Review Article: Frank Bongiorno, Carolyn Holbrook & Joshua Black, editors, Gold Standard? Remembering the Hawke Government, New South, Sydney, 2026. Published as slightly edited in The Recorder, Official newsletter of the Melbourne Labour History Society, No. 315, July 2026, pp. 3-4.
This book has a question mark in its title for a reason. It sets the exam question for each contributor.
The collection grew from a conference ‘“Gold Standard”? The Hawke Government Forty Years On’ held in November 2023 at the Museum of Australian Democracy in Canberra; most contributors ‘road-tested’ their analysis at that forum, in communication with each other, and with the editors. Books like this depend on canvassing potential authors and then who presents essays for attention. There are always stories about those who dropped out or did not deliver.
The book contains 16 chapters, plus an introductory essay by the editors and a preface by Glyn Davis. The essays are grouped into three sections, Politics and Process, Reforming Australia, and Remembering the Hawke Years.
The book is overdue. In their introductory essay, the editors’ note: “Historians, for their part, were in no rush to study the Hawke and Keating governments.” In agreement with Evans, they say: “… the Hawke era was one in which economics was ‘the main game’, and historians, increasing the focused on cultural analysis and less engaged with economics, have rarely tackled the era’s complicated political and policy history head-on.”
All essays are interesting and some outstandingly original and compelling. For my money, Andrew Podger’s on decision-making under the Hawke government, Bruce Chapman on macro-economic perspectives, and Gareth Evans’ careful analysis of the government in which he served will be considered whenever there is serious discussion of the ‘Hawke model’.
The editors deserve considerable credit for curating a gold standard essay collection. The only significant subjects not covered are foreign affairs and defence policy. In those fields it would have been interesting, say, to assess areas of continuity, innovation, breaks, and ongoing influence compared to earlier Labor positions.
Politics and Process
Troy Bramston argues: “The model of governing that Hawke established is an underrated aspect of his legacy,” and robustly considers the topic. “[Hawke] wanted differences of opinion” and Bramston suggests, “Hawke was supremely confident but sure enough in himself that he could share power.” He did so through delegation, extensive consultation, and entertaining dissenting views, before adopting a position.
Podger thoroughly builds on the points raised by Bramston. He says: “There was a sharp focus on evidence”, that “… contestability was a virtue, and Hawke’s ability to sustain it while holding his team together was an achievement rarely, if ever, replicated since.” Hawke sought “[t]o achieve informed consensus – not just a ‘lowest common denominator’ outcome among interest groups, but broad agreement among well-informed people, key organisations and the general public.”
In Hawke’s second term, attributable to the economic ministers, including John Dawkins, there was the ‘trilogy’ framework of budget discipline: “no increase in taxation, spending or the budget deficit as a percentage to gross domestic product (GDP).”
On the government’s handling of the media, Michelle Grattan refers to “… a big store of political capital” which was spent on achieving public acceptance of policy measures. It was not just ‘nice’ neoliberalism. Marija Taflaga comments on “the enormous success of Hawke and his government in giving his reforms of the 1980s a specific Labor stamp.”
Bongiorno observes: “In a new century in which political timidity and policy gridlock ruled, the 1980s could seem like a golden age.” He applies Chris Wallace ideas on ten ways to win an election, highlighting Hawke’s electoral success – the first Labor PM to win more than two successive elections. (He ended winning four.) Bongiorno concludes: “It is an Australian government that might not have any equal in combining ambitious policy reform achievement with an unusual degree of electoral success.”
Megan Hopper considered Hawke’s ‘unique larrikin conciliator model’ and agrees with Bongiorno that Hawke demonstrated “a fundamentally successful performance of a certain liminal style of masculinity.” This peculiar style is unrepeatable and could only eventuate in his person and the mood of the era.
Reforming Australia
Bruce Chapman sets out the strongest case for the Hawke government and is worth quoting at length: “I was very impressed by the Labor government’s openness to ideas, the emphasis placed on the role of evidence as a basis for policy, and the seriousness with which academic research was treated. The Hawke-Keating cabinets seemed the gold standard for economic policy reform, noting the Accord, the floating of the dollar, the reintroduction of universal healthcare, developments towards national superannuation, the deregulation of the financial sector, HECS [The Higher Education Contribution Scheme], the dismantling of tariffs and reductions of inefficient industry subsidies. We should celebrate the wonderful contributions, which transformed Australia in both economic efficiency and distributional justice terms; it is a melancholy truth that there was nothing like this either before or after.”
Industrial relations turmoil was largely avoided. Chapman says: “The Australian pre-Accord institutional environment, with its long history of wage flow-on from one industry to another” fuelled inflationary pressures. Such “[u]ndesirable outcomes are consistent with the adverse Australian macroeconomic experiences of 1974-75 and 1981-82.”
A fierce critic of the Australian conciliation and arbitration model, John Niland, is cited: “The Accord itself required union leaders to discipline their own members, an arrangement without strong precedent in Australian industrial relations.” This mindset was mostly maintained during the Hawke years, with the 1989 pilots’ strike a notable exception – which proved the rule.
