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The “Eloquence”of Robert J. Hawke: United States
informer, 1973–79
C. J. COVENTRY*
In the 1970s, the leader of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and future Prime
Minister of Australia, Robert J. “Bob”Hawke, was an informer of the United States of
America. Using diplomatic cables from official archives, this article shows that Hawke gifted
information about the Australian government, the Australian Labor Party and the labour
movement, assisting the intelligence gathering efforts of the foreign power. In turn, the
relationship influenced the development of Australian policy, including the abandonment of
Keynesian economics and embrace of neoliberalism. His discreet relationship —discussed in
detail for the first time —was not unusual among elites in the post-war period. However,
Hawke was especially entrenched in the practise. This article will also show, through
historiography and memoir, that the act of informing by elites began in the 1940s, as the
United States was becoming Australia’s key strategic ally.
Keywords: Diplomatic cables, United States, Australia, informer, Bob Hawke
Robert J. Hawke was a major figure of Australian politics in the 1970s. For much of
the decade he was president of the Australian Labor Party (Labor) and the Australian
Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). Such was his prominence, there were biographies
written of Hawke before he became the 23
rd
Prime Minister of Australia in 1983.
Scholars and biographers have covered this period of Hawke’s life extensively and it
has also been the subject of documentaries and depicted in films. What has been
overlooked is his secretive relationship with the diplomatic missions of the United
States of America at a time of considerable turbulence in the bilateral relationship.
Using official cables dispatched between 1973–79, this article will show that Hawke
operated as an informer. During this time, he divulged information about the Whitlam
government (1972–75), the Fraser government (1975–83), Labor, and the labour
movement. This article considers the cables in light of what is already known about
Hawke from this time. It will discuss what he was reported to have told diplomats and
contextualise that information in relation to three policy areas: industrial relations;
macroeconomics; and Australian foreign policy. The article will then discuss what the
diplomats thought of Hawke and the value they saw in him, both immediate and
apparent.
On the evidence, there are two reasons why the United States cultivated a
relationship with Hawke. The first was the immediate value he possessed as someone
familiar with the machinations of Labor, the labour movement and the Australian
government, at a time when Labor had regained political prowess after some twenty-
three years out of office. When Hawke was concurrent president of the ACTU and
*The author would like to thank the editorial team and anonymous reviewers for their generosity and
guidance, as well as Rebecca Coventry, James Waghorne, Alex Millmow, Erik Eklund and Keir
Reeves for their comments on an earlier draft.
© 2021 The University of Queensland and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.
DOI:10.1111/ajph.12763.
Australian Journal of Politics and History: Volume 67, Number 1, 2021, pp.67–87.
Labor, he spoke of his attempt to “ride two horses”.
1
However, his success had
ramifications beyond domestic politics. The United States wanted to protect its interests
and understood that the stability of Australia —especially its economics and politics
—was pivotal to this. Its diplomats were in regular contact with Hawke, particularly
during times of heightened activity in these policy areas and whenever Labor was
embroiled in political turmoil. The second was the potential value Hawke posed as a
possible future Labor leader and prime minister. Not unlike many contemporaries, the
diplomats believed he would one day be a successful politician.
2
Hawke was a widely admired figure in Australia and, early in his term, its most
popular prime minister.
3
His actions in the 1970s, as recorded in the cables, reveal a
more complicated character than the one observed in public; the “boozy, aggressive and
randy union leader of the 1970s”who become a “more mature, self-controlled,
statesmanlike figure”by the 1980s.
4
Hawke’s justification for informing over a course
of years is not known, nor do the cables provide insight as to his motivations. To this
end, the scholarship shows that Hawke had a steely commitment to the bilateral
relationship between Australia and the United States. Scholars acknowledge debate
surrounding his “alleged subservience to the United States”and that his government
(1983–91) depoliticised the bilateral relationship; by the time it left office it “had
virtually outdone previous conservative governments in proclaiming its support for
Washington”.
5
Others have also acknowledged this commitment. The government’s
first foreign minister, Bill Hayden, wrote in 1996 of Hawke’s“uncritical support for the
USA”.
6
Hawke, himself, made plain in 1994 his belief in the United States, “whatever
its mistakes”.
7
Given the frequency of conversations with diplomats, it is reasonable to
assume that there was some benefit to obtain. As an informer Hawke persuaded the
United States that he could be a trusted as leader, but this was not the only objective.
Frank Bongiorno argues:
Bob Hawke was the most strongly pro-American Labor leader of the post-war era, an attachment
indebted to political calculation —his dependence on the pro-US Labor Right and his sensitivity
to public support for the alliance —as well as to political conviction.
8
At the same time, the discreet nature of the relationship suggests Hawke thought
informing was unpalatable to sections of the public. Although the cables were sent
1
Robert Pullan, Bob Hawke; a portrait (Sydney: Methuen, 1980), p. 118; Jim Hagan, The History of
the ACTU (Melbourne: Longman, 1981), pp. 414–5.
2
Frank Bongiorno, The Eighties: The decade that transformed Australia (Melbourne: Black Inc.,
2015), p. xii.
3
Paul Strangio, “Bob Hawke: a man of great Labor, and leadership,”Monash University,17May,
2019, https://lens.monash.edu/@politics-society/2019/05/17/1375031/bob-hawke-a-man-and-pm-of-
great-labor.
4
Bongiorno, The Eighties,p.1.
5
Frank Bongiorno, “Vale Bob Hawke, a giant of Australian political and industrial history,”The
Conversation, 16 May, 2019, 7.51pm AEST, Politics +Society, https://theconversation.com/vale-
bob-hawke-a-giant-of-australian-political-and-industrial-history-93719; James Curran, Unholy Fury:
Whitlam and Nixon at War (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2015), pp. 308–9, 311; See also,
Clinton Fernandes, Island Off the Coast of Asia: Instruments of statecraft in Australian foreign policy
(Melbourne: Monash University Press, 2018), pp. 149–50; Ross McMullin, The Light on the Hill:
The Australian Labor Party, 1891–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 424–5; Clinton
Fernandes, What Uncle Sam Wants (Singapore: Palgrave Pivot, 2019), p. 80.
6
Bill Hayden, An Autobiography (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1996), p. 341.
7
Bob Hawke, The Hawke Memoirs (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1994), p. 185.
8
Bongiorno, The Eighties, p. 91.
68 C. J. Coventry
during the Cold War détente, there was a widely perceived ideological contest, in addition
to the geopolitical one, between the United States and the Soviet Union. Hawke, who had
appeared to many as “crypto-communist”and “anti-American”in the 1960s, came to be
associated with the politics of the Labor Right in the 1970s.
9
It is therefore conceivable that
he gave information to the United States as a result of ideological change, in addition to his
political manoeuvrings as he prepared to enter parliament.
What can be determined are his actions and the conversations he had with United
States diplomatic officials. But there has been no comprehensive scholarly or
biographical account of these interactions. This can be explained, in part, by his own
failure to discuss the de facto role in his 1994 memoir. Other accounts of his life are
similarly silent. Notably, the writer Blanche d’Alpuget, who wrote the 1982 official
biography of Hawke while in a close personal relationship with him did not discuss it;
neither does the 2019 edition. Hawke described the biography as “the fullest account of
my early life”.
10
This oversight in the recent edition occurred despite journalistic
coverage of some of the cables pertaining to Hawke.
11
In fact, Hawke knew cables
existed because he was asked in 2017 about one pertaining to his lifestyle.
12
Beyond
biography, this article will demonstrate that the cables are of broad use to scholars
researching histories of labour, economics and politics in the 1970s and 1980s.
It is important to understand that Hawke was one of a number of notable Australians
who maintained discreet relationships with United States officials in the 1970s. These
included Don Willesee, the foreign minister; Billy Snedden, the Liberal leader; Barrie
Unsworth, the future New South Wales premier; Don Dunstan, the South Australian
premier; B. A. Santamaria, the anti-Labor and anti-communist political operative; as
well as future heads of the Department of Foreign Affairs such as Peter Wilenski. One
of the few to acknowledge such a relationship is Hayden —a former Labor leader and
Governor-General of Australia —in his 1996 memoir.
13
Hawke’s actions were
nevertheless unusual because he was especially entrenched in the practice as evidenced
by the sheer volume of cables pertaining to his dealings with diplomats.
Cables and informers
Scholars have understood the value of the diplomatic cables as a source of evidence,
especially as a repository of views of Australia and Australians shared with the key
strategic ally. Historiographically, the cables have been instrumental in revealing
various informers. In 1979, P.G. Edwards used the cables and personal correspondence
to reveal the opinions of United States officials in the 1940s and their “good sources of
information”, like the future Labor leader Arthur Calwell.
