Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I think many of us on this side, and of course the government benches as well, have very mixed feelings about this condolence motion today. We've lost a Labor legend, an Australian icon. We have heavy hearts for that reason, but there is so much to celebrate too about the life of Bob Hawke. There were so many stories, both at his memorial service and in the media in the days after. We heard of his sad death. And today as well we have had so many insights into a life well lived by an Australian who was loved by the Australian public and who loved them in return.

I've lost a friend, a mentor and a shoulder to lean on. The outpouring of grief that we saw in the days after Bob's death was really very real. It was sincerely felt across the Australian public, and I think that rawness was really salved by the wonderful memorial service that many of us attended. Blanche d'Alpuget, who was Bob's great love and carer at the end of his life, did such a marvellous job of inviting people to share their memories of Bob so that we heard from colleagues, family members and former staff. Every member of the Australian public was able to join in that celebration of that wonderful life.

Our condolences, of course, go to Bob's children—Sue, Ros and Stephen—who, with their much-loved mother, Hazel, had to share their father for so many years with the Australian public.

Bob didn't mind a bit of a cry every now and again. I think he was quite different to many Australian men of his generation. He didn't try to hide his feelings and, on that day in that memorial service, there were many tears shed but there was a lot of laughter too and acknowledgement of Bob's great contribution.

Bob became Prime Minister at a time when the country was bedevilled with inflation and a moribund economy. We were a divided Australia—an Australia that was uncertain of itself and in a slow decline. It felt like the place was fizzling out. Bob was exactly the right man for that epoch. As one writer said, 'He had the smell of history about him.' He was a consummate conciliator—a man who brought avowed enemies to the negotiating table, who healed the wounds of our party and our nation. But he was much more than just a consensus politician; he was prepared to take risks—it might have been the punter in him. He was big, bold and brave. The accord, Medicare, the floating of the dollar, the deregulation of the financial system, the tearing down of tariff walls: it is a remarkable list, and so much of it was done with his great collaborator, Paul Keating.

Of course, when we talk of Bob at a time like this it is very easy to forget how hard-fought those reforms were. It is wonderful that so many of them have become popular today or just common sense or just accepted as inevitable, but the reforms were hard-fought. Bob didn't mind having those fights. Many of them, of course, were with his opponents from other political parties, but plenty of them were from our side as well. I was a university student starting university at the time when HECS was being introduced, so I can tell you there was more than one vice-chancellor's office stormed by my friends and me at that time. There were more higher education conferences protested outside of than it's perhaps wise to remember on a day like this. Those reforms were bold, and because they were bold they attracted controversy, and Bob wasn't scared of that at all. Though controversial, though difficult and though hard-fought, those reforms changed everything for our country. They opened our economy. They released the shackles from our nation. They made us more competitive, more relevant globally. They laid the foundation for decades of economic growth and they held true to Labor values: the concept of the fair go, of fundamental decency, of reaching out a helping hand to those who were most marginalised and offering them the social safety net that the member for Lingiari has spoken about.

He didn't build bridges just within Australia. Allowing the 27,000 Chinese students who were living in Australia at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre to remain in Australia, again, was a difficult and controversial thing to do, but it projected our values as a nation to the globe.

Bob certainly had an antenna for talent. The depth and breadth of talent assembled in his cabinet was astonishing, with the likes of Paul Keating, Gareth Evans, Kim Beazley, Brian Howe, Susan Ryan, Neal Blewett, Barry Jones and John Button. There were so many talented people in those cabinets who really worked together to challenge, to debate, to argue and then to agree and make our country better. He harnessed their gifts and brought out the best in them. Under his leadership they changed Australia.

Like the member for Watson, I caught up with Bob quite a lot in the later years of his life. We talked a lot about the achievements of his government, but he didn't feel a need to relive his successes. He was very comfortable with his legacy. He was proud of his legacy, but he didn't feel the need to remind people of it constantly. He didn't have things to prove or scores to settle. He wasn't rewriting history in the later years of his life. He was happy to reflect on those times and the way he'd achieved the great successes of those battles, but he was also very focused on the future. We will remember those achievements for him. As Blanche—his beloved Blanche—said at his memorial service, one of the achievements that Bob was proudest of was taking our high school graduation rates from three in 10 young Australians graduating from high school to seven in 10 during the relatively few short years of his government. He knew the importance of lifelong education. He knew that it had and has the ability to transform the life of an individual—to give them opportunities that their parents and grandparents never dreamed of. He knew that education could set someone on a course, as his education did, to shaping the nation. But he also knew the importance of investment in education as a driver of economic success for this nation.

We can see the difference that that investment in education during the Hawke-Keating years has made to our economic opportunities as a nation today. As I said earlier, as a uni student, in the early years of the HECS generations, I was doing my fair share of protesting. But what the Higher Education Contribution Scheme did was allow the opening up of attendance at university to many, many more Australians. Having the contribution scheme meant that we could increase attendance at university in a way that would otherwise have been unaffordable. Thousands of additional students were given the opportunity of an education. Just as people say that when you look at the Medicare card in your wallet you should remember the legacy of Bob Hawke, I think it's fair to say, particularly if you're from a working class family and you look at your university degree on the wall—if you've gotten around to framing it; most of us probably haven't—that you have to remember that that, too, is a legacy of the Hawke government.