In a paper informed by econometric models, Chapman concludes that “around 356,000 extra jobs [were] created from the Accord’s impact on money wages”, and that “…wage inflation levels were reduced by about three percentage points per year and 10 per cent overall for 1983-89, due to the critical institutional change in the Australian labour market that occurred through the Accord.” Social wage (including Medicare and national superannuation) kept all on track. At the end of his article, Liam Byrne on industrial relations performance says he hopes “…to have contributed to the creation of a completer and more nuanced picture of Hawke as an industrial thinker and economic manager…” Successfully, he did.
Meredith Edwards’ chapter is titled ‘Innovative social policy at a time of fiscal restraint’, referring to the government’s “less heralded but equally significant many innovative social policy reforms.” Holbrook specifically discusses Medicare and the emergence over time of pride in the green and gold card as a symbol of national achievement. This is something which Prime Minister Albanese deftly attached himself to in the 2025 election, seemingly proving her point.
Marian Sawer’s chapter on gender and the Hawke government is partly titled ‘From winning women’s votes to the business case for gender equality’, noting its innovations were “[v]ery much shaped by the new world of neoliberal governance coma with both the constraints and footholds it provided for feminist policymaking.”
Hawke is marked poorly on indigenous affairs, however. Bramston references “[h]is failure to advance First Nations peoples’ land rights…” Hawke did not do enough or spend enough goodwill capital in an area he knew mattered both for the here-and-now, for justice, and for his legacy. First Nations leader Peter Yu, a Yawuru man from Broome in the Kimberley, says the WA government fiercely resisted progressive change. Although Hawke “verbalised his strong support for the rights of First Nation people on many notable occasions”, yet Hawke ultimately “felt a sense of guilt about his government’s failure to deliver on national land rights.” In late 1987, Hawke attended the Barunga Festival in the Northern Territory and publicly committed that his government would enter into a treaty with First Nations people before the end of the 1988 Bicentenary.” But this objective was sidelined. Yu concludes that the “piecemeal progress and false steps of the Hawke government are salutary for us now.”
Remembering
Barrie Cassidy and Craig Emerson in conversation discuss working with Hawke, which traversed high policy making to anecdotes about Hawke’s studying the form guide and placing bets on the horses. Emerson, too, says: “The big failing of the Hawke government was on Indigenous reconciliation”
They noted that a unity of purpose of the government, what calls “a common view” was key. “That tension is very valuable when there’s that common view, because it’s the speed, the pace at which you can implement reforms, not whether they should be done or not,” they said.
Former Liberal Minister Ian Macphee writes about five decades of friendship with Hawke and how that mattered to both of them.
Joshua Blacks’ essay on the documentary series Labor in Power (ABC television, 1993) quickly shaped perspectives on Hawke. He surmises: “Television’s demand for personal drama rather than policy processes explains …omissions to some extent.” The producers expected the government to lose in 1993, and in the series considerable attention was given to where Hawke went wrong and why Keating was the better choice to lead. Black says: “Labor in Power might have told a story less focused on the Labor government’s failures and tragedies. But it would almost certainly have had less impact, then and now, on Australian political culture.” Implicit is that thirty years later a more considered perspective can now be offered.
In the final chapter in the book, Evans attributes “the success that it manifestly was” to “…quality leadership, clear philosophy, decent formal governing process, real internal contestability, genuinely consultative style and effective communication…” He addresses each of those in detail. It was a team. As Evans says: “Paul Keating’s greatest strengths as a political leader were the clear sense of strategic direction that underlay everything he did and said and, above all, his unrivalled capacity to communicate, at every relevant level.” Evans notes that the government “had at least as many public servants seconded to our ministerial offices as political and personal staff.”
Concluding Comments
History may be unrepeatable. But the past can be instructive for how challenges and opportunities were confronted and determined. A gathering of serious academic historians and self-respecting independent researchers is bound to resist uncritical admiration of anyone and anything. It is interesting, then, that overwhelmingly there is such favourable regard for the Hawke government in this book. Hawke’s biggest failure as Bramston, Emerson and Yu argue, was his neglect of indigenous rights.
This review has sought to sample some of the reasons for the overall Hawke achievement, notwithstanding certain failures and blemishes, by drawing from remarks from all the contributors. Podger sums up a powerful reckoning: “The Hawke government displayed a confidence that it could manage the politics of open exposure of current policy issues and challenges.” The pairing of talent from within the ministry, the unions, staffers, and the public service, was impressive. Emerson laments, “the diminution in the importance of the public servers in the last few years up until 2022 has been very costly to the nation.” Podger, again, is worth quoting: “The Hawke government’s reputation for big and lasting policy reforms is due in large part to the decision-making processes it established.” This book enables a deep understanding of how that was so.
As published, the article noted Michael Easson is a life member of the ALP and a former Secretary of the Labor Council of NSW.