Final observations here from Guardian Australia editor Lenore Taylor:
Just back from fantastic #BobHawke memorial service - I wonder whether future generations, whatever their politics, will get to feel that way about their time at the wheel.
— Lenore Taylor (@lenoretaylor) June 14, 2019
Thanks for joining the Guardian’s live coverage today. We will soon be publishing a piece from David Marr who also attended today’s memorial service.
Amy Remeikis will be back with Politics Live when parliament resumes, but until then you can follow all the news at theguardian.com/au and you can also subscribe to the Politics Live podcast here.
A few other tributes on the day of the memorial.
Today we say goodbye to our favourite son and celebrate an extraordinary life. May he rest in eternal peace. pic.twitter.com/AQQ1Na6GZz
— Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) June 14, 2019
Saying farewell to a legend today.
— Tanya Plibersek (@tanya_plibersek) June 13, 2019
Thanks for everything Bob. pic.twitter.com/KZqxdb78oP
Today Labor, the labour movement and Australia celebrated the life of the great Bob Hawke.
— Kristina Keneally (@KKeneally) June 14, 2019
Bob’s deepest belief was the brotherhood of mankind and his greatest love (other than Blanche) was Australia. That was on display today as we, Australians, came together to celebrate him. pic.twitter.com/3tPMpkxaTP
This was the last time I saw Bob Hawke. I am terribly sad to miss his memorial today. He inspired the Labor Party to govern well. He inspired the nation to embrace a better future. He inspired me as Prime Minister as I sought to live up to his example. He continues to inspire me. pic.twitter.com/Kh00Qs0nvo
— Julia Gillard (@JuliaGillard) June 14, 2019
The Guardian brains trust are going to show you a few more photos from Mike Bowers, and a couple more bits and bobs from the day, so I will leave you in their very, very capable hands.
Politics Live will be back, with parliament, in just a few short weeks.
Thank you for joining me this morning – I always appreciate your messages. I’ll see you very soon, but – take care of you.
And remember – long live love.
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The crowd here has had a singalong and toasted to Bob – there’s a lot of love in this little Brisbane pub.
There is also a lot of love in the Opera House, where David Marr has been watching the service and crowd along with Mike Bowers.
I hope you have had a chance for reflection yourselves today, along with the political class, and thought about what sort of Australia we are moving towards.
I know there were more than a few who have been galvanised, not just by Bob Hawke’s legacy, but by the vision he left incomplete.
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The service officially ends.
As Blanche said, long live love.
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Today we say goodbye to our favourite son and celebrate an extraordinary life. May he rest in eternal peace. pic.twitter.com/AQQ1Na6GZz
— Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) June 14, 2019
The crowd in the Opera House claps along as the first few rows of the memorial service stand to leave.
Blanche d’Alpuget said she wanted the public memorial service to be a joyous occasion, celebrating Bob Hawke’s life, and I think she got her wish.
A table near me gets so into the song, they knock over their pint.*
*I’ve just been informed it was a schooner.
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William Barton joins with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, with his didgeridoo to play the final song, Men at Work’s, Down Under.
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Blanche thanks the organisations which have helped today, and then speaks in Mandarin, to say thank you to the Chinese people who have paid tribute to her husband.
She ends on the note the day began with – love.
You have demonstrated Bob’s deepest belief, the brotherhood of man, the long-lived friendship between nations and beyond all, long live love.
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Blanche d’Alpuget is the last speech.
She takes the microphone when Sophie finishes. “Am I allowed to speak?” she asks.
Told “of course”, she clasps her hands together and gives thanks:
Friends, thank you for coming today to honour the life of a wonderful man.
Four weeks ago there was a national outpouring of grief when Australia learned Bob Hawke had died.
That grief has continued until today.
Today, this memorial service marks the transition from the grief of loss to the celebration of a life triumphantly well lived.
With today’s transformative service, we smile again, we glow with pride for the presence among us for almost 90 years of a great human being.
Many organisations and individuals have contributed to this state memorial service and on your behalf, to them I now give thanks.
To the Australian government for hosting this memorial. To the Department of Prime Minister and cabinet for hours of endless work in helping organise it.
To our speakers, the honourable Craig – Dr Craig Emerson, master of ceremonies ... To the Honourable Linda Burney for her welcome to country. To the prime minister, Scott Morrison. The Honourable Anthony Albanese – I almost said Albo. The Honorouble Kim Beazley, ‘Kimbo’; to his eldest daughter, his eldest child, Sue Pieters Hawke; Bob Kelty, a wonderful man; the great Professor Ross Garnaut, and the magnificent Paul Keating. And, of course, our adorable Sophie Taylor-Price, who you have just heard speak.
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The most political of speeches, has come from Bob Hawke’s grand-daughter.
To me, this tells the greatest of stories. It speaks of pop’s values of fairness and equality and his love and his faith in the brotherhood of mankind. It speaks of true leadership and his willingness to be unpopular and to listen to unpopular truths. Thirty years ago I sat by his knee and he implored us to take action on climate.
These past months, he expressed such great sadness that we have failed to do so.
He saw it as a collective failure of our nation that we have traded short-term interests over intergenerational equality.
He would say that the foundations of excuses we cling to are fragile and will inevitably collapse.
We must stop delaying the cost of change now for all we do is load our future citizens with a debt that they cannot repay.
Let us listen to the children and young people who parade their courage and conviction because their tomorrows will be affected by our actions today.
Many tributes have been shared today but truly honouring my grandfather means reflecting on his achievements and applying his values to the future choices we make.
Let us take to heart in his courage, borrow his optimism and mirror his love for the brotherhood of human kind.
In his twilight years, pop was a gruff old bugger at times. I imagine that if he were here today, he would look at me with love and with fierce pride and with a twinkle in his eye, say in his grumpy old man voice “Well, get on with it then”.
