Bob Hawke, Australia's longest-serving Labor Party prime minister, whose charisma and powers of persuasion earned him near-folk hero status among many Australians, died on Thursday, his wife said. He was 89.
Bob Hawke, Australia's longest-serving Labor Party prime minister, whose charisma and powers of persuasion earned him near-folk hero status among many Australians, died on Thursday, his wife said. He was 89.
Opposition leader Bill Shorten said Hawke had transformed Australian society and protected the environment, a reference to his government preventing the damming of a wild river in Tasmania state to generate electricity in a major environmental conflict in 1983. His lifelong involvement with the labor movement began in 1958, when he joined the Australian Council of Trade Unions, first as a researcher and later as a union advocate. After scoring several high-profile wins before the Arbitration Commission, Hawke rose through the ranks of the ACTU and was elected its president in 1969.
"This feat was to endear me to some of my fellow Australians more than anything else I ever achieved," Hawke wrote of the 1955 stunt in his autobiography. Not everyone loved him, of course. Some viewed him as arrogant, sexist, even obnoxious. Hawke was notorious for his short temper and womanizing ways; he admitted to repeatedly cheating on his first wife, Hazel Masterson, during their 39-year marriage and married his biographer and mistress, Blanche d'Alpuget, shortly after their divorce."Today we lost Bob Hawke, a great Australian — many would say the greatest Australian of the post-war era," D'Alpuget said in a statement.
But as Australia plunged into recession, Hawke's enormous popularity began to wane and his rule as prime minister finally ended on Dec. 20, 1991, when he was ousted by his own party. He retired from Parliament the following year.
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