14
In more recent years, the
cables have become more frequently used by scholars. Laurence W. Maher, using
the cables, showed that the eminent jurist Owen Dixon was an informer in the 1940s, as
9
Blanche d’Alpuget, Robert J. Hawke; a biography (Melbourne: Schwartz, 1982), pp. 87–8,
166, 331.
10
Hawke, Memoirs, p. xi.
11
Philip Dorling, “Hawke and Carr were US sources on Whitlam turmoil,”Sydney Morning Herald,
9 April, 2013, https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/hawke-and-carr-were-us-sources-on-whitlam-
turmoil-20130408-2hhe5.html; Paul Toohey, “Wikileaks: Bob Hawke dished the dirt to America,”
News.com.au, 13 April, 2013, https://www.news.com.au/technology/wikileaks-bob-hawke-dished-the-
dirt-to-america/news-story/b62e244c0ed87f19d58792568643d0e6.
12
ABC, Hawke: The larrikin and the leader (Directed by Bruce Permezel, 2017).
13
Hayden, An Autobiography, p. 340.
14
P.G. Edwards, Australia Through American Eyes, 1935-1945 (Brisbane: UQ Press, 1979), pp. ix,
5, 8, 13, 19, 71.
69The “Eloquence”of Robert J. Hawke: United States informer, 1973–79
was then ACTU president P.J. Clarey.
15
David McKnight wrote of cables which
revealed informers operating in the 1960s, including Hawke
16
and David Horner used
the cables to show the existence of informers in the 1950s.
17
The same series of cables
used in this article was utilised by James Curran to show what diplomats thought of
Australian politicians in the 1970s.
18
A recent series of cables, between 2005–10 and
leaked by Wikileaks, allowed Clinton Fernandes to demonstrate the influence United
States diplomats exerted over former prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard,
former Labor leader Kim Beazley and others.
19
Fernandes also mentions Hawke’s
activities in the 1970s.
20
Other scholars also acknowledge the presence of informers without recourse to the
cables. In the 1970s, Robert Murray and John Warhurst wrote about assistance
rendered by diplomats to anti-communists in the 1950s.
21
Humphrey McQueen wrote
in 1983 that Hawke’s election as ACTU president was endorsed by the US labour
attaché, a mid-level diplomatic role concerned with industrial relations.
22
In 1994,
David McKnight mentioned activities of successive United States labour attachés —
explaining that the position has long been occupied by intelligence officers —and their
efforts to cultivate relationships in Labor and the Democratic Labor Party.
23
More
recently, Stuart Macintyre refers to a number of conservative informers from the
1940s,
24
while John Blaxland also provides examples of United States diplomats
approaching Australian bureaucrats.
25
It can therefore be seen that a thread runs
through the scholarship hinting at a greater truth: informers have long been a feature of
the bilateral relationship.
By discussing recorded history and evidence coincidentally, it can be shown that the
intelligence received by the United States diplomatic mission was reliable. This further
helps mitigate potential exaggeration, misunderstanding and misinterpretation by
diplomats and informers. The quotations in this article are almost entirely the words of
diplomats, used in summation after conversations and when interpreting events. The
precise words communicated by Hawke are, in large part, not recorded. However, it is a
reasonable assumption that diplomats relayed faithful information, especially given the
interests at stake. The series of cables considered in this article, sent between 1973–79,
are available in full through the National Archives and Records Administration
15
Laurence W. Maher, “Takes of the overt and the covert: Judges and politics in early Cold War
Australia,”Federal Law Review Vol 21, 2 (1993), pp. 169–70, 173.
16
David McKnight, “Labor and the Quiet Americans,”DavidMcknight.com.au, 27 August, 2005,
https://www.davidmcknight.com.au/archives/2005/08/quiet-americans.
17
David Horner, The Spy Catchers, vol. 1 of The Official History of ASIO, ed., David Horner
(Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2014), p. 174.
18
See Curran, Unholy Fury.
19
See Fernandes, What Uncle Sam Wants.
20
Ibid., p. 80.
21
Robert Murray, The Split: Australian Labor in the fifties (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1970), pp. 265–66;
John Warhurst, “United States’Government assistance to the Catholic Social Studies Movement,
1953–4,”Labour History No 30, May (1976), pp. 39–41.
22
Humphrey McQueen, “The pain of coming home to deficit government,”Australian Society,
December (1983), p. 27; Humphrey McQueen, “What’s good for Bechtel…,”Australian Society,
February (1990), p. 58.
23
David McKnight, Australian Spies and Their Secrets (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1994), pp. 292–3.
24
Stuart Macintyre, Australia’s Bold Experiment: War and reconstruction in the 1940s (Sydney:
NewSouth Publishing, 2015), pp. 451–2.
25
John Blaxland, The Protest Years, vol. 2 of The Official History of ASIO, ed. David Horner
(Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2015), pp. 337–8, 445.
70 C. J. Coventry
(NARA) in the United States, having been released between 2005 and 2014. The
author has only considered this series because of its expansive size. Cables containing
information gifted by informers —referred to within the cables as “informants”or
“sources”—were marked with higher classifications of secrecy than cables that
summarised press commentary. Mid-level diplomats —labour attachés and political
and economic affairs officers —signed many cables; ambassadors signed cables less
frequently.
Industrial relations
The 1970s is known for economic instability, as well as social and political change, in
which a militant left wing tussled with a resurgent right wing within, and without, the
labour movement.
26
Hawke was a conspicuous figure in the press and became
synonymous with the ACTU itself, just as his power within the ACTU Executive also
grew.
27
He is remembered as having been “the front man for industrial militancy”, but
one with “vigorous anti-communist […] opinions”.
28
More generally, there was a
resurgence in unionism and the unions experienced a period noted for their successes,
especially wage increases.
29
Publicly, Hawke was often in contest with the Whitlam
government and would say the unions should not be its “automatic guarantors”.
30
The United States saw Hawke as being effective at grappling with the competing
interests between labour, capital and the state.
31
The diplomats perceived that the
ACTU’s core tactic under his presidency was to maximise union self-preservation by
allowing the Australian government, regardless of party, “to make [the] bulk of big,
headline catching mistakes”with respect to industrial relations.
32
But they also
believed that Hawke’s political ambition would “make him jeopardize one presidency
for the sake of the other”.
33
With respect to the preservation of United States interests,
Hawke was dependable. Hawke “promised”to keep diplomats abreast of matters that
concerned the diplomats, including those of economic importance, and they came to
expect it from him.
34
Hawke provided information about union disputes with
multinational corporations operating in Australia, like the Ford Motor Company.
35
In
1974, he warned Ambassador Green that these corporations could be targeted by
unions and activists.
36
Hawke forewarned diplomats on another occasion “that if the
left-wing of the ACTU becomes more influential, his political survival could require
26
Michelle Arrow, The Seventies: The personal, the political and the making of modern Australia
(Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2019), pp. 4–5, 105, 110; Hagan, ACTU, pp. 414, 438–39.
27
Hagan, ACTU, pp. 377, 397, 436.
28
Anthony Forsyth & Carolyn Holbrook, “The Prices and Incomes Accord,”The Conversation,24
April, 2017, 2.43pm AEST, Politics +Society, https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-
explainer-the-prices-and-incomes-accord-75622; Bongiorno, The Eighties, p. 21.
29
Bradley Bowden, “The rise and decline of Australian unionism,”Labour History No 100, May
(2011), pp. 52, 66–7.
30
Hagan, ACTU, p. 420.
31
26 October 1978, 1978CANBER08848, National Archives and Records Administration
(henceforth NARA).
32
19 November 1976, 1976CANBER08408, NARA.
33
13 December 1974, 1974MELBOU01492, NARA.
34
28 March 1974, 1974MELBOU00333, NARA; 19 July 1973, 1973MELBOU00674, NARA;
18 June 1974, 1974MELBOU00691, NARA; 23 October 1974, 1974MELBOU01228, NARA.
35
19 July 1973, 1973MELBOU00674, NARA; 29 August 1973, 1973CANBER04792, NARA;
29 June 1973, 1973MELBOU00620, NARA.
36
1 July 1974, 1974SYDNEY01315, NARA.
71The “Eloquence”of Robert J. Hawke: United States informer, 1973–79
him to adjust [his] own rhetoric to the prevailing line”.
37
Diplomats lauded his ability
to keep militant unions at bay and his ability to resolve disputes with what he
“jokingly”called “my eloquence”.
38
Hawke displayed a willingness to involve the
United States in the machinations of the labour movement. Such was their confidence
in him that, before the ACTU conference of 1973, one diplomat reported: “[c]
onsidering role of ACTU in Australian politics and fact that its president, Robert
Hawke, is personally involved, [the Attaché] expects to be deeply involved”.
39
Occasionally in these conversations, Hawke would denigrate various unions as
“industrial idiots”and disclose information about their long-term financial viability.
40
The diplomats noticed a change in union politics under Hawke’s leadership, with the
ACTU Executive having become “significantly more conservative”by 1977 and
therefore less militant.