So, that is my path. It was both his gift to me and my enduring tribute to his legacy.
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She continues:
Of all the things said about Bob these past weeks, there is one story that, to me, speaks to the legacy that is most relevant to the future of Australia.
For both what was achieved and what is possible, in 1989, Bob was handed some cabinet papers, requesting Australia’s support to open Antarctica to mining. He was horrified.
But, he was told that years of international negotiations could not be unwound. It was a done deal. “Bugger that” he said.
Refusing to sign, Bob courted the world with an ideal for something greater, better and fairer. Enlisting global eco champion Jacques Cousteau, the Hawke/Keating government determined to set about changing the world’s mind and they did.
In 1991 the Madrid protocol was executed, making the last great wilderness on earth a place devoted to peace and to science, protected from exploitation. Now, that is legacy.
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Sophie Taylor-Price:
I grew up in the shadow of a giant. All the reflections shared today reinforce that his greatness was one of a kind. However, his blood is my blood and his story has become part of my story. When I was four years old, I sat by my grandfather’s knee in 1989 when he addressed the nation on climate change. It is actually one of my first memories. Having spent my entire professional career working in climate change and sustainability, you could say that that night rubbed off on me.
However, it is only in recent years, with the passing of my nan and pop, that I’ve truly reflected on just how their values have shaped mine and what I carry forward.
The final two speakers are Bob’s grand daughter, Sophie Taylor-Price, and his wife, Blanche.
But first, a video of Bob Hawke talking about world environment day, with a very, very young Sophie, plays:
Yesterday was world environment day. A day on which the global community could focus on the state of our planet and pose the question are we looking after it?
We don’t inherit the planet, we borrow it. Not simply for ourselves but for our kids and their kids like Sophie here, my granddaughter.
How successfully she and other Australian children can fulfil their goals depends increasingly on how we look after our environment and how we best use this planet’s natural resources.
The green house affect, or global warming, cannot be dismissed as just another environmental problem.
(In the video, Sophie interrupts) “This is another one too.”
Hawke: Yes, love.
It has the potential to change fundamentally within a single lifetime the way all nations and people live and work.
Care for your planet, as you would care for your children.
Their tomorrows depend on our actions today.
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Australia’s 24th prime minister concludes:
Underlying the fact that Bob asked me to speak at this memorial was his recognition that our control over the 1993, 96 parliament broadened Labor’s policy frontier. The policy achievements he believed the country sorely needed and which book-ended the policy framework begun during his own period of office.
I think I can say the template which we and our remarkable cabinet colleagues set into place in those 13 years has provided the foundations for Australia’s burgeoning growth and wealth in a fundamental sense, really ever since.
People seek leadership in political life for all manner of reasons.
We will never know what particular mix of influence propelled Bob Hawke, or whether what Immanuel Kant called the inner command, the commitment to more primary objectives drove him. That higher calling rang loudly in his head.
None of us could be on the stage for long, invariably most of us get carried out.
What matters is the value of the legacy, its quality and its endurance.
On both counts, Bob Hawke well earned five-star rank and 24 carat stars at that.
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The thing about truly big confidence plays is that there is no substitute for the psychological reward. The bounty of major policy achievement. We truly relish those achievements, often celebrating them with family dinners at the Lodge.
Much of the very late focus on my relationship with Bob was on the termination of cooperation between us and his displacement by me as leader.
Any cursory observation of those events generally fails to comprehend the very high level of friendship and cooperation between us for those 8.5 years, a long time in so hot a policy hothouse and in policy terms, it lasted right to the end.
In the event between us, Bob and I won five elections successively, not far short of four American presidential terms in a row.
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In the perpetual contest for ideas, egos inevitably clash. Bob and I would have private skirmishes over this policy or that, even criticise one another to immediate staff, often heavy criticisms ... But by instinct and a very large dollop of friendship, we always remained wielded to the same objective, a point even the closest of our staff sometimes fail to comprehend.
I’m not sure they knew how stuck together we were.
Through the ups and downs, each of us knew the other would remain faithful to the obsession.
In the end, it was trust that held Bob and me together. I knew he would never – he knew I would never leave a landmine in some budget or economic statement to explode in his face, as I knew when push came to shove, he would not rattle the big ones on the big policy changes.
And we both loved the game of political dodgems off with the spirit, banging our way around the course, often trying to sell the near impossible.
Of course, we were sometimes wary of particular dodgems but always exhilarated by the wild ride that generally followed.
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Keating continues:
Eight budgets and six major economic reform statements, the equivalent of more than 14 normal budgets, along with stand-out singular reforms put in place along the way was a major undertaking.
Through this great body of work, Bob and our cabinet colleagues remained focused on the target and the target was a nirvana of an open, creative and free society with enhanced opportunities for all.
It was a huge agenda and moving on a very broad front.
Bob was a great chair of a very creative and independent cabinet. Contestability was its hallmark, loyalty and commitment was its binding strength.
The quality Bob brought to the Prime Ministership was an open mind, regard for policy creativity and a commitment to reform in areas central to Australia’s economy, its society and place in the world.
Areas long neglected and passed over by a succession of Governments broadly since the Second World War.
The shape and direction of the Government came about with Bob setting the overall direction, balancing off the competing policy demands, giving the whole recognisable and compelling coherence. He presided over the cabinet in a manner where all matters were generally contested but where, importantly, he allowed ministers to prioritise their issues an... he landed a can-do collegiate group.
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Paul Keating:
Before I begin, I would like to extend my condolences to Blanche, who looked after Bob so sweetly and for so long and Bob’s children, Susan, Stephen, Roslyn and their children, who went on the long ride, sometimes the crazy ride but the high ride, as I do Blanche’s son Louis.
