Australian society had steadily become more
polarised. Many Australians, particularly the pro-
fessional classes, enjoyed a high standard of living.
But working people during the 1970s had made
less progress and more than one Australian in every
six was classified early in that decade as living in
poverty or close to it. Fraser’s economic policy was
orthodox. Despite increasing unemployment,
social benefit expenditure did not rise. A backward
step was the dismantling of Whitlam’s health care
provision, Medibank, and its abolition in 1981;
free medical provision was restricted to the poor,
who qualified by a means test or as senior citizens.
In March 1983 Fraser’s Liberal–National coalition
lost the general election and a Labor government
was once more returned to power.
Robert Hawke, who dominated Australian
politics as Labor’s dynamic and colourful leader
for the remainder of the 1980s, was academically
well qualified and had won his spurs in Australian
politics as a research officer for the Australian
Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) thirty years
earlier. Bob Hawke had been an active and skilful
advocate on behalf of ACTU and, eventually, its
president. He entered the House of Representa-
tives in 1980, determined to gain the leadership
of the Labor Party.
Hawke’s period in office was marked by con-
ciliation with the business community on the one
hand, and trade union moderation on the other.
He wanted all sides of industry to work together,
with the federal government playing the role of
benevolent third party. This time Labor was lucky
in the timing of its victory. The mid-1980s were
years of unprecedented world economic boom.
Australia did well out of it. There was nothing
radical or socialist about Hawke. He used to good
advantage his trade union experience of negotiat-
ing and balancing opposing sides, in this way
holding the Labor Party together and resisting its
tendency to split into left and right wings. Nor
was there any great move to benefit the poorest
section of Australians by extending and increas-
ing social benefits, except in the area of health
care. A national health scheme providing univer-
sal benefit had become something of a political
football in Australia, with the Australian Medical
Association fighting a fierce rearguard action over
the decades. Hawke’s administration resurrected
Whitlam’s Medibank, now called Medicare, and
Australia’s doctors acquiesced. But the Labor
government did not engage in a spending spree
or impose high taxation policies, and in this
Hawke was loyally and ably supported by his min-
isterial colleague Paul Keating. But the private
sector and state governments were running up
large debts. Most political excitement during
these years was caused by Hawke’s efforts to
rid Australian politics of corruption. Australians
approved of his undoctrinaire approach, his
friendly relations with business and the apparent
stability of the economy, which was expanding
with the influx of foreign capital. The price was
paid later in recession and spectacular business
failures. Hawke won the two elections of 1984
and 1987, his expansive personality and self-
confident espousal of an Australian identity
making him for a time the most popular prime
minister in the country’s history. He presided
over the bicentenary in 1988, a fitting celebration
of an Australia reaching maturity.
But the festivities also became a reminder that one
group of Australians, its oldest settlers, the
Aborigines, had not shared equally in that wealth,
and that their grievances had not yet been ade-
quately addressed. The early settlers of the late
eighteenth century had been instructed to deal
with the Aborigines as a whole, leaving them ‘in
the full enjoyment of their possessions’. But the
benevolent intentions of the sovereign’s govern-
ment in London thousands of miles away did not
make much impression on pioneers engaged in the
hard task of making a living out of what appeared
to them to be empty lands. State governments’
efforts in Australia and missionary endeavours
could do little to alleviate the disastrous impact of
Western lifestyles on the culture and way of life of
the exploited Aborigines. After the Second World
War the Aborigines began to organise themselves,
demanding citizens’ rights and better wages. In
1957 the Northern Territory admitted mixed-race
Aborigines and full Aborigines who could look
after themselves to citizenship. Aborigines were
regarded as civilised if they assimilated to white
Australian culture – assimilation was the welfare
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