What’s worse? The white suit thingy or the manbag?

This man was once the highest elected official in our country. Just think about that for a few moments.

I’m reading a pretty good account of Bob Hawke’s prime ministership at the moment — The Hawke Years: The story from the inside (1993) by former Hawke speechwriter Stephen Mills — and thought I’d share a couple of interesting passages with you, seeing as I found the book at a garage sale and it’s well and truly out of print.

In the first passage, Mills is attempting to explain why Hawke — whose diplomatic skills were regarded highly among world leaders at the time — was never quite successful at “breaking through the starch and reserve of the Japanese”. It made me laugh out loud on the train:

Perhaps his style and abrasive vernacular puzzled them. On one occasion he told Japanese businessmen they would be ‘out of their cotton-picking minds’ if they didn’t support him in the pilots’ dispute; another time he assured the Japanese that Australia wouldn’t play ‘funny buggers’ on protectionism. He was told later that the phrase had been translated for the audience as ‘humorous homosexuals’.

The second passage describes a moment on Brisbane talk-back radio where Hawke “veered back to indiscipline” during the otherwise meticulously managed 1990 election campaign. Indiscipline aside, Hawke’s rebuke serves as a stark reminder of just how far John Howard’s latent racism and cynical opportunism later degraded the moral authority of the prime ministerial office:

On this occasion, when a caller offensively urged Hawke to hold a referendum on Asian immigration, he embarked on a passionate assault on racism. ‘I happen to believe profoundly in the concept that I learned from my father, and that is if you believe in some concept of a God, then if there’s a fatherhood of God then we are all brothers and sisters in this world. So I reject you profoundly in terms of fundamental patriotism for the future of this country, and I reject you with total contempt on moral grounds.’

Sadly, I’m pretty sure we’ll never again hear a prime minister publicly reject a bigoted citizen with “total contempt”. But with any luck we’ve also seen the last prime minister who will treat so many citizens with contempt, while enjoying the shameful cheerleading and apologetics of a most viciously partisan commentariat.