement. “We remember him for his unique capacity to speak to all Australians as one – from everyday battlers to business leaders.
“It was his ability to connect with everyday Australians – with a word, with that larrikin wit, with that connection and an understanding of everyday Australian life – that we will most remember Bob Hawke.”
Labor leader Bill Shorten paused his election campaign on Thursday evening to honour the party’s longest-serving prime minister. “The nation and Labor are in mourning,” said Shorten in a speech from Sydney. “We have lost a favourite son. Bob Hawke loved Australia and Australia loved Bob Hawke.”
Julia Gillard, who was the prime minister from 2010 to 2013, remembered Hawke as an inspiration, a friend and “Australia’s greatest peacetime leader”. She said Hawke approached the end of his life with serenity. “When I last saw Bob, he was facing his own mortality with a sense of calm. He was ready and taking great comfort looking back on a life lived so well.”
Another recent Labor leader, Kevin Rudd praised Hawke for his ability to unite the people of the country. “Bob Hawke was an Australian institution,” Rudd said. “He could connect with any Australian, workers, academics and business leaders alike. And when elected as Prime Minister, he was able to bring the country together like no other.”
Former Labor leader Paul Keating, who served as Hawke’s treasurer before successfully challenging his leadership in 1991, said the legacy of their partnership was “the monumental foundations of modern Australia”.
“With Bob Hawke's passing today, the great partnership I enjoyed with him passes too … But what remains and what will endure from that partnership are the monumental foundations of modern Australia,” Keating said in a statement.
“The country is much the poorer for Bob Hawke’s passing.”
Earlier this month, Keating and Hawke made their first joint statement in 28 years in support of Shorten’s run for the prime ministership.
Former Liberal prime minister John Howard said while he and Hawke “clashed fiercely on many occasions”, the two enjoyed each other’s company outside of politics. “He was undoubtedly a very fine prime minister,” Howard told ABC Radio National on Friday.
“He brought to the office of prime minister and also to the position of leader of the Labor Party a great deal of authority, and in politics, the greatest commodity a leader can have is authority.”
Another former Liberal leader Tony Abbott agreed with Morrison’s statement that Hawke was Labor’s best prime minister, but his following swipe has raised eyebrows.
“[Hawke’s] key achievements — financial deregulation, tariffs cuts, and the beginnings of privatisation — went against the Labor grain, as Labor’s more recent policy direction shows,” said Abbott. “You might also say he had a Labor heart, but a Liberal head.”
Abbott’s statement has been slammed as “tasteless” and “awful”. “A rare combination of thoughtless, tactless, heartless, clueless and tasteless,” The Monthly's Richard Cooke posted on Twitter.