Bob Hawke

[Sits]

As one of OTF's Australian contingent I really shouldn't let this by without a thread. One of a literally dying breed: great Australians. Well before my time here but the first Aussie PM who resonated with me. He and Keating actually believed in things - good things - and did them as best they could within the limits placed on them.

https://www.theguardian.com/australi...hawke-obituary

He didn't get to see today's general election; let's hope it's what he would have wanted.

[Diable Rouge]

Polls close in 15 minutes, and the Guardian's Australian affiliate is suggesting that exit polls point to a Labour victory.

[NHH]

I've got really mixed feelings about Hawke. I adore his larrikin-nature (calling a public holiday when pissed etc), and he seemed to carry the common bloke and middle class intellectual wings of the ALP in himself and synthesise them (a mixture of Rex Connor and Gough Whitlam). I just have grave reservations about the neoliberal compact he brought in.

Him and Keating seemed to do a Blairite-before-Blair move of introducing all sorts of market-based reforms that seemed to be driven by a desire to follow the prevailing consensus and prove to those who said Labor couldn't govern (they'd only had 3 years in the previous 34 years in office, and that term had ended with Whitlam being forced out) and I think the trauma of The Dismissal meant that they took from it a lesson that they needed to be on-side with business (and US capital) and calibrated accordingly, but ended up embracing their reforms with some zeal.

It seems to me that the cultural politics of Hawke - the lack of shame at not possessing the airs and graces of a psuedo-British gentleman - was really important, and healthcare stands as his testament, in the same way Attlee or Bevan are venerated in the UK.

[Nefertiti2]

Looks like the Liberals have done it.

Cunts

[Hot Pepsi]

[Sits]

Looks like the Liberals have done it.

Cunts

Never underestimate the selfishness and venality of Australian voters.