41
To their eyes the trend was favourable:
[Hawke’s] hand has thus been considerably strengthened in his efforts to keep control of the
Australian labour movement and direct it towards a more responsible and influential voice [...]. If
Hawke’s purposes are not altogether altruistic, he is at least [a] pragmatist who accepts that too
much […] energy has been wasted on divisive political issues […].
42
In this the diplomats were prescient. Although Hawke left the ACTU in 1980, the trade
unions continued to achieve influence in policymaking. The United States thought
Hawke’s“little here, little there”approach succeeded in gradually undermining internal
opposition; causing a de-radicalisation of the labour movement.
43
One example of this
was Labor’s ban on uranium mining. Hawke was reported to have “masterminded”the
“erosion”of popular anti-uranium policy by exploiting a “break in union solidarity”.
44
After 1975, United States diplomats came to see greater value in the ACTU’s
economic approach than that of the Fraser government. Diplomats considered the
politics:
With the county still mired in stagflation as of mid-1977 the [government], the employers and
portions of the media were generally successful in getting the public to take a dim view of
‘greedy’and ‘irresponsible’union efforts to maintain real wages.
45
However, they deplored Fraser’s counterproductive “union-bashing”and admired
Hawke’s subtle dampening of union wage demands.
46
The government’s reform agenda
was seen as slow and needlessly antagonistic to workers: “the economy is not being
managed any better […] than it was under Whitlam”.
47
To their mind, Hawke
understood the discretion unions should employ by not engaging in “economy-
disrupting industrial clashes”.
48
He thought Labor should take the same approach and
diplomats strongly agreed, believing that Australia was a “highly volatile country”.
49
By way of background, the diplomats reasoned that the lack of “concrete action in the
37
26 October 1978, 1978CANBER08848, NARA.
38
11 October 1973, 1973MELBOU01032, NARA.
39
24 July 1973, 1973MELBOU00688, NARA.
40
2 October 1973, 1973MELBOU01002, NARA; 23 October 1974, 1974MELBOU01228, NARA.
41
20 September 1977, 1977CANBER06540, NARA.
42
20 September 1977, 1977CANBER06548, NARA.
43
Ibid.
44
15 February 1978, 1978CANBER01161, NARA.
45
16 June 1977, 1977CANBER04270, NARA.
46
Ibid.
47
22 August 1977, 1977CANBER05883, NARA.
48
19 November 1976, 1976CANBER08408, NARA.
49
8 November 1977, 1977CANBER07782, NARA.
72 C. J. Coventry
economic area […]mayreflect in part the fact that in its final days the economic policy
of the Whitlam government had already moved a long distance in the general direction
of the Liberal position”.
50
This is almost certainly a reference to the Budget of 1975;
the symbolic beginning of the Keynesian ebb.
51
Its passage was the first act of the
newly appointed Fraser government in November 1975.
52
Seeking to influence global industrial relations was of “vital concern”to the
United States.
53
Its diplomats wanted to align the ACTU with the American
Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). They
managed relations between AFL-CIO leader George Meany and Hawke, softening the
suspicions of the former toward the latter, which are known to have been strained.
54
In 1973, the Labour Attaché suggested to the Ambassador that he share his highly
favourable “early impressions of [the] Australian labour movement and particularly
Hawke”with AFL-CIO representatives.
55
The diplomats fostered a relationship
between trades unions that Hawke quickly came to be “very pleased”with, especially
after his carefully planned trip to the United States in 1974.
56
The AFL-CIO kept
diplomats informed of their conversations with Hawke.
57
At this time, Hawke also
became a de facto “emissary”between the International Labour Organisation (ILO)
—a tripartist organisation of the United Nations —and the United States.
58
Then
Director-General of the ILO Francis Blanchard, said the election of Hawke and
others to the governing body “was a victory for the US and insured that US interests
[…] would be supported”.
59
Although Blanchard was trying to stop the United States
leaving the ILO, this comment indicates that Hawke was seen by non-Australians as
a proponent of United States’interests. Relations with other international unions and
Hawke were similarly managed by the diplomats.
60
On occasion, Hawke gave them
advice about the activities of the AFL-CIO, as he did with Papua New Guinean
independence.
61
There were other informers in the ACTU and unions. Another prolific informer was
John Ducker, the President of New South Wales Labor and a member of the ACTU
Executive.
62
Together, he and Hawke eased tensions in a time of heightened anti-
American sentiment.
63
One such example of this involved Frank Sinatra. The Ol’Blue
Eyes is Back international tour was interrupted when Sinatra made sexist slurs about
50
27 February 1976, 1976CANBER01549, NARA; cf. 15 August 1975, 1975CANBER0
5505, NARA.
51
Tim Battin, Abandoning Keynes: Australia’s capital mistake (London: Macmillan, 1997),
pp. 95–8, 107.
52
Jenny Hocking, Gough Whitlam; His time (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2014), p. 345.
53
14 September 1977, 1977STATE220002, NARA.
54
15 October 1975, 1975MELBOU01656, NARA; d’Alpuget, Hawke, pp. 170, 220, 278.
55
30 July 1973, 1973CANBER04189, NARA.
56
28 August 1973, 1973MELBOU00851, NARA; 5 August 1974, 1974MELBOU00923, NARA;
18 November 1976, 1976STATE283872, NARA.
57
31 July 1974, 1974STATE166138, NARA; 7 November 1977, 1977MELBOU02282, NARA.
58
d’Alpuget, Hawke, p. 284.
59
23 June 1975, 1975GENEVA04781, NARA; 26 October 1973, 1973MELBOU01100, NARA.
60
10 April 1974, 1974MELBOU00404, NARA.
61
3 October 1973, 1973MELBOU01006, NARA.
62
6 September 1979, 1979CANBER08194, NARA; Troy Bramston, “ALP boss John Ducker a friend
of the US,”The Australian, 13 April 2013, https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/alp-
boss-john-ducker-a-friend-of-the-us/news-story/0f964f98c56197dcd1dcc5e0129ee3ce; cf. Curran,
Unholy Fury, p. 273.
63
Curran, Unholy Fury, pp. 182, 220.
73The “Eloquence”of Robert J. Hawke: United States informer, 1973–79
female journalists.
64
Sinatra refused to apologise and a major union dispute unfurled,
with unions —under the direction of Hawke —“holding him hostage in Australia”.
65
Diplomats sought the assistance of Ducker, who contacted Hawke.
66
The popular view
is that Hawke engaged in protracted, liquor-soaked negotiations but ultimately failed to
elicit an apology.
67
The cables show differently: through Ducker, the diplomats reached
an agreement with Hawke to end the strike hours earlier and no apology was sought.
68
Hawke, nevertheless, spent hours with Sinatra’s lawyer before emerging to read the
(pre-formulated) “joint statement of regret”.
69
The moderation of the ACTU under Hawke was admired by the United States. Of
course, this admiration was somewhat isolated within the United States government, as
is understandable. Hawke’s apparent suggestion in 1978 that he have an audience with
President Jimmy Carter does not appear to have eventuated, despite the efforts of
Ambassador Philip H. Alston.
70
Helping to marshal the labour movement and contain
damage to the United States was, as the cables show, an integral part of Hawke’s
relationship with the foreign officials.
Macroeconomics
With the end of full employment policy came the end of post-war social democracy in
Australia.
71
The cables show the United States government had wanted the Australian
government to abandon the macroeconomic programme of Keynesianism, to which its
officials were opposed.
72
The abandonment took over a decade, from 1973–84, starting
with the Whitlam government, continuing with the Fraser government, before it was
completed by the Hawke government.
73
Notable partisans —including Hawke himself,
who was an economist —accept the decisive role of the Hawke government in
64
Kitty Kelley, His Way: The unauthorised biography of Frank Sinatra (New York: USA Bantam,
1986), pp. 424–5; James Vyver, “He was almost legless, How Bob Hawke and a bottle of brandy
saved Frank Sinatra from tour disaster,”Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 21 November, 2018,
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-21/frank-sinatra-under-siege-in-australia-in-1974/10511714.
65
Vyver, “He was almost legless,”.
66
12 July 1974, 1974SYDNEY01434, NARA.
67
Shane Maloney, “Encounters: Frank Sinatra & Bob Hawke,”Monthly, October (2009), p. 74;
Vyver, “He was almost legless,”;Joint statement on behalf of Frank Sinatra and Bob Hawke on
behalf of the unions (press release, Sydney, July 1974); Sydney Morning Herald,“The siege of
Sinatra,”22 April, 2002, https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/the-siege-of-sinatra-
20020422-gdf7sz.html; The Night We Called It a Day (2003) ContentFilm International, (Directed by
Paul Goldman).
68
12 July 1974, 1974SYDNEY01434, NARA; Mirriam Kleiman, “Regrets, he had a few…,”
National Archives and Records Administration, 18 April, 2016, https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/
2016/04/18/regrets-he-had-a-few/.
