Hawke instead of Hayden replacing Whitlam as Labour leader

aussieman1

Banned
What if it had happened? Would the Australian Labour Party have had a better chance against the Liberals in 1975?
 

Cook

Banned
Bill Hayden took over from Gough following Labor’s 1977 federal election defeat. No-one was going to challenge Saint Gough prior to then and Hawke was still head of the ACTU at the time.

A good question would be if Hawke resigned from the ACTU and ran for parliament in the 1977 election rather than the 1980 election. Hawke would have been certain to push the Labor primary vote up and got the ALP over the line.

His reforms of the Australian Economy and Industrial relations could have started three years earlier saving much of the wasted years of the Fraser Prime Ministership.
 

Cook

Banned
This is all hypothetical you know. Alternate not actual history.

Yes, thank you for that. But what you will find is that this section of the discussion board is devoted to scenarios that can be considered seriously realistic, where the consequences of changes in the timeline are examined for their plausibility. For outright fantasy try the Alien Space Bats section.

You initial question of what would the ALP’s chances have been like if Hawke had replaced Whitlam instead of Hayden is a good one but you then asked if they would have stood a better chance against Frazer in 1975.

For Hawke to replace Whitlam prior to the 1975 election we have to ask when Hawke would have resigned from the ACTU and run for Federal Parliament? Would it have been in the 1974 election when Gough had successfully won his second term in government, or earlier, in the ’72 election that had brought the Whitlam into power to begin with?

What would be the circumstances that would bring Hawke to the top job? Would he have had to challenge Whitlam and if so, how could such a challenge have been possible?

And why would Bob Hawke give up his powerful position as head of the ACTU to run for a seat in federal parliament anyway?

At what point would he have given up the piss? (Joking with that last one of course because he never did;))

The devil and fun of course, is in the details.
:)
 
"Only" with a POD after a successful Corio campaign in 1963 would this one work out. That way he now has a 'parliamentary track record' to run on. 1975 Labour is back again 'on the nose' with the electorate 1974-75 has done the damage as far as the electorate is concerned, 1977 the "Labor brand is still toxic"; however 1980 is a fair chance of success. The best I can give you is three years earlier I am afraid.
 
Depends on which sources you believe, but apparently Whitlam sounded Hawke out about taking the leadership directly after the disastrous '75 election defeat; Hayden and Clyde Cameron, quite separately, 'offered' the leadership to Don Dunstan; and I have a feeling Cameron also spoke to Hawke to 'offer' him the leadership at around that time.

Of course none of the aforementioned MHRs actually had the power to hand the leadership of caucus to an outsider, even if said outsider was a political superstar who was able to parachute into the reps in a bye-election for a safe Labor seat (and really, it's not like there was any happy precedent for that happening in federal politics--see division of Dalley, 1927). So these supposed offers were all just idle political gestures.

Ultimately I think Hawke timed it pretty well. He showed uncharacteristic restraint in not going all out to get a seat at the election of 1977--and it's not as if he had any plans to end his career as a mere ACTU president.
 

aussieman1

Banned
About the thread

Just supposing that Hawke had run for the position of Labor leader, been elected in 1977 instead? Isn't that more plausible?
 

Cook

Banned
Alternatively, what if Labor had gone to the 1983 election led by ‘the drover’s dog’?

What would a Hayden Government have looked like and who would things have been different?
 
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