Robert James Lee Hawke AC (1929 - 2019)

Born 9 Dec 1929 in Bordertown, South Australia

Ancestors

Husband of Hazel Susan (Masterson) Hawke AO — married 3 Mar 1956 (to 1995) in Perth, Western Australia, Australia

Died 16 May 2019 at age 89 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

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Biography

Bob Hawke AC is Notable.

Robert James Lee Hawke was born in Bordertown, South Australia, on 9 December 1929. He is the second of two sons of Clement Hawke, a Congregational minister, and Ellie Lee, a school teacher, both of Cornish ancestry. After the death of the older son, the family moved to Leederville, Western Australia, where Hawke grew up. Clement's brother, Albert (Bert) RG Hawke, was Labor Premier of Western Australia for six years from 1953 to 1959. Robert (Bob) Hawke attended Perth Modern School before going on to the University of Western Australia. He graduated with arts and law degrees in 1952. He won a Rhodes Scholarship and studied economics at Oxford University from which he graduated B.Litt, having written his thesis on wage fixation. He married Hazel Masterson in 1956 ^[1], and they had three children.

After further study at ANU, he was appointed research officer and advocate with the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) in 1958. serving as a high profile president from 1970 to 1980.

He was elected the member for Wills in 1980, and succeeded Bill Hayden as Leader of the Labor Party just before the March 1983 election, which he won and became Prime Minister. After winning four elections, he was challenged by his former deputy Paul Keating in 1990 and resigned as Prime Minister and from Parliament in December 1991.

He was previously the world record holder for the fastest drinking of a yard of beer, when he downed a sconce pot in eleven seconds as part of a traditional Oxford college penalty.^[2]

Sources

1. ↑ Marriage
2. ↑ Wikipedia: Yard of Ale

• Wikipedia entry for Bob Hawke
• National Museum of Australia - Bob Hawke
• Museum of Australian Democracy (Old Parliament House, Canberra) - Bob Hawke
• Blanche d'Alpuget, Robert James Hawke: A Biography, (Schwarz, Melbourne, 1982).

Paul Kelly, Hawke, Robert James (Bob) (1929–2019), Obituaries Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, from Australian accessed 10 July 2023.