Australia: Hawke Swoops into Power

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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 7½-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 2½ 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 protégé 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.