When Bob invited me over to see him the better part of a year ago, he and I were again joining the circle on the great friendship and partnership that drove the longest reform period in the country’s history. 8.5 years we were together and with a great cabinet, we were able to give the country what it formally never had: At least not since the war - policy, creativity, coherence and continuity.
As it turned out, not just for 8.5 years but for 13 years.
At the core of it, Bob and I shared one primary idea, that Australia’s creativity had been locked down by a paternal policy regime, the idea that the Government knew best and that Australia was best protected and nurtured as a closed economy behind policy barbed wire.
A framework that both a Labor Party and the Coalition then heavily subscribed to.
Bob and I had clear ideas as to how each of us kind of independently arrived at the same conclusion and, as to why Australia had operated sub opt matly and for so long and broadly what had to happen to change it.
We also knew to change it required wholesale policy reform on a scale the country and the Labor Party had never experienced. We knew we were in for it and so did those senior cabinet colleagues who shared our view, we knew none of the factions of the Labor Party would embrace so great a philosophical shift without a lot of persuasion and a lot of heft.
It was this quest that was central to my 8.5 years partnership with Bob, the long and weary externalisation of the country, binding up sections of society as the changes bore their fruit and inevitably their cost.
Paul Keating takes the stage, following this introduction:
Would you please welcome to the stage a member of the partnership that modernised our nation, working hand in hand with Bob in creating our open competitive economy, investing in the health of our people and the talents of our children, preserving our wonderful natural environment, the Honourable Paul Keating.
The next tribute is from former Japanese prime minister, Yasuhiro Nakasone:
He writes about Bob that “He was not only a strong leader for Australia but the entire Asia-Pacific region. He initiated the establishment of APEC and his valuable contributions to the peace and stability of the international community, as well as in the trade and economic field will be enjoyed for many generations to come”.
And finally, a note from ... Jacques Chirac’s granddaughter Celine, we tracked her down in Madagascar.
She writes “I like to think of Bob Hawke and my grandfather drinking a beer and glass of wine together, imagining a better world. Creating a vision where a community and a united future is the guiding force for their respective endeavours. Because no matter what we do in life, we thrive better together. To be a great leader you must inspire and guide but it is up to those who follow to keep the vision alive.
So though Bob is gone, his vision and spirit remains in each who believed in that vision. Keeping that spirit and that vision alive is a beautiful way to honour him today”.
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Craig Emerson reads from a tribute from Bill Hayden:
The next tribute is from Bill Hayden who, in a distinguished career, was Leader of the Opposition, a fine foreign minister and the nation’s governor-general. Bill writes “Much of the country is in mourning at the passing of our former prime minister, Bob Hawke. Bob Hawke was a contemporary icon of Labor. I was his Foreign Minister for just on five years. He was a great manager to work with and I believe we worked well together as a team. In the period during which I worked with him, to use a quickening an allergy which he would have liked, he was the Don Bradman of Australian politics.
There was no peer. He had his weaknesses that were human but he made no secret of them which endeared him to the Australian public. I’m truly saddened by his passing. My sympathies go to his children and to his widow, Blanche, who has loyally stood beside him in the more recent declining years. Bill Hayden.
And the next:
Now we have a statement from Sonny Ramphal, who is a former Commonwealth secretary general.
Sonny’s tribute begins with a quote. The quote is “I want you to know Bob that I am here today at this time because of you”. Sonny explains it was October 1990 in Canberra and the speaker was Nelson Mandela.
Mandela was speaking of Bob Hawke’s efforts in the area of financial sanctions on South Africa to end apartheid and free Mandela.
At this moment of national grief I join in recalling that time when a great Australian led the Commonwealth in one of its greatest stands for human dignity and justice.
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The memorial moves on to the video tributes from those who could not attend.
First is Julia Gillard, who is chairing a meeting of global partnerships on education, overseas - she has recorded a video.
I wish I could be with the Labor family today to celebrate the unique and remarkable life of Bob Hawke.
Instead, I’m in Stockholm, chairing a board meeting of the global partnership for education.
My only consolation is that Bob, who believed so deeply in opportunity for all, would have understood.
A million words could be written and a million more spoken about Bob Hawke, such is the breadth of his achievement.
But for me, the essence of the Bob I knew is caught by one word - inspiration. He inspired the Labor Party to govern and govern well.
He inspired the nation to embrace a new and better future. He inspired me as Prime Minister, as I sought to live up to his example, and he will go on inspiring those who believe in Labor values for generations to come. But knowing that does not take away the pain of loss.
To Blanche and Bob’s children and grandchildren, my heartfelt condolences. With you, we mourn the loss of a great man but we can be thankful that we will always have his shining example to guide us.
As a young economic advisor, I reasoned this through. I could confess, I could lose my job and make everybody unhappy. Why would I inflict such unhappiness on everyone, especially on the prime minister of Australia? So I never told Bob. Never. I’m telling you today to confess to you.
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Craig Emerson takes back to the stage:
We have come now to the tributes section of today’s memorial service and before I convey to you a number of tributes that have come from overseas, I wanted to make my tribute to Bob by telling a very short story. As a 33-year-old economic advisor, as I foreshadowed earlier, I was handed the responsibility of placing Bob’s bets on the horse races.
One Wednesday, when the midweek races were on, Bob rang one of his favourite trainers who told him that his runner, his horse, had a very good winning chance at the long odds of 33 to 1.
Bob was very excited about this and he asked me to put on that horse $100 each way for him.
He didn’t closely monitor his account, which was a good thing.
But before the race was run, Bob had to go into the cabinet room for a formal cabinet meeting and he asked me “Mate, would you please slip me a note and tell me what happened with the race?”
I listened to the race and, to my absolute astonishment, the horse won. I slipped a note into the cabinet room and, at that time, a minister was really struggling to convince his colleagues of the merits of the extra spending that was contained in the submission.
The notetakers later told me, they said “After receiving some sort of note from the office, the prime minister abruptly said it’ll be right made, your submission’s approved”.