69
Joint statement on behalf of Frank Sinatra and Bob Hawke on behalf of the unions (press release,
Sydney, July 1974).
70
24 October 1978, 1978CANBER08740, NARA.
71
Geoffrey Bolton, The Middle Way, 1942–1995, Vol. 5 of The Oxford History of Australia
(Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996), p.103; G.C. Harcourt, “Introduction,”in Claudio
Sardoni ed., On Political Economists and Modern Political Economy: selected essays of
G.C. Harcourt (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 8; See also, Sarah Gregson, et al., “Roundtable:
Assessing the Accord and labour’s role in neoliberalism,”Labour History No 118, May (2020),
pp. 135–76.
72
18 September 1974, 1974MELBOU01111, NARA.
73
Elizabeth Humphrys, How Labour Built Neoliberalism: Australia’s Accord, the labour movement
and the neoliberal project (Leiden: Brill, 2018).
74 C. J. Coventry
Australia’s embrace of neoliberalism.
74
The cables shed light on Hawke’s change of
mind, which began in 1974. By the end of the decade he believed the maintenance of
full employment was secondary to controlling inflation; that wage restraint was pivotal
to the inflation fight; and that tripartism was needed to enact macroeconomic reform.
Full employment
Rising inflation was seen by the United States as “the root of Australia’s severe
economic difficulty”.
75
Its diplomats were alert to the possibility that the Whitlam
government “could very well founder on trade union rocks”because of inflationary
wage demands.
76
Understandably, Hawke’s balancing act between the ACTU and
Labor was seen as crucial to the Australian economy in which American multi-national
corporations operated.
77
The debate in government and academic circles centred on the
question of how rising inflation could be curbed. The Keynesian and neoliberal
approaches to this problem, understood correctly, were similar: the former involved
austerity in fiscal policy to cause a fall in inflation tied with attempts to keep
employment as high as possible; the latter opted for unemployment until inflation was
under control. The Whitlam government, after it was narrowly returned at the 1974
election, publicly declared its receptiveness to dropping the full employment
objective.
78
This was supported by the bureaucrat H.C. Coombs, perhaps Australia’s
most famous Keynesian.
79
But the idea enraged many in Cabinet, Labor, and the labour
movement, with Hawke publicly opposed at that time.
80
In mid-1974 Hawke told United States officials that “people expected [a] low
unemployment rate and had come to expect it ever since wartime economic
expansion”.
81
The policy of full employment was a “long time national commitment”
across Australian politics.
82
To his mind, Whitlam was “ruthless”in contemplating
Treasury advice that unemployment was an “instrument in [the] fight against
inflation”.
83
In late 1974, the inflationary situation became desperate. Diplomats
reported to Washington that Hawke “will carry whole burden of holding [Labor]
together”as the threat of inflation and rising unemployment tore it apart.
84
They sought
out “trade union leaders throughout the country”for information about Hawke’s
chances of success and found that the more radical elements of the labour movement
posed a larger threat.
85
74
Hawke, Memoirs, p. 153, quoted in Bongiorno, The Eighties, p. 19; John Howard, “Undoubtedly a
very fine PM: John Howard remembers Bob Hawke”, interview by Sabra Lane, AM,Australian
Broadcasting Corporation, 17 May, 2019, https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/am/undoubtedly-a-
very-fine-pm-john-howard-remembers-bob-hawke/11122614; Sally McManus, On Fairness
(Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2019), p. 50.
75
27 February 1976, 1976CANBER01549, NARA.
76
31 July 1974, 1974MELBOU00892, NARA.
77
Curran, Unholy Fury, pp. 13, 251–2.
78
Michael Beggs, Inflation and the Making of Australian Macroeconomic Policy, 1945–85 (London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), p. 183.
79
Hocking, His Time, p. 164; Tim Rowse, Nugget Coombs; a reforming life (Cambridge: CUP,
2005), pp. 306–7.
80
Beggs, Inflation, p. 183; Singleton, Accord, p. 30.
81
11 July 1974, 1974MELBOU00808, NARA.
82
Ibid.
83
Ibid.
84
18 September 1974, 1974MELBOU01111, NARA.,
85
Ibid.
75The “Eloquence”of Robert J. Hawke: United States informer, 1973–79
Hawke’s commitment to Keynesianism faltered sometime between late 1974 and 1978.
In November 1974, Hawke said he had told Whitlam the ACTU expected the government
to have “due regard for its obligations to the people who had elected them”.
86
But
privately, he did not hold this “narrow point of view”, explaining that he was “under
pressure particularly from manufacturing unions to get [the] Government to change its
policies […]quickly”.
87
Unlike bankers, higher levels of inflation are preferable to
manufacturers.
88
He sensed that the labour movement was starting to evince concern for
rising inflation; a shift also detected by the Labour Attaché.
89
In late 1978, the ACTU
stated publicly that full employment was “not obtainable in the immediate future”.
90
According to diplomats —informed by “reliable sources”—this reflected the “long held
views”of Hawke, Ducker and Bill Kelty.
91
By 1979, Hawke was openly questioning the
viability of full employment, saying ambiguously, “it should be common ground […]to
aim for the restoration of full employment opportunities in this country”.
92
Although full
employment policy ended under the Fraser government, Hawke’sgovernmentdidnot
resurrect it because the conditions were not seen as conducive.
93
Wage restraint
What is already known is that Hawke went to the 1983 election with a “cautious but
unmistakeable Keynesianism which aimed to reduce unemployment and lift demand”.
94
He
declared employment Labor’s central concern.
95
The Statement of accord regarding
economic policy (the Accord) between Labor and the ACTU, which lasted from 1983–1996,
appeared to honour these promises. In its initial form it “set out wide-ranging economic and
social policy”, including Medicare, and sought to reduce unemployment.
96
Increases in real
wages were to be “maintained […]overtime”.
97
But the agreement “quickly narrowed to
focus almost exclusively on wages”.
98
On coming to office the government saw “political
gold”in the “inherited […]fiscal mess”which enabled it to “cast aside many of its election
promises”.
99
Under the so-called “trilogy”commitments of 1984, which were self-imposed
fiscal restraints, it became impracticable to implement the Accord in full. The ACTU,
however, continued to commit to wage restraint, which became the Accord’s central feature
from the 1985 revision.
100
Hawke’s apparent volte-face was, in fact, gradual.
86
12 November 1974, 1974MELBOU01311, NARA.
87
Ibid.
88
Clinton Fernandes, Peace with Justice: Noam Chomsky in Australia (Melbourne: Monash, 2012),
pp. 76–7.
89
12 November 1974, 1974MELBOU01311, NARA.
90
24 January 1979, 1979CANBER00627, NARA.
91
Ibid.
92
Robert J. Hawke, The Resolution of Conflict (Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1979),
pp. 35–43, 46–8.
93
Arrow, The Seventies, p. 174.
94
Bongiorno, The Eighties,p.4.
95
Beth Cook, “National, regional and local employment policies in Australia,”Centre of Full
Employment and Equity, October (2008), http://www.fullemployment.net/publications/wp/2008/08-
06.pdf.
96
Humphrys, How Labour Built Neoliberalism, p. 6; Bongiorno, The Eighties,p.56
97
Frank Stilwell, “Wages policy and the Accord,”Journal of Australian Political Economy
No. 28, (1991), p. 30.
98
Humphrys, How Labour Built Neoliberalism, pp. 6, 109–13; Stilwell, “Wages policy,”p. 29.
99
Bongiorno, The Eighties, p. 15.
100
Stilwell, “Wages policy,”pp. 34, 36, 42, 46; Don Watson, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A
portrait of Paul Keating PM (Sydney: Random House, 2002), p. 656.
76 C. J. Coventry
Hawke has been seen as one of the Accord’s main creators.
101
Certainly, he thought
his role was “fundamental”, having “begun the Accord negotiations”while at the ACTU
and then “pursued these negotiations in Parliament”.
102
The Accord was pursued during
the debates on wage indexation and acceptance of a “social contract”to curb
inflation.
103
In the 1970s, the ACTU advocated price controls and full wage indexation;
it was opposed to various forms of wage restraint.
104
It stopped the Whitlam
government’s attempts to bring about wage restraint and Hawke was “unequivocal”in
his public opposition to such measures.
105
But after historic wage increases were
secured in 1974, negotiations with the Whitlam government became possible.
106
However, the ACTU Special Unions Conference of September 1974 resolved that wage
indexation would curb inflation.
107
But, as Whitlam later observed, the “loosely worded
indexation package”of the Special Conference was, in fact, the first sign that union
resolve was softening.
108
After the conference, Hawke brokered an agreement with the
Whitlam government —the Kirribilli Accord —for voluntary wage restraint, but this
proved premature.
