|
Sponsored Links
Robert James Lee (Bob) Hawke AC (born 9 December 1929) was the 23rd Prime Minister of Australia and longest serving Australian Labor Party Prime Minister. After a decade as president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, he entered politics at the 1980 elections and became Prime Minister within three years. He became by far the longest-serving and most electorally successful Labor Prime Minister, achieving the rare feat of winning four consecutive federal elections, and he is Australia's third longest-serving Prime Minister. Hawke was born in Bordertown, a small town in South Australia near the Victorian border. His father was a Congregationalist minister; his uncle, Albert Hawke, was Labor Premier of Western Australia between 1953 and 1959 and was a close friend of Labor Prime Minister John Curtin, who was in many ways Bob Hawke's role model. Hawke's mother, Ellie, had an almost messianic belief in her son's destiny and this contributed to his supreme self-confidence throughout his career. Both his parents were of English extraction. Hawke abandoned his Christian beliefs as a young man and by the time he entered politics he was a self-described agnostic.[1] Hawke was raised in Perth and attended Perth Modern School and completed undergraduate degrees in Law and Arts (Economics) at the University of Western Australia. He joined the Labor Party in 1947, was selected as a Rhodes Scholar in 1953 and went to the University of Oxford to complete a Bachelor of Letters at University College with a thesis on wage-fixing in Australia.
|
Bob Hawke Subcategories
Bob Hawke Articles
|
| 