So when cabinet was finished Bob waltzed into his office and declared “Cups of tea all round”.
It was a happy day. The whole office was happy, the secretaries were happy, the advisors were happy.
The minister was happy and the cabinet was bewildered but the minister was happy.
The CSIRO was happy ... The trainer was happy, the jockey was happy, the horse was happy, everybody was happy, except me. I wasn’t happy. I was pacing around in my own office while these celebrations proceeded.
What to do, what to do?
I’d forgot to put the bet on.
(“Classic advisor move,” says someone in the audience here.)
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The Sydney Philharmonia choirs and Sydney Symphony Orchestra are led in Messiah, Hallelujah by Bob Hawke, conducting on a giant screen.
He finishes:
Bob Hawke has one of the most disciplined lives in which I have interacted in a lifetime of working with clever people.
His focus an stamina enabled productive work with staff, ministers, public servants and the people.
He had always read in good time a paper prepared for him.
Usually overnight. He respected the public service as a rich resource of knowledge, experience and analytic capacity.
He was the purposeful leader of a ministry of unequal talent, ensuring prominence for Bill Hayden and his supporters, setting priorities for reform, letting ministers get on with the job, and talking things through face-to-face when they did not go to plan. We, in his office, loved going to work.
Our interactions could be shocking in their honesty. Hawke expected to be told, forcefully, if any of us thought a government position or prime ministerial idea was unsound and he took full personal responsibility for a position based on advice when political gales blew against it.
Bob Hawke showed us how good democratic government can be.
Amidst the daunting contemporary realities, his life as prime minister gives hope for a democratic future with broadly-shared prosperity for our country and for humanity.
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Ross Garnaut:
Australia’s greatest prime minister leaves an incomparable legacy - a modern nation, more prosperous, more fully enmeshed in a dynamic and assertive region, still enjoying the benefits, economic, social and environmental, of visionary, hard-fought reform. The achievement of national interests prevailing over vested interests seems unattainable in 2019. What made it possible then?
That is a story of leadership of many parts. Public education on the imperative of change. Long-time perspectives on policy, and sustained gradual movement towards objectives. Disciplined management of government and public policy.
And a social democratic policy framework that gave ordinary Australians confidence that they would not be stranded by change. Bob Hawke shared many of the values, interests, enthusiasms and weaknesses of his fellow citizens. His democratic confidence was crucial to sustained support across the Australian community.
Knowledge is power, is the motto of Perth Modern school - Bob Hawke’s old school, and mine.
The premier of WA, just before we sat down, has asked me to tell you that a new Bob Hawke College is now to be built alongside our old school.
Knowledge is power.
Hawke understood that widely-shared knowledge was the foundation of a successful democracy.
His National Economic Summit was all about educating us on our critical problems, and the changes necessary to overcome them. Speeches at home and abroad were, from the start, exercises in public education, about outward-looking change, reorientation, the advantages of open trade.
Hawke said that we should be the ‘clever country’, built on our brains and knowledge.
One of his proudest achievements was a transformational increase in the numbers of Australian school children completing year 12. He implemented the policies through which Australia became a leading place of learning for international students.
He was an Australian social democrat at home in every international context. Chinese leaders engaging with him late into the night in Nanjing, Chandu and Perth about the reforms transforming China.
With his close friend Secretary for Secretary of State George Schulz, making sure the US was never surprised by what we were doing in China.
Nelson Mandela. Using his high personal standing to draw together the leaders of the Asia-Pacific to form Apec.
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There is applause in the room and in the pub, before Craig Emerson walks back onto the stage:
Well, thank you, Bill Kelty. I can assure you, we won’t be singing all the verses of Solidarity Forever here, and I promise you I won’t be singing at all.
I invite to the podium Bob’s economic adviser - the good one - Professor Ross Garnaut.
(There is laughter at that - but the room knows it is true)
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He finishes his speech, and you can also hear the emotion begin to get the best of him:
Bob was always - always - about those two things and when we went to see him, in his last weeks of life, he was still about the Treaty with the First Australians.
He was still about climate change. He was still about aspiring for this country to be better and do better, and to provide the inspiration for us all. Bob was no saint. Bob had his faults.
But he did a power of good for this country, a power of good for all of us. He made the country and helped make the country what it is.
And he made a part for making this country play a better part in the rest of the world.
Bob loved trade union songs.
He was one of the few people who actually could know the words of the songs.
Most of us just mumble and shuffle along hoping we’ve got the right word at the right place but not Bob.
He knew the words. And he loves the poets. But above the poets, he loved Blanche d’Alpuget.
These are ... These words are for her. ‘How shall I love thee? Let me count the ways. I will love these to it is - depths and breadths and heights my soul the reach.’
If I had one line for Bob, if people asked me to explain just one line for Bob, I would say Bob Hawke loved this country to the depths and breadths and height that his life could give, and he was loved in return.
Thank you for everything you ever did, Bob. Thank you.
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Kelty:
The greatest legacy for is a simple one. Here is this person who raised the aspirations of this nation, get us to set bigger objectives and bigger tasks but provided us the inspiration to achieve them. On the eve of the Springbok Tour, as we sat there contemplating the next step, waiting for Bob to appear in a crowded ACTU room, he did appear, shuffled his papers, and he told a story - two stories.
One story was the dignity of Nelson Mandela. The other story, the indignity of apartheid. He took us to Soweto. He was truly inspirational. When we went to the streets and we went to the factories and we went to the ports and to the airports to stand up, and stand up for this cause.
When confronted with the political pressure to make a step backwards following the result and implications of his decision to allow 40,000 Chinese to stay in this country following Tiananmen Square ... Bob didn’t take a step back. He didn’t take two steps back, but he took two steps forward. It wasn’t for a cheap political ploy, it wasn’t for a political gain. As he said, it was to put the knife into policy that would stain this country - the White Australia policy.
