Bill Hayden

Bill Hayden 1990

William George "Bill" Hayden (born January 23, 1933 in Ipswich , Queensland , Australia ) is an Australian politician . He was Foreign Minister and Governor General of Australia .

biography

Professional career and longstanding member of parliament

The son of an American seaman of Irish origin worked as a policeman with the Queensland Police from 1953 to 1961 after completing his education in Catholic schools. After attending night schools, he also graduated with a degree in economics from the University of Queensland .

He became a member of the Australian Labor Party while working as a police officer . He had a nationwide surprise back in 1961 when he was elected to the House of Representatives as Labor Party candidate for the constituency of Oxley , against Donald Alastair Cameron, the previous MP and liberal health minister in Robert Menzies ' cabinet , who had held the seat since 1949 , won. As a committed member of parliament, he was a member of the leadership circle of the Labor Party , which was still in opposition at the time, and represented democratic-socialist positions at the time . Hayden was a member of the House of Representatives until 1988.

Minister and Chairman of the Labor Party

After the Labor Party's victory in the 1972 elections, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam made him Minister of Social Security on December 19, 1972. During his tenure, in 1973, he passed the law establishing Medibank, Australia's first comprehensive health insurance system. In June 1975 he was appointed Treasurer by Whitlam and held this office until Whitlam was ousted by Governor General John Robert Kerr on November 11, 1975. In the subsequent devastating defeat of the Laboratories by the Liberals around Malcolm Fraser , Hayden was the only Labor MP Queensland who could hold his seat.

When Whitlam resigned as Labor Party chairman after the Labor Party's defeat in the House of Representatives elections of December 10, 1977, Hayden was elected as its successor. At the same time, he increasingly represented a moderate political stance and advocated the alliance with the United States and in particular an economic policy that favored the private sector.

Although he succeeded in improving the Labor Party in election polls over the next three years, his Labor Party only narrowly defeated the Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, who had ruled since November 1975, in the House of Representatives elections on October 18, 1980 with 51 to 54 seats . In this election, the popular chairman of the Australian Trade Union Confederation, the Australian Council of Trade Unions , Bob Hawke , was elected MP, who called Hayden a "lying cunt with a limited future" last year on the sidelines of the party conference in Adelaide.

After it became clear in 1982 that Prime Minister Fraser intended to call early elections, Hawke began mobilizing supporters to replace Hayden as Labor Party leader. Although Hayden beat Hawke on July 16, 1982 in an internal election, Hawke did not give up his efforts to become party chairman. When the Labor Party failed to win the by-election in December 1982 in the Flinders constituency , a safe constituency of the Liberal Party, internal voices were heard calling for Hayden to win the election against the Liberal Party in the upcoming general election. Hayden then resigned on February 3, 1983 after a party meeting in Brisbane after his closest supporters suggested he should take the move. Shortly thereafter, Hawke was elected unopposed to succeed him as party chairman. When Fraser, unaware of the replacement of Hayden by Hawke, called new elections for March 5, 1983, Hayden said at a press conference:

“At the moment, a shepherd dog could lead the Labor Party to an election victory” (“A drover's dog could lead the Labor Party to victory at the present time”).

After Hawkes' landslide victory in the early parliamentary elections on March 5, 1983, in which the Labor Party won 75 seats but the Liberal Party only 33 seats, Hayden was appointed Foreign Secretary by the current Prime Minister Hawke on March 11, 1983. He held this office until August 17, 1988. As Foreign Minister, he worked for closer relations between Australia and its Asian neighbors. In a noteworthy speech he declared in 1983:

“Australia is changing. We are special, like a European country in this part of the world. There is a large and growing Asian population in Australia and in my view it is inevitable that Australia will become a Eurasian country ... I think that this is desirable. ” (“ Australia is changing. We're an anomaly as a European country in this part of the world. There's already a large and growing Asian population in Australia and it is inevitable in my view that Australia will become a Eurasian country ... I happen to think that's desirable. ")

Governor General of Australia

After the House of Representatives elections on July 11, 1987, Prime Minister Hawke offered him the post of Governor General of Australia to give him a dignified exit from political life, but also to give him consolation for the post of prime minister he had not achieved.

When he was officially proposed for the post of Governor General of Australia by Prime Minister Bob Hawke in mid-1988 as the successor to Sir Ninian Stephen , he gave up his ministerial office and his parliamentary mandate and also cut ties with the Labor Party.

After being appointed by Queen Elizabeth II , he officially assumed the office of 21st Governor General after being sworn in on February 16, 1989.

The transfer of government from Prime Minister Hawke to his successor Paul Keating , who followed Hawke as Hayden as chairman of the Labor Party at that time, fell during his term of office.

He held the office of Chancellor of the Order of Australia because of his work as Governor General, although he previously stated several times that he would not accept any honors. On the other hand, he rejected the post of Chief Scout of Australia , also exercised by the Governor General , because the reference to God contained in the scouts' oath was not compatible with his atheistic convictions.

On February 16, 1996, he was succeeded by the previous judge at the High Court of Australia, Sir William Patrick Deane , in the office of Governor General.

Next life

After retiring from the office of Governor General, he was named Humanist of the Year 1996 by the Council of Australian Humanist Societies . In the same year he published his memoirs under the title Hayden, An Autobiography .

It became apparent that he had not yet overcome the loss of party leadership and the behavior within the Labor Party at the time. In particular, he had an aversion to Prime Minister Keating, who he said did the background work when he was ousted as laboratory chairman. Still, Hayden supported Keating's overthrow efforts against Hawke.

In 1998, he used a libel case in which Labor Secretary Tony Abbott, Treasury Secretary Peter Costello and their wives sued well-known political columnist Bob Ellis, to spread rumors about Keating's private life. He was heavily criticized for this, but that did not change the fact that only one month later the de facto end of Keating's marriage to the former Alitalia stewardess Annita van Iersel of Dutch origin was announced after more than 20 years.

In the late 1990s, Hayden became increasingly conservative and loyal to the British Crown and became a member of the advisory board of the conservative magazine Quadrant . During the 1999 debate on the referendum on the establishment of a republic of Australia , he spoke out in favor of maintaining the monarchy , as only a republican model with direct election of the president was possible for him.

He was made an honorary member of the Australian Labor Party at the 45th Queensland Labor Party in 2007.

After retiring from politics, he and his wife Dallas settled in Bryden on the east bank of Lake Wivenhoe in the Somerset region about 50 kilometers northwest of Brisbane, where they keep some bulls on almost 250 hectares. Both are a little weak physically, but are still of good spirit.

Originally an atheist, Hayden was baptized and accepted into the Catholic Church at the age of 85.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Mungo McCallum: The Good, the Bad and the Unlikely: Australia's Prime Ministers , Black Inc., Carlton, Vic., 2012. et al.
2. ^ Paul Kelly: The Hawke Ascendancy . 1984
3. ↑ Old Parliament House - Bill Hayden Cartoons ( July 19, 2008 memento in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ List of the most important Australian ministries
5. ↑ Debate in the Parliament of New South Wales on May 28, 1997  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ Republicans call for the real Bill Hayden to stand up in the No referendum case ( Memento of November 28, 2001 in the Internet Archive ). Australian Republican Movement press release August 17, 1997
7. ↑ Joel Gould: Man of the people mastered politics after 35-year career , Queensland Times, December 29, 2013.
8. ↑ Australia: top politician becomes Catholic at 85 [1]

Web links

• Biography on the website of the Australian Labor Party (English)
• Biographical notes on "rulers.org" (English)
• Portraits of the Governors-General of Australia (English)

• [2]