Days of beers and tantrums

We’re sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We’re working to restore it. Please try again later.

Advertisement

This was published 13 years ago

Days of beers and tantrums

By Tony Wright

''JUST go to bed, Bob,'' Hazel Hawke ordered her husband. It was 1990 and we were in the middle of an election campaign. In the middle of Australia in the middle of the night, too.

We were, to be precise, in a steakhouse in Alice Springs. For what seemed an unfathomable reason, prime minister Bob Hawke had ordered his VIP plane with its load of journalists to land at this remote town at the nation's dead heart.

Were there votes to be courted along the banks of the dry Todd River?

Not a bit of it. We were going to have a party. It was the 40th birthday of Hawke's press secretary, Barrie Cassidy, and Bob and Hazel's 24th wedding anniversary.

There was another agenda, too. There always is in an election campaign. Hawke had a surprise up his sleeve. We just didn't know it.

The flight from Perth had been a relaxed affair with a magical mystery tour quality to it. With the evening coming down, Hawke had the pilot of the Boeing 707 circle the great monolith known as Ayers Rock and Uluru.

The desert sun lent Uluru an unearthly glow, as if light was flowing from within the rock as the old 707 wheeled above it, granting us one of the great Australian experiences.

They don't make election campaigns like that any more.

Soon, we were trooping in to the outback steakhouse. Beers were bought and slabs of Hereford rump were sizzling. It was the first mobile-phone election campaign, but in Alice Springs, there was mercy: no reception. No editor could get to us.

Hawke, though, was on edge. He was fidgety and kept visiting the dunny. We did not know it, but he was enduring a problem with his prostate.

Advertisement

But there was something even more urgent on his mind. Far away in South Africa, Nelson Mandela had been released a couple of weeks previously from 27 years of incarceration at the hands of the apartheid regime.

Hawke had spent years railing against apartheid and had used his office to pressure South Africa by playing a leading role in the Commonwealth of Nations to impose sanctions on the regime. Mandela's release from prison was the most dramatic signal that South Africa's brutal imposition of apartheid was coming to an end.

And that, as it turned out, was why Bob Hawke had corralled the travelling media in an Alice Springs steakhouse without the risk of another story taking their attention.

Diplomatic channels had arranged a very special phone call to be patched through to the steakhouse's landline telephone. Nelson Mandela was lined up to phone Hawke and thank him for his part in the international effort that had led to him being released from prison.

Hawke always liked presenting himself as an international statesman. And here, right in the middle of an election campaign, a single telephone call from the most charismatic figure on Earth would prove - in the midst of a captive audience of journalists - that he was personally involved, why, hell, responsible for, the world's biggest current event. Mandela himself! It would seal the election.

The hours ticked by, jugs of beer flowed, songs were sung and Hawke became more and more distracted.

And then, late in the night, the steakhouse manager announced there was a call for Mr Bob Hawke. The prime minister fairly sprang to his feet and rushed for the handpiece.

Cursing was soon heard.

It was a disaster. Hawke disappeared into the dunny and didn't emerge for 15 minutes.

Word slowly spread. Mandela had called, all right, but he hadn't called Hawke. He'd passed on his good wishes through Gareth Evans back in Canberra. The call couldn't be patched through to Alice Springs, or Mandela didn't have enough time or something.

Hawke was deflated. He sulked. A thundercloud appeared to have settled above his famous cocky's crest. His mood infected the party. Even the beer seemed flat.

Hazel took charge. ''Just go to bed, Bob,'' she ordered.

A car and driver were summoned and Bob Hawke, his would-be celebrated moment stolen, disappeared into the desert night to rage alone in his hotel room.

Hazel strode to the piano and the steakhouse rollicked into the small hours to the sound of song and carefree laughter.

Ah, but old leaders do not allow history to leave them sidelined because of the misfortune of circumstance, however long it may take. In this case, it's taken 20 years.

The new, updated biography of Bob Hawke written by Hawke's post-Hazel wife, Blanche D'Alpuget, relates that later in 1990, Nelson Mandela visited Australia. And, of course, all was set to rights.

Mandela sought out Hawke to deliver the long-awaited benediction.

''I want you to know, Bob, that I am here today, at this time, because of you,'' D'Alpuget's book quotes the great Mandela. It surely says much about Hawke's previously unremarked modesty that somehow, these words had lain undisturbed for 20 years.

The book, of course, lovingly tends to a great many more of Hawke's versions of events when he was prime minister to the point that his rival and successor Paul Keating was driven this week to the heights of wrath.

''It is as if, Narcissus-like, you cannot find enough praise to heap upon yourself,'' Keating raged in a three-page letter of indignation at what he damned as a wholesale rewriting of history.

Keating, of course, is no stranger himself to the vanity of Narcissus, and is threatening to write his own history. ''… It will … record without fear or favour,'' Keating warns Hawke, ''How lucky you were to have me drive the government during your down years, leaving you with the credit for much of the success.''

In the wild, old stallions driven out of the herd drop their heads and mooch away, their once-slashing teeth slowly filing down, their hooves splitting, and they disappear into the forest. Not the likes of Hawke or Keating, though, or any number of lesser former leaders.

They are like former prizefighters who buy restaurants and bars, subjecting customers to endless tales of old victories.

Oh, Lord, what might Kevin Rudd become now he has been driven out?

Most Viewed in Politics

Loading