109
Hawke and Whitlam would portray their efforts as having been
ahead of the politics.
110
The cables suggest that Hawke and the government began working closely on this
matter before the Kirribilli Accord and the Special Conference. In August 1974, Hawke
told diplomats, contrary to public protestations, that he personally thought union wage
demands were responsible for Australia’s rampant inflation.
111
Soon after, during one
of their meetings with Hawke, diplomats listened to a telephone conversation between
Hawke and the Prime Minister’soffice, in which a draft resolution for the Special
Conference was agreed to.
112
The resulting conference was described by one diplomat
as “[p]avlovian”, with Hawke telling him during a lunch break that his plan “had the
numbers”.
113
In the intervening years, before the Accord, the ACTU came to accept
wage restraint and, under the Accord, worker living standards were eroded and
unionism, from the 1990s, declined.
114
101
Shaun Goldfinch, “Remaking Australia’s Economic Policy: Economic policy decision-makers
during the Hawke and Keating Labor governments,”Australian Journal of Public Administration Vol
58, 2 (1999), p. 5; Chris Wright, “The Prices and Incomes Accord: Its significance, impact and
legacy,”Journal of Industrial Relations Vol 56, 2 (2014), p. 267; cf. Hayden, An Autobiography,
pp. 363–4.
102
Hawke, Memoirs, p. 134.
103
Stan Anson, Hawke: an emotional life (Melbourne: Penguin Books, 1991), pp. 79–80; Hagan,
ACTU, p. 422.
104
Hagan, ACTU, pp. 403–12, 421; Singleton, The Accord, pp. 32–4.
105
Singleton, The Accord, pp. 32–3; Hagan, ACTU, p. 421.
106
Hagan, ACTU, pp. 358–9, 420–3; Humphrys, How Labour Built Neoliberalism, pp. 86–7.
107
Singleton, The Accord, pp. 34–37; Hagan, ACTU, pp. 359, 406, 409.
108
Gough Whitlam, The Whitlam Government, 1972–1975 (Melbourne: Penguin, 1985), p. 203.
109
Singleton, The Accord, pp. 41–42, 48–49.
110
d’Alpuget, Hawke, p. 216; Whitlam, The Whitlam Government, pp. 203–4.
111
29 August 1974, 1974CANBER05670, NARA; cf. 23 October 1974,
1974MELBOU01228, NARA.
112
25 September 1974, 1974SYDNEY02054, NARA.
113
Ibid.
114
Kelly, The Hawke Ascendency, pp. 100–4, 314–15; Humphrys, How Labour Built Neoliberalism,
pp. 115–18; Stilwell, “Wages policy,”p. 29; Jonathan Strauss, “Opposition to the Accord as a social
contract in the 1980s,”Labour History No. 105, November (2013), pp. 47–8, 50; Hayden, An
Autobiography, p. 367;
77The “Eloquence”of Robert J. Hawke: United States informer, 1973–79
Tripartism
Hawke’s preference for consensus politics arose before he came to office. It is said he
adopted these politics in 1977.
115
As Hawke recalled:
Long before I was in Parliament I had had the idea of a National Economic Summit aimed at
establishing a social compact between Australia’s main constituent groups: governments, business
and labour […]. Although I had mentioned the idea earlier, I floated it in some detail in the 1979
Boyer Lectures […].
116
Hawke’sfirst public mention of his preference for a consensus approach to
policymaking was made on 21 August 1974 in a speech to the Conference of
Economists’at the Australian National University.
117
By 1983, there was a widespread
acceptance of tripartism in the unions and business, but influential sections of the latter
resolved to pursue macroeconomic reform slowly, to ensure ultimate success.
118
Despite misgivings, business accepted the first version of the Accord.
119
Peter Abeles,
the managing director of Thomas Nationwide Transport (TNT) and Hawke’s confidant,
suggested in 1983 that the Accord become a “trilateral agreement”, which the National
Economic Summit of the same year effectively accomplished.
120
The United States suggested to Hawke on 2 August 1974 that he pursue a “tripartite
committee of unions, employers, and government”to build consensus on industrial
matters, especially on wages.
121
The suggestion was made by the Labour Attaché after
“many months”of advocating inside the State Department.
122
Earlier, in May, a request
by the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission under Justice John Moore for a
“tripartite”conference between the ACTU, government and business had been described
to superiors in Washington as a “firm and long step toward removing constant acerbation
caused by purely political consideration of these problems in the past”.
123
What United
States officials envisaged for Australia was a system of “American style collective
bargaining”.
124
Their advocacy for tripartism did not abate over the following years.
When the tripartite National Labour Consultative Council (NLCC) was announced by
the Fraser government in 1977, with Hawke’s encouragement, diplomats hailed it as a
“major tactical victory for the ACTU”which had come to champion “meaningful high-
level tripartite economic consultation”.
125
Tripartism, which had been mooted within the
labour movement since the 1960s, would flourish under the Hawke government.
126
The
cables reveal the United States as a discreet advocate encouraging Hawke.
115
Hagan, ACTU, p. 377.
116
Hawke, Memoirs, p. 170; Hawke, Resolution, pp. 42–3.
117
Alex Millmow, A History of Australasian Economic Thought (London: Routledge, 2017), p. 175.
118
Damien Cahill, “Business mobilisation, the New Right and Australian Labor governments in the
1980s,”Labour History No 98, May (2010), p. 15.
119
Stilwell, “Wages policy,”p. 34.
120
Bongiorno, The Eighties, pp. 17–8; Paul Kelly, The Hawke Ascendency, 1975–1983 (Sydney:
Angus & Robertson, 1984), pp. 438–9.
121
8 August 1974, 1974MELBOU00942, NARA; 5 May 1974, 1974MELBOU00513, NARA.
122
8 August 1974, 1974MELBOU00942, NARA.
123
5 May 1974, 1974MELBOU00513, NARA; Canberra Times,“The Moore conference,”3 August
1974, p. 2; Hagan, ACTU, pp. 423, 430–1.
124
16 June 1977, 1977CANBER04270, NARA.
125
Ibid.; Hagan, ACTU, pp. 430–431.
126
Christine Jennett & Randal G. Stewart, eds, Hawke and Australian Public Policy: Consensus and
restructuring (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1990), p. 295; Sean Scalmer & Terry Irving, “The rise of the
modern labour technocrat,”Labour History No. 77, November (1999), pp. 65, 75.
78 C. J. Coventry
Foreign policy
The Whitlam government is known for digressing from established Australian foreign
policy, particularly the bilateral relationship with the United States and support for the
state of Israel. During its time in office, Hawke presented himself as something of a
counterweight. In the assessment of one diplomat, the “differences in foreign affairs”
between Hawke and Whitlam “frequently entertain [the] public”.
127
The cables show
the extent of Hawke’s departure from Whitlam’s foreign policy.
The bilateral relationship
There was considerable tension between the Whitlam government and the Nixon
administration in 1973. On one hand, the government’s attempts to seek greater
involvement in the bilateral relationship proved inflammatory to President Richard
Nixon and his advisor Henry Kissinger; although United States diplomats had long
understood Whitlam’s intentions.
128
On the other, the United States wanted its allies to
become less reliant on it for defence.
129
Once personal hostilities soothed, the Whitlam
government marked the beginning of greater “maturity”in the bilateral relationship.
130
By 1974, Ambassador Green believed that “US-Australian relations had greatly
improved since 1972”with the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty
(ANZUS) and defence facilities “now […] placed on a more fully joint US-Australian
responsibility”.
131
At the heart of the United States’fears were the numerous defence
installations in Australia, which officials believed were under threat from the
government and shifting Australian public opinion.
132
The cables show that Hawke
again proved useful.
Hawke was seen as a bulwark against anti-American sentiment and resurgent
communism during the economic turmoil of the 1970s.
133
One cable, from 1978,
summarises his approach:
Hawke has a lively and sometimes critical interest in the United States and has been a friend of
Labor attaches and US officials in Australia […]. [I]n 1973 he told a US official that Australia and
the US must remain close for a long time to come. He said that while the style of cooperation
might change, the basic principle of working together must be persevered […]. [I]n late 1975 he
said that his personal attitude on foreign policy questions was very close to the United States.
134
When Labor’s Bill Brown publicly accused Ambassador Green of political interference
in June 1974 he was widely rebuked, especially by colleagues.
135
Many people voiced
support to Green directly, including Governor of Victoria Henry Winneke, in
professing “undiminished loyalty”to the bilateral relationship.
136
Hawke offered an
especially vigorous defence of Green and was thanked in person during a meeting at
his house.
137
Hawke is reported to have said to Brown, “while no one could be
127
15 May 1974, 1974MELBOU00561, NARA.
128
Curran, Unholy Fury, pp. 87–8, 144-5, 148, 163, 172, 216–7, 263, 285.