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Kelty continues:
His belief in the ALP and this thing he called Australia, not a democracy but a belief. Hazel and the family, they provided him ballast and buoyancy at the times of happiness and joy, but equally at times of doubt and uncertainty.
What Bob did for the ACTU was to change it forever, for industrial relations fights he led, for the future funds, the amalgamation.
He gave it a base from which you can negotiate with government effectively, for everybody in the union movement - not just some but for all unions.
But it was not always easy. It was not always kind. Not a woman on the ACTU executive the entire time.
The fight with Bill Hayden, tough and hard, was just simply painful. There were tough times. Many tough times. And the reality was we never did as much as we could have with the Whitlam Government. But when Bob became Prime Minister, Jan Marsh, the ACTU advocate, and Simon Crean, we went to his place at Sandringham and there he spelt out his vision of what he expected and what he would do for Australia. He would fix the economy. Invest in education and invest in social welfare, and make the country more confident and make the country more cooperative to achieve these objectives.
He would put in Medicare, implemented but, this time, it would be in concrete and can never be removed. He would open Australia... He would open Australia to the rest of the world and he would do something for women and make her place better in this country. Was he inspirational ...? He was.
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I first met Bob Hawke in 1966. As a young student, ALP member, they tell me that the best act in town was Bob Hawke and the Arbitration Commission.
And there I went. What did I see? Bob and his able Assistant Ralph Willis, against an army of QCs, he was tenacious, tough, irreverent and persuasive.
The only thing that really I think clearly about was the ad hoc nature of the adjournments.
I asked Bob why was it so erratic.
He said, “Bill, we time the adjournments to coincide with the races.”
Richard Kirby and are really interested in the races. What I noticed in this great class battle, everybody gathered in the middle to get the results. I said to myself, “It’s something about Bob, it’s says something about Australia.”
Lenin was right, “There is no place for revolution or revolutionaries.”
But when Bob became the president of the ACTU it had never seen anything like him every before.
The man of conciliation and captain of consensus.
But at the same time he led the biggest political disputes in our history.
At the same time, the business, unashamedly the friend of many, many business people but he caused competitive mayhem by getting rid of a whole range of competitive vehicles, particularly retail and price maintenance and leading competition in a lot of industries. He was, to some people’s chagrin, really, an opponent of the Russian’s invasion of Afghanistan as deeply as his opposition to the American and participation of the war in Vietnam.
He was loving and kind and charismatic ... but, boy, could he be frightening. He could be really frightening on occasions. It was the consistency with which you’d find him. His undiluted belief in the power of education and his undiluted in the power of democracy.
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So we have good reason in our grief to celebrate the magnificent, rambunctious human being who has left us. I am so grateful he was our dad - part of our lives and our world. He’s gone ... but the essence of who he was shines on in our hearts.
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She continues:
You all know that families are complex beasts at the best of times and that there can be some tough passages. Our family is no exception. But I do count us as fortunate because, ultimately, love, laughter and deep bonds have prevailed and expanded as we’ve been enriched by partners, kids, their kids, and our step-family.
Back in the day there were weekend mornings with just Steve, Ros and I, the dog and the cat, all sprawled with Mum and Dad on their bed, reading newspapers, playing boardgames, telling stories, and listening and chattering away.
There were holidays at a remote beach shack on the Eyre Peninsula, with old friends of Ellie and Clem’s, and at a farm in Gippsland and Dad taught us how to ride motorbikes, fish and pick mushrooms after the rain.
Our parents taught us to listen to people, to seek out facts and think for ourselves. They were proud of us but, oh, some of the arguments as we grew and differed. Debate was situation normal as far as we knew growing up.
Sue Pieters-Hawke:
In sifting through the memories, of course I should note that Dad’s public life overlapped with our private lives.
I remember tramping the fields with him holding my hand as we visited many farmers before the 1963 Corio election.
That night of the vote he woke me as promised to say he had done OK but lost.
When I was puzzled, he proceeded to explain the mechanics of DLP preferences to me. I was six!
... In the garden one day he answered my questions about the wage cases we saw him work so hard on.
Grabbing and using a box of Cornflakes, making things, selling things.
But to explain the central point of how people’s wages determined the choices they could make, or not make, for themselves and their families.
I remember him agonising about leaving the trade union movement he’d come to love to enter parliament.
And we had the privilege then of observing from the semi-inside so much that happened in those momentous years where, as others have acknowledged, so many had hope and belief that a government with imagination, integrity, skill and a sense of fairness could operate to improve our life as a nation and create better opportunities for all.
And so I will always be proud of what Dad did and of the spirit of optimism and inclusion he helped bring to our country.
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Bob Hawke’s daughter, Sue Pieters-Hawke, begins the personal tributes:
It’s amazing how shocked you can be by something that’s not actually a surprise.
Dad was so powerful a presence in our lives that I don’t yet fully comprehend that he’s gone. It’s a time of so many emotions.
Of ... grief, happiness at our quiet coming together in recent years, comfort that he was really ready to go and died peacefully with Blanche holding him, and yet a bleak coming to terms with a reality we will never see him.
It is a time of so many memories. Here I want to especially - oh! The dangers of using an iPad.( There is gentle laughter)
I want to especially acknowledge my brother Steve and my sister Ros. We grew up together. We share so many of these memories, and we’re family forever. And to the rest of my beloved family, I look forward to us meeting and all being together in happier times.
It finishes with a pan out from him sitting on his balcony, where we know he loved doing the crossword and drinking a strawberry milkshake.
Craig Emerson:
Bob’s daughter Sue, when we were drafting the run sheet for this ceremony, drafted in for me to wipe away tears. I said, “We don’t need that.” But I think we do. What an absolutely gorgeous tribute to Bob and his life.
