policy & reform
campusreview.com.au
Bob Hawke. Photo: AAP/Megan Slade
Remembering
Bob Hawke
Reflections on an
education reformer.
John Tate interviewed by Wade Zaglas
T
his year’s federal election was overshadowed by an event
many thought might push the Opposition over the line: the
passing of the Australian Labor Party’s “greatest son” and
charismatic reformer, Bob Hawke.
Prime minister between 1983 and 1991, Hawke helped to
democratise education, like Gough Whitlam before him, ensuring
hundreds of thousands of Australians could access the life-changing
experience of a university education. Unlike Whitlam, however,
Hawke viewed free university education as unsustainable and
introduced a deferred payment scheme that is now widely used
across the world.
Indeed, his government’s decision to expand the university
sector and introduce the Higher Education Contribution Scheme
(HECS) are a defining legacy, according to Universities Australia chief
executive Catriona Jackson.
“Those changes opened the doors of opportunity to hundreds
of thousands more Australians of modest means who would not
otherwise have had the chance to go to university,” she said.
“It took what was an exclusive higher education system and
democratised it – making it accessible for everyday Australians in
vastly larger numbers.”
The Hawke government, buttressed by the pugnacious and
incisive treasurer Paul Keating, was responsible for some of the most
dramatic economic reforms of the post-war period: the floating
of the dollar and the deregulation of the financial system, both of
which opened Australia up to the global financial market.
In the words of political commentator Paul Kelly, these were “the
most influential economic decisions of the 1980s”.
What made Hawke different from most economic reformers,
however, was that he didn’t see economics as an end in itself.
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As Tim Harcourt wrote in The Conversation, “there had to be a
social benefit”. He also disliked the kind of “crash through or crash”
reform model practised by Keating, instead preferring change
through consensus.
The prevalence of opinion polls in today’s political climate, and
the importance politicians place on them, means it is unlikely there
will be another reformer like Hawke. Politics has perhaps changed
too much, for better or for worse.
Campus Review spoke to Dr John Tate from the University of
Newcastle about the Hawke government’s education legacy, its
economic reforms and the leadership style of the man himself.
CR: Hawke inherited an economy in freefall in 1983, yet through
major economic and social reforms, he’s said to have laid the
foundation for 16 years of prosperity and economic growth. Do you
think today’s leaders could achieve this?
JT: Politics is very different today than it was in Hawke’s time.
Remember, we have the enormous influence of polling today, which
was nowhere near as pervasive in Hawke’s period. We have political
leaders who pay a lot of attention to polls. Any major reforms often
have a negative impact on these polls.
People are often concerned about change, frightened about
change. Sometimes change has negative consequences for some
people, at least in the short term. In this respect, I think given that
today’s leaders at least have the reputation of being very poll-
directed, this makes radical and long-term policy change less likely
in our period than it was in Hawke’s.
Having said that, you have to understand that Hawke engaged
in reform in a very different way to, say, Paul Keating, who was his
treasurer when the Hawke government came to power in 1983.
Keating’s idea of reform is, like Gough Whitlam, crash through
or crash – that was Whitlam’s phrase, but that was also Keating’s
philosophy. He argued that leadership was about governments
pushing forward, often ahead of the public, and pulling the public
along behind them.
Hawke, on the other hand, had a different model. He governed
by what he called ‘consensus’. This was in many ways a reflection
of him being an ACTU leader. The years in which he was prime
minister, he was very explicit about this consensus model.
For instance, in 1983, we had the national economic summit,
where Hawke brought together business leaders, union leaders and
community leaders in an attempt to redirect Australia’s economic
policies. In 1985, we had the tax summit, where treasurer Keating
sought to introduce a consumption tax. Each of those were
exercises in consensus from Hawke’s perspective. We can see the
difference between Hawke and Keating in the fact that in 1985 at
the tax summit, Keating was very much in favour of what he called
his “Option C”.
Option C was a consumption tax. Halfway through the tax
summit, it was clear to Hawke that there was not going to be broad-
based support at the summit for Option C. He therefore abandoned
it. Keating saw that as a betrayal of leadership and a betrayal of
support by Hawke. Hawke, on the other hand, saw that as an
exercise in consensus – that you can’t push through radical reform
unless you have all the major parties on board.
There’s a very different approach to leadership on the part of both
of them, and a very different approach to policy implementation.
Today, if there was going to be major policy reform, it would more
likely have to be on the consensus model of Hawke, rather than