The Silver Bodgie Turns 80
Happy birthday Bob Hawke, who turned 80 on this very morn. He'll celebrate with a black-tie dinner at the Sydney Opera House, thus giving photographers the chance to capture two great Aussie icons in a single snapshot - one with glorious white sails, the other with luxuriant silver hair.
I have the "Silver Bodgie" to thank for providing one of my more memorable moments covering Australian politics. It came during the 2007 election, when Bob Hawke was "g'daying" and "hello darlinging" his way around a pedestrianised shopping precinct as he sought to lend his charisma and panache to a rather dour Labor party candidate who was in urgent need of a personality transplant. Needless to say, the Silver Bodgie was magnificently presented: resplendent in an electric blue sports jacket, an open-necked white shirt, even whiter leather loathers, no socks and a heavy gold chain that hung lazily from his sun-tanned neck. At a distance he could easily have been mistaken for a sales rep trying to sell retirement homes on the Gold Coast, but up close there was no doubting his presence. For surely nobody else in Australia has such a extravagant head of hair, so perfectly coiffured that it looked like it has been groomed by his very own squadron of stable hands working since the crack of dawn.
Oddly, I had spent that morning compiling a report on how green issues had intruded on the campaign, and I was keen to get Bob Hawke's input. And he was more than delighted to help, since he claimed to be the first Australian prime minister to have been alert to the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions, and had acted accordingly. Shortly after launching into the interview, Hawkie was a few words short of a near perfect sound-bite when his voice started to be over-powered by a busker, who had spotted him approaching and decided to honour him with a musical tribute: a quick rendition of Advance Australia Fair.
Rather than stop Mr Hawke in mid-flow, I tried to make sense of the melody to the listeners back home. It was now drowning out the former prime minister, and could hardly be ignored. "They're playing the national anthem for you, Mr Hawke," I said.
"I gathered that," he replied abruptly, shooting me the most withering of looks. Then, with the microphone still on, he started to hum along with the anthem, bouncing from one word to the next - an impromptu performance in which the Silver Bodgie delivered radio gold.
That morning I left Bob Hawke thinking that the only leader I have ever witnessed do retail politics with more aplomb is another Rhodes scholar, Bill Clinton. And it helps explain why the Silver Bodgie is Labor's longest serving prime minister, with four election victories to his name. Regardless of what you thought of his politics, it was hard not to like him - from his endearing habit of breaking down in tears on national television to that moment of spontaneity on the morning of Australia's America's Cup triumph in 1983 when he essentially gave the whole country the day off.
By far the best profile that I have read of Bob Hawke comes from the pen of one of my favourite Australian journalists, Craig McGregor, who had trailed him for a few days in 1977, when he was still a union leader. "He drinks like a fish," wrote McGregor, "swears like a trooper, works like a demon, performs like a playboy, talks like a truckie - and acts like a politician....Bob Hawke is your typical Australian, oversize."
McGregor went on to say that no other country in the world could have produced a leader like Bob Hawke: "In a way he sums up the best, and the worst, of us. For that reason alone, he could make a great prime minister."
The profile also included a quote from Hawke himself, which offers a good starting point for anyone covering Australian politics. "I don't think in Australia we are going to change things dramatically," he said before becoming prime minister. "We are a very conservative country. And you have to move with within the constraints of what the nation's economic performance will allow. Whatever a future Labor government may achieve, it will live or die according to its economic performance." Prophetic words from the prime minister who "opened up" the Australian economy, and who, with his Treasurer Paul Keating, laid many of the structural foundations for its present-day prosperity.
Almost 30 years on, Hawke still has a penchant for the killer sound-bite. Asked last week what sort of leader Tony Abbott would be, Hawkie deadpanned: "Temporary."
Like McGregor, I've always looked upon Hawke as an emblematic leader, a man of contradictions who led a country full of contradictions (yes, Whitlamite, a "schizophrenic country"). He was the son of a Congregationalist minister whose catchphrase as a union leader was: "You can get f." He was a brilliant scholar who won a Rhodes Scholarship, although his students days are best remembered - memorialised even at the Turf Tavern in Oxford - by his skill at downing a yard of ale quicker than anyone else in the world. He was a heavy drinker who gave up the bottle while he was prime minister; he was a back-slapping larrikin, who thought nothing of crying in public. He was the longest serving Labor prime minister who, despite his personal popularity, had a surprisingly conservative political outlook and governing philosophy. So is it an exaggeration to say that, more so than any post-war prime minister, he was a complicated man who personified the complicated country he led?
UPDATE: To avoid any confusion, the Silver Bodgie is indeed the Silver Bodgie. Parrgirl's definition is spot on: "Bodgies were delicious blokes from the 50s/60s with the tight duds and glorious shocks of brushed back hair." And richer than the description from an online dictionary of Aussie slang: "The word was used to describe a young Aussie male, distinguished by his complete conformity to certain fashions of dress - and loutish or rowdy behaviour - the antipodean counterpart of the pommie 'teddy boy'." Seems like the the Silver Bodgie had a fine old time at his Opera House bash. It was attended by Kevin Rudd, along with the former Labor prime ministers, Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating. A burlesque stripper pretending to be John Howard also made an appearance, wearing skimpy swimwear - something which seems to be in vogue among Liberal leaders. .
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