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Canon in D plays with a montage of Bob Hawke’s life.
It’s a wonderful piece of music and suits the mood perfectly.
There are tears at the Opera House, and at the pub. I hope, wherever you are watching, you get to take a moment to remember those close to you as well.
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Kim Beazley seems to be getting a bit misty eyed, but his voice holds as he finishes with:
Well, where is he now? Bob said. The pastor said “If you are a believer in the fatherhood of God, you must believe in the brotherhood of man”.
We talked of his destination in our last conversation.
He still firmly held the second part of Clem’s saying but no longer the first.
I am sustained by the belief he is in the arms of a loving God.
He believed he would live in the hearts or at least the minds of those who knew him. Then when we all pass, in the history books and stories of future generations, there he will reside while ever his nation abides.
Beazley is not the only one a bit misty. This was a magnificent eulogy.
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In all this, Bob never forgot who he was fighting for.
He once said “The essence of power is the knowledge that what you do is going to have an affect not just immediate, but perhaps lifelong affect on the happiness and well being of millions of people, so I think the essence of power is to be conscious of what it can mean for others”.
He was massively persuasive from his experience as ACTU advocate and President.
He was deeply effective publicly.
But at the heart of his ability to persuade was trust. Most people believed, as that quote indicated, that whether you agreed or not, your happiness was his motive.
He could afford risk-taking in leadership. He was confident in the effectiveness of argument to succeed. Yet there was some who were hurt and some who mattered most to him.
We owe a deep debt to Hazel and their children, Sue, Ros and Stephen and to Blanche.
We owe Blanche for the joy she provided him and the care in his decline. Well, on behalf of all of us to the family, thank you.
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Kim Beazley:
Peter Walsh, the late Peter Walsh, no great supporter of Bob, said to me “You know, only two ministers read every cabinet submission, myself and Bob”.
On Sunday afternoon his senior public servants would come around to his home for a game of tennis.
Then they would settle down for detailed consideration of every submission.
Third there was the party and the Labor movement, the focal point of support for a Labor Government but also, frankly, potentially a base for effective opposition.
Bob accepted their legitimacy as major participants in the Australian democratic project, as had Curtin, of course.
In seeking to overturn Labor opposition to conscription during the war. He did not move, Curtin did not move until he had secured a Federal conference decision. Bob didn’t circumvent the machinery, he used it.
He was particularly emphatic to me on that, when we focused on micro-economic reform. He had given me the key transport and communications portfolio at the beginning of his last term.
He said this “Your first job is to get this through the Caucus and the union movement, then to a successful outcome at the Federal conference”.
Finally, he governed with peak organisations, unions of course, but also the employer groups, indigenous, environmental and rural groups, multicultural, arts, sporting, social, religious groups.
For him, they were the transmission belts of change to the community, feedback and adjustment.
Not all or even most of them Labor supporters but all part of the Australian community. So he loved them and many, despite themselves, required it.
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There is laughter at this bit:
Second and above all, he governed with the cabinet. As I sat weeping on my porch as I absorbed the news of his passing, the oddest memory came to mind.
It was back at the time of the navy’s 75th birthday. I nagged Bob into taking the cabinet to sea for a meeting.
The biggest ship, HMAS Stalwart, had enough space but no cabin table. One was dually put aboard.
We all came aboard. The Stalwart passed through the Sydney Heads and began to roll.
The table started to move.
It pinned the Prime Minister to the bulkhead, then it retreated and then it came back harder as momentum gathered.
“F this” he said repeatedly as he fought the beast and continued the meeting.
Afterwards, pretty cross, he said to me “you know, cabinet is the heart of our Government, we cannot have the cabinet table running away and killing a couple of us on the way through”.
Beazley continues:
Bob exemplified Baget’s view of great Prime Ministers as men of commonplace opinions and uncommon administrative abilities. Perhaps with opinions not quite so common but he was certainly trusted by the public, whose values and characteristics he shared and he loved. But as an administrator he was unsurpassed.
He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of how the nation worked, how the system could be creatively deployed to achieve the necessary reforms. So, first he governed with his ministers.
He had a superb office, an engine of reform but they were not there to dominate his ministers and sideline them, so as not to dull the glow of the sun king.
He told each of his ministers “You know the policy, you know your resources, you proceed, I will interfere when you invite me.
“My reputation will rise or fall on the quality of my ministers’ performance”.
Kim ‘Kimbo’ Beazley:
I loved Bob. He was my mentor, my friend. He allowed me to be a member of a Government that transformed this nation for the better. I would love to speak about the personal aspects of the man for whom I had and have such affection.
A man who, in the extremity of his last illness, would cross the country to my installation as Governor to sit outside in the cold to smoke his last cigar in WA.
What I need to do is talk about how he governed because that, with what he did, is what cements him in history.
Was he our greatest Prime Minister, or our greatest Labor Prime Minister? Bob told me he was neither.
His aspiration was to be our greatest peace time Prime Minister.
He deferred always to John Curtin. Bob believed Curtin faced a national existential crisis and responded correctly, with a national strategy of alliance building whole hearted national mobilisation and planning for postwar reconstruction.
He saw himself pursuing that necessary complexity in peace time conditions that also presented existential national challenges.
Craig Emerson is back on the stage:
Thank you Albo. Albo, ScoMo,- this is a very Australian celebration and this is a celebration.
Ladies and gentlemen, would you please make welcome the honourable Kim Beazley to deliver the eulogy. I guess - here’s Kimbo.
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He finishes with this:
At once he was our leader and our cheerleader. He governed for all Australians truly. Even after the Lodge he energetically continued to live life to the full.
While we join Blanche and the family in mourning him, we give thanks and we remember his wisdom to a young girl who had chosen the Prime Minister as the person with whom to share her grief over the death of her grandmother.
This is what Bob wrote:
“I think you should try not to think about dying but think about all the nice things around you that make life so precious to us all”.