129
Curran, Unholy Fury, pp. 18, 103–5; Fernandes, Island Off the Coast, p. 139.
130
Fernandes, Island Off the Coast, pp. 72, 77, 81, 114, 139, 286–7, 305–6.
131
20 September 1974, 1974CANBER06178, NARA.
132
Curran, Unholy Fury, pp. 12, 225, 234, 261, 278, 281–3.
133
5 August 1974, 1974MELBOU00924, NARA.
134
26 October 1978, 1978CANBER08848, NARA.
135
26 June 1974, 1974CANBER04015, NARA; 26 June 1974, 1974CANBER04029, NARA; 1 July
1974, 1974SYDNEY01315, NARA.
136
19 July 1974, 1974MELBOU00833, NARA.
137
11 July 1974, 1974MELBOU00808, NARA; cf. Curran, Unholy Fury, p. 271.
79The “Eloquence”of Robert J. Hawke: United States informer, 1973–79
expected, and he least of all, to give complete agreement with US policy on every issue,
[anti-Americanism] […] was intolerable and too emotional and wrong to be useful.
138
Later, in the United States, Hawke would say that the bilateral relationship, “despite some
tensions”,was“sounder”and that the rebuke of Brown served as proof.
139
A similar
episode occurred in 1977 with Labor’s Bill Hartley, and again Hawke led the public
defence, denying any Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) activity in Australia.
140
Hawke helped to protect defence installations, provided information about union
disputes and warned officials that installations could be targeted.
141
In 1973, the
Labour Attaché contacted Hawke about a possible union dispute at the Harold E. Holt
Naval Communication Station (or the “North West Cape”) in Western Australia.
142
The cable reported that Hawke “volunteered to intervene informally”as he felt
“concern and surprise at the militancy”of certain workers described by the
commanding officer. This was not the last time Hawke proved useful in pre-empting
and pacifying union disputes.
143
Tensions between the Whitlam government and the United States eased in 1974. So,
in August 1974, when the diplomatic mission saw Whitlam’s premiership as terminal,
there was no celebration. It presented a threat to the interests of the United States as
“Whitlam’s weakened position within ALP government has worrisome implications for
US. We have relied upon his basic moderation and his support of US defence facilities
and other US interests […] ALP is undergoing a crisis of leadership”.
144
The
assessment was reached on information gifted by informers, including Hawke.
145
At
around this time, the idea of a national government was put to Hawke, while Rupert
Murdoch revealed his intention to campaign against Labor (see below). In October
1974, Hawke “nearly said in public what he had told [the Labour Attaché] privately that
[…] Australia is on the verge of economic collapse”.
146
In December, he foreshadowed
the “fall of [the] government”within a year.
147
The diplomats did not seem concerned
with the government’s souring political prospects from late-1974:
Our principal conclusion is that with Whitlam’s clear and successful support of defence facilities at
Terrigal [conference] US can watch this rapidly –changing political situation with relative
equanimity […] [Andrew Peacock] confirmed our views, adding that the US has no need to take
sides in present situation.
148
Peacock would soon become foreign minister and, in the 1980s, the Liberal leader.
This cable suggests he perceived a preparedness on the part of the United States to
interfere in domestic politics, beyond intelligence gathering.
149
138
11 July 1974, 1974MELBOU00808, NARA.
139
31 July 1974, 1974STATE166138, NARA.
140
6 July 1977, 1977CANBER04690, NARA; cf. Hocking, His Time, pp. 293–4, 322; Curran,
Unholy Fury, pp. 292–4.
141
1 July 1974, 1974SYDNEY01315, NARA.
142
18 October 1973, 1973MELBOU01034, NARA.
143
27 August 1978, 1978CANBER06818, NARA; 8 July 1977, 1977CANBER04792, NARA.
144
29 August 1974, 1974CANBER05670, NARA.
145
5 August 1974, 1974MELBOU00923, NARA; 18 September 1974,
1974MELBOU01111, NARA.
146
23 October 1974, 1974MELBOU01228, NARA.
147
13 December 1974, 1974MELBOU01492, NARA; cf. 21 October 1975, 1975CANBER07069,
NARA; 13 November 1975, 1975MELBOU01863, NARA.
148
5 March 1975, 1975CANBER01433, NARA.
149
cf. Curran, Unholy Fury, pp. 126, 260, 269–70.
80 C. J. Coventry
The diplomats maintained a faith in Hawke’sbona fides towards the United States.
Publicly, as one cable records, Hawke projected a desire for “an independent non-
aligned Australia”.
150
Privately, he explained to diplomats that he wanted to expand
ANZUS beyond a “purely defensive military alliance”.
151
They reasoned that this
duality was part of a “tactical move […] to gain left wing support for parliamentary
pre-selection”, although not a successful one.
Israel
Labor had been the preferred political party of many Jewish Australians because of,
inter alia, its early Zionism and opposition to anti-Semitism.
152
But support for Israel
became something of a litmus test by the late 1960s.
153
Under Whitlam’s leadership, a
majority of Jewish voters switched support from Labor to Liberal.
154
One reason for
the swing, which proved to be permanent, was the Whitlam government’s embrace of a
so-called “even-handed”approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
155
This saw Australia
become less supportive of Israel to “draw closer politically and economically […]to
countries which were hostile to Israel”, in line with business interests.
156
To many
Jewish voters, anti-Semitism was to blame; a perception bolstered by Whitlam referring
to Jewish Australians as “you people”.
157
However, “symptoms of evenhandedness”in
the Australian government had become apparent to Israel from 1960 as Australia’s
export market grew, and continued to be displayed until the 2000s.
158
In the 1970s, Hawke is considered to have been an impulsive and self-righteous
supporter of Israel.
159
A dispute arose between Whitlam and Hawke, resulting in public
feuding.
160
Whitlam thought Hawke was only concerned for his political career, given
the high number of Jewish voters in Melbourne
161
and Israel had tried to persuade
Hawke to enter the 1972 election.
162
By the time he was prime minister, however,
Hawke’s support for Israel is said to have diminished.
163
The cables refine what is
known of Hawke’s convictions.
150
14 September 1976, 1976CANBER06584, NARA.
151
17 September 1976, 1976CANBER06720, NARA; 20 September 1976, 1976CANBER
06753, NARA.
152
Isabelle Macgregor, “Australian Jewry’s conservative voting swing,”Australian Journal of Jewish
Studies Vol 22, (2008), pp. 77–8, 81; Jacob Abadi, “Australia-Israel Relations the Political and
Economic Imperatives,”The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs Vol
90, 361 (2001), pp. 564, 567, 569.
153
Macgregor, “Australian Jewry,”pp. 84–5.
154
Macgregor, “Australian Jewry,”p. 82; Abadi, “Australia-Israel,”p. 574.
155
Rutland, “Whitlam’s shifts,”pp. 40, 55; Macgregor, “Australian Jewry,”p. 85; Chanan Reich,
“Australia and the ‘Yom Kippur’War of 1973,”Australian Journal of Jewish Studies Vol
26, (2012), p. 10.
156
Rutland, “Whitlam’s shifts,”p. 45; Abadi, “Australia-Israel,”pp. 564, 571–3.
157
Macgregor, “Australian Jewry,”pp. 86–7; Rutland, “Whitlam’s shifts,”pp. 53–4, 57–8; Reich,
“Australia and the ‘Yom Kippur’,”p. 25.
158
Abadi, “Australia-Israel,”pp. 568, 576, 580; Fernandes, Peace With Justice, p. 85; Martin Harris,
“Australian aid to the Middle East: Statistics and trends,”Parliamentary Library, 12 November
(2015), https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_
Library/FlagPost/2015/November/Australian-aid-Middle-East.
159
d’Alpuget, Hawke, pp. 246, 249, 259–260, 263, 271–2; Pullan, Hawke, p. 134.
160
d’Alpuget, Hawke, pp. 262–263; Rutland, “Whitlam’s shifts,”p. 52.
161
Rutland, “Whitlam’s shifts,”p. 46; cf. 27 February 1976, 1976CANBER01553, NARA.
162
Reich, “Australia and the ‘Yom Kippur’,”p. 26.
163
Abadi, “Australia-Israel,”pp. 576–8; Hayden, An Autobiography, p. 378.
81The “Eloquence”of Robert J. Hawke: United States informer, 1973–79
The issue exercised Hawke, causing numerous “vituperative”outbursts in front of
United States diplomats.
164
His “extremely pro-Israel”stance —or “crusade”—led
him to contemplate resignation as Labor president on 20 February 1974.
165
This was
only days after he stopped a plot to remove him from the Labor presidency.
166
But
Hawke’s advocacy for Israel had a pragmatic side. The United States was told of the
importance of pro-Israel supporters to Labor’s coffers and, again, Hawke was one of
numerous informers disclosing this.
167
Whitlam was said to have “begged money”
from the “Jewish community”before the 1972 election but had, upon taking office,
rebuffed it.
