Bob Hawke: Biographical Monograph

Publisher’s description:
Bob Hawke ranks as one of Australia’s leading prime ministers. He enjoyed extraordinary electoral success, winning four elections and serving for eight years and nine months, a term exceeded only by Robert Menzies and John Howard. His political skills, including his popularity with voters and his emphasis on consensus, enabled his government to implement a large agenda of economic reform that transformed the nation.

Hawke was a complex personality. A son of the manse, his life combined hard work, discipline and a sense of public duty with an undisciplined private life of heavy drinking, aggressive behaviour, multiple affairs and sexual liaisons and neglect of his family. The convention that journalists did not report on politicians’ private lives unless it affected their public duties meant Hawke survived with his reputation largely intact until recently.

Mike Steketee was chief political correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald in the Canberra Press Gallery from 1984 to 1988 and continued to cover the later years of the Hawke Government as the Herald’s Political Editor.

Author: Mike Steketee

Publisher: Connor Court Publishing

Format: Paperback

Pages: 84

Published: 22 August 2022

ISBN: 9781922815200