It’s an attitude, when I was with Bob and Blanche at the end of last year, he certainly continued to express.
Farewell Robert James Lee Hawke.
Farewell Bob, you go with the nation’s gratitude. You go with the nation’s respect and you go with the nation’s love.”
There are a couple of tears here at the pub. And for a crowd which has been drinking since 10am, a lot of quiet.
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Albo continues:
With four consecutive election victories, Bob taught Labor through action, not just words, what it takes to truly transform our nation. He understood the essential ingredient for achieving visionary reform, bringing the people with you. If Bob had any inhibitions before that fateful crash, they certainly didn’t survive.
Nor any sense of limitation. He was ambitious though not just for himself, he was ambitious for our nation.
Bob was Labor to the core of his being, but his heart was too big to be contained by party lines.
Just because you didn’t vote for Bob didn’t mean that you were beyond his love and I think the presence of so many people from across the political spectrum today is testament to that.
Anthony Albanese:
Yet when he was up against those forces of division, his moral compass did not waiver. Beneath that cloud of hair, the sun shine would give way to lightning and to thunder.
But the sun shine always returned and his positivity changed the nation for the better.
His government advanced economic reform, it entrenched social reform, including Medicare, it promoted gender equality and it stands unchallenged as the greatest ever protector of our natural environment.
Bob, as we know, is no shrinking violet.
After a conversation with Margaret Thatcher in 1983, he reported to the media that she thought they would both be around for a while in their respective positions.
She certainly is right in one respect – he modestly observed that.
There is more laughter at that.
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How do you measure a giant? Bob Hawke was not towering physically but somehow he seemed bigger than all of us.
He was Australia amplified but he almost wasn’t part of our lives at all.
Bob’s journey towards the light began with a moment of darkness, a black-out that turned a motorbike ride into a brush with death.
Granted what he saw as a second chance, the young Bob vowed that his life wasn’t going to be wasted, not a minute. It certainly wasn’t.
Using his talents and living life to the full was the Hawke way, not least in his heart. He loved Australians and they loved him back. It was indeed a national romance.
He loved us together because we understood that our greatest strengths flow from unity. He reached out, he listened, he learned, he encouraged and he dared, dared us to be a better nation.
He knew that Australia was great but it was a greatness that he wanted to build on. He wanted to protect us from those who sought to divide us.
If ever there was a man who could appeal to our better angels, it was Bob.
Do you know why I have credibility, he once asked? “Because I don’t exude morality”.
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Scott Morrison finishes with this:
On behalf of Australia, I extend to his widow Blanche and his family our deepest sympathies as a nation. As well as our thanks for sharing him with our country and caring for him until the very end.
We also remember the legacy of the late Hazel Hawke and we thank all of Bob’s family for the sacrifices they made as Bob pursued his public service in service to us all. Bob, your record is honoured, your legacy is secure and your country will be forever grateful. May he rest in peace.”
Our 23rd prime minister was a proud and faithful son of the Labor movement. He became one of the proud fathers of our modern Australia.
Today, we will rightly honour his many achievements for our economy, for our security, for indigenous Australians, for our society and Australia’s place in the world and as a Liberal, I’m honoured to acknowledge these achievements as I know others would be.
On many occasions, admittedly not all, our party was pleased to partner in many of the changes Bob was able to bring about but he led them and that will be forever to his credit and his Government.
The 80s in Australia will always be the Hawke era and it is a rich legacy for Australians.
Grand accomplishments are not the worth or measure of a human being.
Rather a life is measured by its love, love given and love returned.
As Australians, or as he coined the phrase forever in our national anthem as we’ve sung, we thank Bob Hawke for loving Australia and loving Australians with every fibre of his being, with every measure of his enormous enthusiasm, with every bead of his great intellect, with every laugh, every tribute, every tear and every moment of his great devotion.
Bob Hawke loved our country and we are a better nation for it.
In his passing, we honour and give thanks for a great Australian patriot.
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The room stands for the anthem.
Craig Emerson pays tribute to Bob Hawke’s family first, before moving into the dignitaries, there’s a lot. And among them, five former prime ministers – John Howard, Paul Keating, Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull.
Scott Morrison delivers the first official speech.
“...Australians all let us rejoice for the life of Robert James Lee Hawke. A, father, husband, son,(“lover,” says someone at the pub) friend, grandfather, colleague, passionate Australian, the 23rd Prime Minister of Australia.
...Unlike those who will follow me today, and although we did meet on a few occasions, I only knew Bob from a distance.
But in that way I can reflect and share with you the common remembrance and speak of the affection he inspired from millions of Australians who only knew him in this way.
Today, I come to speak on behalf of a nation Bob Hawke loved and that deeply loved him in return. It was a great romance played out in the shopping centres, with journalists tripping over cables, sporting ovals, grandstands, schools, town halls, beaches, parks, outback stations and, of course, indigenous communities all around the country.
It was a passionate and affectionate relationship between Bob and the Australian people.
They knew each other well. They forgave each others’ short comings.
They understood each others’ virtues, there was trust, there was faith in each other. There was also sorrows born and joys shared great passions and disappointments.
Destiny was always Bob Hawke’s friend but it was never a passive or easy relationship. He never hid himself from us.
He let us see all of his complexity, all of it and that’s what Australians loved about him.”
The service begins with Linda Burney:
Can I extend my respect and affection to Susie and the Hawke clan and Blanche for giving me the great honour of sharing in this celebration of the life of Robert James Lee Hawke.
The people forged into the Australian story as the first to experience the brunt of British colonisation or invasion, depending if you were on the shore or the boat.
Acknowledgement reminds us that we are a place of many stories, many maps.
The oldest being the legitimate sovereign nation states many hundreds of them. It tells the story of first Australians.