168
The Iraqi loans affair may be further evidence of the financial problem
created by “even-handedness”.
169
The exact value pro-Israel donors contributed to
Labor is unclear, but could have been as much as “afifth of the total funds”during the
years of the Whitlam government.
170
Hawke undermined the foreign policy of the Whitlam government in 1974. A
supposed intermediary of Yasser Arafat used Hawke to pass a message to Israel, and
while waiting for instructions from the Israeli ambassador he sought advice from the
seemingly bemused United States diplomats. The cabled reported, “[i]n reply to
suggestion that he check [with] Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, Hawke said
he doesn’t agree with Whitlam Government’s so-called “even-handed”policy and
didn’t trust [the Department] on the question [of Israel].
171
Hawke explained to them
that he was “attempting to build a cabal in Parliament directed at [the] PM”with
Victorian Labor leader Clyde Holding, called the “Friends of Israel”.
172
Holding,
another informer, had told them —along with deputy leader Frank Wilkes —of a
“carefully planned”coup or “renovation”within the Victorian Young Labor
Association to “expel”dozens of “pro-Arab”members of Labor by stacking a vote with
new “pro-Israel”members.
173
On foreign policy, the cables pertaining to Hawke show that his influential position
in the labour movement was useful to the United States in the pursuit of its defence
interests. The cables discussing Hawke’s position on Israel bolstered Whitlam’s doubts
about the sincerity of Hawke’s support for Israel.
Hawke’s value
To United States diplomats, Hawke was a useful source of intelligence, but they also saw
someone worth cultivating, given his ambition, charisma, power and intellect.
174
There
were many cables dispatched that discussed his potential and political manoeuvrings. To
them,Hawkewasan“experienced chameleon”who had “successfully played down his
164
23 January 1975, 1975CANBER0527, NARA.
165
21 February 1974, 1974MELBOU00180, NARA; 26 October 1978,
1978CANBER08848, NARA.
166
d’Alpuget, Hawke, pp. 267–268.
167
26 November 1973, 1973MELBOU01222, NARA; 5 April 1974, 1974MELBOU00385, NARA;
d’Alpuget, Hawke, pp. 246, 257; Kelly, The Hawke Ascendency, pp. 77–8.
168
26 November 1973, 1973MELBOU01222, NARA; 5 April 1974, 1974MELBOU00385, NARA.
169
Rutland, “Whitlam’s shifts,”pp. 62–3.
170
Ibid., p. 56.
171
19 December 1974, 1974MELBOU01526, NARA.
172
26 November 1973, 1973MELBOU01222, NARA; cf. Reich, “Australia and the ‘Yom
Kippur’,”p. 24.
173
21 February 1974, 1974MELBOU00180, NARA.
174
26 October 1978, 1978CANBER08848, NARA; 31 May 1974, 1974CANBER03304, NARA;
8 July 1974, 1974MELBOU00786, NARA.
82 C. J. Coventry
academic record and bookish background”and could transform into the “ideal Australian
Labor leader”, despite his personal faults.
175
Ambassador Green described Hawke, to his
superiors in Washington, as follows:
I wish to emphasise how important proposed visit of Bob Hawke to US can be […]. [T]here is
little doubt that he has major potential as a Labor Party leader. Now 44, he has every prospect of
being a major figure on political scene for next 20 years or so, and it will be worth our while to
make a real effort to develop a worthwhile program for him.
176
He proposed meetings with Chase Manhattan, the International Chamber of
Commerce, the Brookings Institute, amongst other organisations.
177
In short, “Hawke
might benefit in being exposed to some sophisticated non-labour thinking on the role of
multi-nationals in Australian economic development”.
178
A number of meticulously
planned (and supported) visits followed, including one with appointments in London
where his movements would be closely observed.
179
In any case, Hawke subsequently
reported to them his conversations with senior British Labour Party figures like Jim
Callaghan.
180
Diplomats believed the relationship between Whitlam and Hawke was strained
because of their competing ambitions. One diplomat wondered if the continent was too
small to “contain two super egocentrics like these”.
181
Informers speculated about the
relationship’s longevity.
182
Hawke too discussed the relationship. In November 1973,
he was reported to have said, “he had always found Whitlam difficult and very
egocentric (‘even for me’) but had held him as essentially a ‘good man’. Now he is not
so sure. He […] thought Whitlam had ‘caved in’on [Israel] for ‘commercial
reasons’”.
183
He would make the same charge against Whitlam for his “even-handed”
Israel policy.
184
It is already known that despite this tempestuousness, Whitlam wanted Hawke to
enter Parliament.
185
But the diplomats were also chronicling the attempts, offering
nuance to posterity. In 1973, they were told of Whitlam’s plan to move Minister for
Labour Clyde Cameron to the Defence ministry so as to make room for Hawke.
186
Although this was old information to them it nevertheless caused “real concern”,given
Cameron’s politics.
187
Days later, Hawke said the plan had failed, although “unsaid but
obvious”to the diplomats, “Hawke will spend appropriate part of his time […]
preparing his political future”.
188
Hawke now wanted a new senior position created at
the ACTU for Charlie Fitzgibbon, so he could “run day-to-day business”, leaving him
175
19 August 1974, 1974MELBOU00984, NARA; 26 October 1978, 1978CANBER08848, NARA.
176
31 May 1974, 1974CANBER03304, NARA.
177
Ibid.
178
Ibid.
179
16 July 1974, 1974MELBOU00823, NARA; 5 August 1974, 1974MELBOU00923, NARA;
22 May 1976, 1976STATE125710, NARA.
180
2 August 1974, 1974MELBOU00914, NARA.
181
15 May 1974, 1974MELBOU00561, NARA.
182
11 October 1973, 1973MELBOU01032, NARA.
183
26 November 1973, 1973MELBOU01222, NARA.
184
5 April 1974, 1974MELBOU00385, NARA.
185
d’Alpuget, Hawke, p. 150; Freudenberg, A Certain Grandeur, pp. 103, 181–2; Whitlam, The
Whitlam Government, p. 277.
186
24 August 1973, 1973CANBER04707, NARA.
187
Ibid.
188
28 August 1973, 1973MELBOU00851, NARA; 29 August 1973, 1973MELBOU00853, NARA.
83The “Eloquence”of Robert J. Hawke: United States informer, 1973–79
“free to take more active part in international affairs and various industrial projects”.
189
On another occasion, in 1974, Hawke spoke of a “long time understanding”he had
with Whitlam that he “could move into Parliament by way of [Treasurer Frank] Crean’s
Melbourne Ports seat”.
190
After the 1975 election, in which Labor was defeated, the ACTU was seen by
diplomats “as the de facto political opposition at the national level”.
191
In their eyes,
Hawke had effectively assumed the role of opposition leader, as demonstrated by his
meetings with Fraser and the “trio who control Australian press”: Rupert Murdoch,
Kerry Packer, and the head of John Fairfax Holdings.
192
Packer is known already to
have been an informer.
193
The plan to install Hawke in parliament is said to have
intensified at this point.
194
As Hawke explained to diplomats, under a plan devised by
Whitlam on 14 December 1975, he would “move over”to become Labor leader.
195
He
told them of a draft press release Whitlam had written, and of various preparations,
including consultations with state party leaders and a caucus numbers count.
196
Under
the plan, Whitlam would become shadow attorney-general, while Fitzgibbon would
become ACTU president.
197
The plan to have Hawke replace Whitlam failed quickly, as the cables chronicle.
Ducker told one diplomat on 15 December 1975 that Fitzgibbon was “definitely a front
runner”to replace Hawke and that he wanted “a Paul Keating type”as deputy Labor
leader because “we could use a young man”during Labor’s time in opposition.
198
However, the “cabal conspiracy”to install Hawke —whom he was not supporting —
had disintegrated, its plotters having made “a bad mistake […] to tip their hand
prematurely”.
199
Whitlam’s subsequent re-election as leader, for 18 months, was
interpreted as having been “designed to leave the way open”for Hawke or Dunstan.
200
The cables suggest a degree of organisation on Whitlam’s part that contradicts the
established view that he had only been half-hearted.
201
Hawke appears to have contemplated —and advocated —abandoning Labor in
1974 to pursue a British-style national government in order to face the economic crisis.
In late 1974, when Labor’s grip on power began to weaken, he was asked about
the idea:
In reply to […] inquiry about possibility of involvement of non-Labor party supporters in decision
making process, Hawke said he had not noticed any movement toward a national unity
government concept but he had several feelers about political realignment. He mentioned his long
time association with Sir Peter Abels (sic), controversial industrialist who is a financial supporter
of the Labor Party but whose personal philosophy more easily fits him within the Liberal Party
189
29 August 1973, 1973MELBOU00853, NARA; cf.d’Alpuget, Hawke, pp. 228–229.
190
12 November 1974, 1974MELBOU01311, NARA; Freudenberg, A Certain Grandeur, pp. 310–1;
Kelly, The Hawke Ascendency, pp. 23–4
191
16 June 1977, 1977CANBER04270, NARA.
192
Ibid.; 18 December 1975, 1975MELBOU02095, NARA.