Bob was up-front about his flaws, and I think it was beautiful the way that many of the speakers at his memorial service didn't pretend that Bob was perfect. He wouldn't have wanted them to pretend that he was perfect. I think that's what, as he said himself, people responded to: the humanity that he was prepared to share with the Australian people—his struggles as well as his successes. He was an extrovert's extrovert. He could charm the birds from the trees. His personality, both the flaws and that real charm, helped deliver four election victories in a row.

In 2014, we asked Bob Hawke to come to Canberra and speak to our caucus and staff at a dinner as a special surprise guest. I had very, very strict instructions from his wonderful, loyal, long-serving, beautiful and dedicated PA, Jill Saunders, that I was not allowed to let a million people get their photos with Bob, because he was getting older and he was getting tired and everybody would want a photo with him, and it was after dinner and it was going to be too exhausting. So there I was on duty, trying to stop people mobbing our great hero, while Bob was behind me calling them in: 'Come on! No worries, let's get a photo together!' Jill had given me instructions that I was to have him home early and it was my job to make sure he got out of there in good time. I was exhausted, leaning on the table and thinking, 'When is this going to finish?' and he was singing happy birthday to one of the people working at the Press Club.

This was a man who got so much strength from talking to people. Of course, it was a little bit about the adoration, because who doesn't love being adored? But it was much more than that. It was actually about hearing about their lives, their struggles today, their successes, their families, their work. He got so much back from his interaction with people—with his old friends, former staff who he always stayed in contact with, and also the new people that he met wherever he went.

Sometimes Bob and I would have lunch at one of his favourite Italian restaurants in Darlinghurst, and I had lots of questions about some of the battles of the past and some of the successes. But he was very keen to talk about the politics of the day and very keen, always, to think about the future. He wasn't someone who was just dwelling on the past and reliving his great victories. He profoundly cared about the modern Labor Party. I know he was very supportive of many of my colleagues who are here today. He profoundly cared about our electoral prospects, our policies and our potential successes. He was focused, laser-like, on the future. I thought it was beautiful to hear his granddaughter Sophie talking at his memorial service about the many years of environmental activism and real achievement that the member for Watson and others have detailed. Bob was still talking about climate change. He'd talked about it decades before most people. He was still talking about climate change and global warming even very recently when I'd seen him. Sophie was talking about this, too: his commitment to seeing real action on climate change.

I know that Bob and Blanche loved Lord Howe Island, which is in my electorate. I saw them there. The Prime Minister was talking about Bob answering the door in the nude, and Gareth Evans has talked about that in his books. I'm very happy to report that he was wearing bathers on Lord Howe Island! He did love the natural environment there, the fishing and the world heritage protection that had been achieved for Lord Howe Island too.

People see Bob as very blokey and beer-drinking. They see the larrikin elements of him. But what I saw in our conversations was the phenomenally sharp intellect, his capacity to recall detail, his resolve, his indefatigability and his compassion for people. I think that face of his—the laughing eyes, as the health minister was talking about, with lines etched into his face from a lifetime of warmth and wisdom—is something that Australians will always remember.

He was always prepared to campaign for our Labor cause. In 2016, when he saw Medicare under threat, he was prepared to don the battle gear again and travel around Australia. I travelled with him to many functions—speeches, press conferences, visits—where he was speaking of Medicare and the great legacy that he was so proud of. Michael Lee told me that he was happy to campaign in the City of Sydney Council elections when Michael Lee was running for Lord Mayor many years ago. He was always prepared to turn up to back the Labor Party and Labor Party candidates. We all remember him singing at the top of his voice 'Waltzing Matilda' and 'Solidarity Forever'. But we also remember the man who was so gentle and tender, visiting Hazel in her last days and holding her hand and softly singing 'Danny Boy' to her.

He was absolutely larger than life. I remember, at the City of Sydney New Year's Eve fireworks one year, Bob and Blanche turning up all in white on a launch, landing on the steps of the Opera House and coming in to the fireworks. He loved a grand entrance. I think that in many ways he would be very touched by his exit as well—the outpouring of feeling for him from our nation. I went to see him for the last time at home just before the election campaign got into full swing. He was tired. As the member for Watson said, he was very tired. But he was still full of insight into the current campaign and the political issues that we face today. He was full of encouragement. I can't really describe how very encouraging he was of me personally, how generous he was with his time. The feeling that he always gave me—I was much younger; I'm a woman; he was a man; all that—is that I always felt like he treated me as a comrade. That meant so much to me, to be treated as a comrade by such a great man. I'm sure many of my colleagues share this feeling.

I want to finish by saying this: Kim Beazley has spoken about Clem Hawke more than once and the influence that Clem had on Bob. Clem used to say, 'If you are a believer in the fatherhood of God, you must believe in the brotherhood of man.' You absolutely saw that with Bob. He didn't have that sort of faith later in his life, but the relationships he had, including with people like Nelson Mandela, show how intensely he believed in the brotherhood of man.

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