It remind us that our countries endowed with the extraordinary gift of the oldest continuous surviving culture on our planet.
Our collective story weaves the blanket that embraces us all and creates the story, the narrative of our nation.
In that story, there is a man that stands tall. Bob offered a vision for an inclusive forward-thinking Australia.
For first Australians, Bob Hawke was able to tap into Australia’s sense of fairness, to find the rightful place of first peoples.
He transformed the conversation to land rights and self-determination. He announced the 1987 Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody.
He established ATSIC and Bob was the Prime Minister when Uluru was handed back to the traditional owners.
...I’ll finish the acknowledgement today with part of Bob’s response to the Barunga statement, a statement that now sits in the Australian parliament, a statement that calls for self-determination, land rights and recognition and resulted in the Prime Minister committing our country to a treaty making process.
Bob’s response to spell the false dichotomy and fear mongering that indigenous advancement meant the loss for non-indigenous Australians.
Bob knew it meant advancement for all. 31 years ago he said, of the bicentennial, I have asked all Australians to understand that these 200 years which come on top of 40,000 years of Aboriginal traditional culture and civilisation that is the Aboriginal people who were the prior occupiers and owners of the land
“You were the people who, for 40,000 years, have cared for this land and it’s only if we understand that are we entitled to have a celebration”.
Friends, in that context and in that vain, let us celebrate the life of Bob Hawke.
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The order of service is being passed around the Opera House.
Linda Burney will open, with the Welcome to Country to follow.
Craig Emerson will serve as the master of ceremonies.
Scott Morrison, Anthony Albanese and Kim Beazley will all speak, as will Bill Kelty.
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While the seats are being filled at the Opera House, the seats are also starting to fill at the Staghorn Bar at the Breakfast Creek. And of course, the beer is pouring.
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Speaking of drinking, Ben Doherty has filed this report from Oxford:
The second line in any vernacular biography of Bob Hawke – that he was once the possessor of the world record for skolling a yard of ale – could be formally honoured with a plaque in Oxford.
A formal proposal will be put to Oxford city council to mark the former Australian prime minister’s youthful achievement. Hawke was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford between 1953 and 1956. In 1954 he skolled a yard of ale – two-and-a-half pints, or 1.4 litres – in 11 seconds, then a world record.
It is proposed that an official blue plaque, dozens of which are dotted around Oxford commemorating the achievements of such luminaries as Edmund Halley, TE Lawrence, JRR Tolkien and Roger Bannister – should be placed in St Helen’s Passage, a narrow, winding thoroughfare which leads to the Turf Tavern where Hawke’s record is widely believed to have been set, though Hawke himself maintained the feat was achieved in a nearby college dining room.
Bob Hawke was declared Victoria’s “father of the year” in 1971, which his family found bemusing, given his drinking and flirtations were not exactly state secrets.
But they have also spoken of the “gentleness” which covered him, in his later years.
"He wasn’t the perfect father, but he was very much a loving father. And he was loved in return by all of us,” @JezNews is joined on the steps of the Opera House by members of Bob Hawke's family. #bobhawke #auspol pic.twitter.com/WhxClHdi7x
— ABC News (@abcnews) June 14, 2019
It looks like the ushers are trying to get everyone to take their seats ahead of the official memorial service, but everyone is having catchups. It will settle down soon.
In the meantime, this from Gareth Evans in London last week, is lovely
Ahead of Bob Hawke’s State Memorial Service today, here are a couple of cracking anecdotes from an address by former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans in London last week. pic.twitter.com/yZrTRkCtU7
— Michael Rowland (@mjrowland68) June 13, 2019
I’m sitting across from Pamela, who did worked for Bob Hawke in his electoral office.
“I used to make phone calls and used to ask people if they wanted to do postal votes and that sort of thing.”
She has brought a photo album with her to the pub, filled with photos of her and Hawke, as well as most Labor leaders since Gough Whitlam – Paul Keating, Julia Gillard, Kim Beazley and a young Kevin Rudd, but she doesn’t see too well now, “which is not a lot of good”.
What should people know about Bob Hawke, according to Pamela?
“He was charming. He was responsible for Medicare, don’t you know. But he always just wanted to talk to the people. No matter where he went.”
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Mike Bowers tells me Penny Wong has arrived at the Opera House and received “a big cheer” when she got out of the car.
Scott Morrison will also be at the memorial service.
In fact, we are expecting quite a few former prime ministers. It will make for quite the pic.
Over at the Opera House, I’m told it is quite packed, with some of the labour movement’s biggest names queuing politely to enter.
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We’ll be hearing a lot about Bob Hawke’s accomplishments from those who knew him best today.
For those wanting to know a little of how he came to be the man he was - as flawed and wonderful as that was - you’ll find his obituary, here
As Mike Bowers has told me many, many a time, Bob Hawke was a favourite of many photographers, because he was just so, well, Bob Hawke.
Even when sitting next to the queen.
Good morning
Welcome to our coverage of the Bob Hawke memorial, where Australia’s 23rd prime minister will be remembered for his heart, larrikinism and just general Hawkie-ness.
Mike Bowers is at the Sydney Opera House, where the official service will begin at 11.30.
Paul Keating and Anthony Albanese are expected to speak – as are Hawke’s eldest daughter, Sue Pieters-Hawke and his god daughter, Sophie Taylor-Price.
I am at the Breakfast Creek Hotel, one of Brisbane’s oldest and most famous pubs, where Labor and union members are gathering to watch and pay tribute - it was here in the late 1970s, where Hawke stepped in to settle a dispute between pub patrons and Castlemaine Perkins, when the brewer moved to stop using wooden kegs.
Wooden kegs have been used at the Brekky Creek since 1889 - and still is, so you can guess how that story ended.
We’d love to hear your memories of Hawkie, so send us through your tales. Thank you for joining us this morning. It’s going to be beautiful.