193
Curran, Unholy Fury, p. 186.
194
Freudenberg, A Certain Grandeur, p. 451; cf. Kelly, The Hawke Ascendency, pp. 20–3.
195
18 December 1975, 1975MELBOU02095, NARA.
196
Ibid.
197
Ibid.
198
19 December 1975, 1975SYDNEY02656, NARA; Freudenberg, A Certain Grandeur, p. 451.
199
19 December 1975, 1975SYDNEY02656, NARA.
200
28 January 1976, 1976CANBER00645, NARA.
201
Hocking, His Time, pp. 369–70; Kelly, The Hawke Ascendency, p. 24; McMullin, The Light on the
Hill, p. 376.
84 C. J. Coventry
context. Apparently Abels has recently sounded out Hawke’s availability for a leadership position
in such a new political unit. Hawke reported this flatly […]. without indicating whether or not he
favoured such idea.
202
Abeles was Hawke’s trusted confidant on economics and politics.
203
There is also
contemporaneous corroborating evidence, in the form of another cable, which records
Murdoch as having told the Ambassador:
Hawke is fiercely ambitious to become Prime Minister […]. He is intelligent and essentially
moderate […]. Hawke is now talking ‘national government’, which would give him the best
chance personally [at becoming Prime Minister]. He sees the ALP going down to defeat and does
not want to board the sinking ship.
204
This ship was one Murdoch now explicitly wanted to sink.
205
Notably, Abeles and
Murdoch would soon go into business together.
206
The United States was also treated to inside knowledge of the “Iraqi breakfast
affair”. During the 1975 election campaign, Whitlam met with officials of the Iraqi
Ba’ath Party to secure a “no-strings”donation to Labor of half a million US dollars.
207
The story became public on 26 February 1976, and the new Ambassador James
Hargrove, sought information from numerous informers, including Whitlam. The
former Prime Minister told him “in great detail”what had happened and his
involvement in the deal “from the beginning”.
208
Not only did his admission contradict
what he was stating publicly, he also explained that he had “secure[d] funds”from
“foreign mining interests”as well.
209
He believed he would be deposed as leader and,
this time, “very much hoped”Hayden would replace him, even though he “lacks the
confidence”.
210
Hawke revealed at a press conference that he and the Labor Executive
became aware of the loan when Whitlam and David Combe, party secretary, signed a
large overdraft on 11 February 1976.
211
The prospective donation was, however, said to be no donation at all. According to a
later cable, Whitlam and Combe had committed to “swing […] policy toward the radical
Arab cause and against Israel”.
212
A further condition is said to have been that the pro-
Israel Hawke could never become Labor leader.
213
The historian Jenny Hocking argues
that Murdoch had been eager to exploit the affair and this is loosely supported by the
cables.
214
But the cables also show that Whitlam was intimate with the plan. It is worth
noting other informers on this matter: Kerry Sibraa, John Wheeldon, Jim McClelland and
Kim Beazley Sr,
215
and, prior to the dismissal, Combe had been an informer as well.
216
202
12 November 1974, 1974MELBOU01311, NARA.
203
Hawke, Memoirs, pp. 259–260, 452, 474; Bongiorno, The Eighties, p. 292; Anson, Hawke,
pp. 44, 138.
204
16 November 1974, 1974CANBER07509, NARA.
205
Ibid.
206
Bongiorno, The Eighties, p. 123.
207
McMullin, The Light on the Hill, pp. 377–9.
208
27 February 1976, 1976CANBER01553, NARA.
209
Ibid.
210
Ibid.
211
8 March 1976, 1976CANBER01811, NARA.
212
14 October 1977, 1977CANBER07150, NARA; cf. McMullin, The Light on the Hill, p. 377.
213
Suzanne D. Rutland, “Whitlam’s shifts in foreign policy, 1972–1975: Israel and Soviet Jewry,”
Australian Journal of Jewish Studies Vol 26, (2012), p. 63.
214
Hocking, His Time, pp. 372–5; cf. 3 March 1976, 1976CANBER01681, NARA.
215
26 February 1976, 1976CANBER01477, NARA.
216
28 September 1973, 1973CANBER05376, NARA.
85The “Eloquence”of Robert J. Hawke: United States informer, 1973–79
Reading the situation after the 1975 election, United States diplomats believed
Hawke wanted Whitlam secured until he could replace him.
217
On their count of
caucus Whitlam had lost the support of a majority, but would probably remain as leader
in the circumstances.
218
This assessment proved wrong in the short term because
Hawke’s authority in Labor ebbed after the affair. It was Hayden who become leader, in
1977, whereas Hawke met internal resistance. He suffered the further humiliation of
losing majority support for Labor’s presidency in 1977; although his challenger Mick
Young, naïvely undertook to Ducker to give Hawke one last year.
219
Thus, Neil Batt
succeeded Hawke in 1978 and, according to “conservative figures within the ALP”,he
was “on side”like Hawke had been.
220
Through the cables, there is much that can be learned about the political
machinations of the 1970s, from Hawke’s attempts to enter parliament, with or without
Labor, to the scandals that courted a cash strapped party.
Conclusion
Evidently, Hawke was an informer to the allied foreign power in the 1970s.
Conversations he had with United States diplomats involved information that was
pertinent to the preservation of American interests in Australia. As a well-placed
insider in the ACTU and Labor, Hawke offered them greater leverage in the pursuit of
these interests, including the protection of multinational corporations operating in
Australia. Hawke gave diplomats an insider’s understanding of the labour movement
during the pivotal years of macroeconomic policy flux. In their eyes, there was no
sudden departure from Keynesianism but a gradual cajoling by Hawke, and others,
towards the new macroeconomics. These diplomats also wanted to protect defence
installations in Australia, another important interest. Hawke helped calm tensions
within the labour movement and publicly defended officials from accusations of foreign
interference.
As with Hawke, it is not clear why elites informed and how they came to inform.
There is said to have been a mentality in the 1970s in which “loyalty to the United
States became a test of loyalty itself”.
221
It is conceivable that lingering Cold War
fervour may have compelled people to inform. On its face, there were more informers
in Labor, the labour movement, and government than in other parts of society. It could
be that the Coalition parties and business had less need to establish bona fides with the
United States. After all, the conservative parties had “acted to protect the substantial
US investment stake in Australia and encouraged access for new US investment”.
222
It
is possible Labor’s renewed electoral success in the 1970s attracted the United States.
Equally, there could have been a change of heart towards the United States within
Labor and the labour movement. In the 1940s, it seems United States officials were met
with a degree of resistance:
[T]here was considerable reluctance on the part of leaders of […] the Labor movement to be seen
in the company of American diplomats, even […] in government. Although some […] cultivated
the Americans to demonstrate their anti-British sentiments […] [officials] found it hard to meet
217
8 March 1976, 1976CANBER01811, NARA.
218
Ibid.; cf. 1976, 1976CANBER02082, NARA.
219
12 July 1977, 1977CANBER04860, NARA.
220
4 August 1978, 1978CANBER06175, NARA; McMullin, The Light on the Hill, p. 384.
221
Curran, Unholy Fury, pp. 26, 53.
222
13 December 1977, 1977CANBER08699, NARA.
86 C. J. Coventry
leaders like Curtin, JB Chifley and JA Beasley, with all of whom his personal relations were good,
on any basis other than official business.
223
Only a few years later, the attitude appears to have changed. In 1952,
L.G. Churchward, having noticed the presence of the United States Labour Attaché at
the ACTU Congress, made the following observation: “[t]he American influence on the
Australian Labour movement, which throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth
century was essentially a radical one, is becoming almost wholly a conservative
one”.
224
The cables offer scholars more than a reconsideration of Hawke in the 1970s.
Whatever maturity the Whitlam government achieved for Australia in the bilateral
relationship must be tempered by the existence of well-placed informers, especially
Hawke. The obsequiousness toward the United States displayed by Australian leaders
since John Howard may be little more than a public display of an earlier private
manifestation.
225
Informers were a feature of the bilateral relationship in the 1970s as
they appear to have been in other decades. An extended work considering historical
cases of unofficial relationships between Australian elites and the United States —as
well as the United Kingdom —is needed, especially in light of the present concern in
Australia with foreign interference.
223
Edwards, Australia Through American Eyes, p. 13.
224
L.G. Churchward, “The American influence on the Australian labour movement,”Australian
Historical Studies Vol 5, 19 (1952), p. 277.
225
Curran, Unholy Fury, p. 314.
87The “Eloquence”of Robert J. Hawke: United States informer, 1973–79
