 | ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
A leadership spill of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), the party of government in the Parliament of Australia, was held on 19 December 1991, the second spill in a year. Backbencher and former treasurer Paul Keating defeated Prime Minister Bob Hawke, who had led Labor for eight and a half years.
 | This section needs additional citations for verification .(August 2018) |
Bob Hawke had been leader of the Labor Party since 3 February 1983, and prime minister since the 1983 election, with Labor winning a record four elections under his leadership. The unexpectedly close win at the 1990 election, coupled with the deepening economic recession, fuelled tensions within the government over economic policy, resulting in a breakdown of Hawke and Keating's previous "close cooperation". [1] A re-energised Liberal opposition led by John Hewson, a qualified economist, gained ground in the opinion polls. Hawke had alienated key NSW Right powerbroker Graham Richardson in late 1990 by denying him the transport and communications portfolio, causing Richardson to support Keating as a leadership alternative, before bluntly telling Hawke he no longer had the support of the Right. [2] He also reneged on an agreement with Paul Keating, known as the Kirribilli agreement, that he would hand over the leadership to him following the 1990 election. [1] On 3 June 1991, Keating challenged for the leadership, but lost in a 66-44 vote and moved to the backbench.
By late 1991, Hawke's public support continued to decline as the Australian economy showed no signs of recovering from the recession and the opposition Liberals launched their Fightback! economic policy, without strong response from Hawke. [3] The final straw was when Hawke sacked Keating's successor as treasurer, John Kerin for his perceived communication weaknesses in early December.[ citation needed ] Keating supporters began a campaign to undermine Hawke's leadership. [2]
The following table gives the ballot results:
| Name | Votes | Percentage | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paul Keating | 56 | 52.3 | |
| Bob Hawke | 51 | 47.7 | |
Keating's second challenge was a success: he defeated Hawke by 56 votes to 51. Keating said Hawke had gone missing for four of his eight years as prime minister and had to be propped up by him. [4]
Foreign Minister Gareth Evans was unable to attend the second ballot as he was overseas. [5]
Evans, a Hawke supporter, was one of three Caucus members who could not vote on this spill. The others were another Hawke supporter Con Sciacca, as he was with his dying son, and Keating supporter Jim Snow. [6] [7]
Therefore if all three were in attendance Keating would still have won but with a vote of 57-53.
Hawke resigned from Parliament shortly after losing the leadership, which resulted in Labor losing his seat to an Independent at the following by-election.
Robert James Lee Hawke was an Australian politician and trade unionist who served as the 23rd prime minister of Australia from 1983 to 1991. He held office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), having previously served as the president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions from 1969 to 1980 and president of the Labor Party national executive from 1973 to 1978.
Paul John Keating is an Australian former politician who served as the 24th prime minister of Australia from 1991 to 1996, holding office as the leader of the Labor Party (ALP). He previously served as treasurer under Prime Minister Bob Hawke from 1983 to 1991 and as the seventh deputy prime minister from 1990 to 1991.
Simon Findlay Crean was an Australian politician and trade unionist. He was the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and leader of the opposition from 2001 to 2003. He represented the seat of Hotham in the House of Representatives from 1990 to 2013 and was a cabinet minister in the Hawke, Keating, Rudd and Gillard governments.
Kim Christian Beazley is an Australian former politician and diplomat. Since 2022 he has served as chairman of the Australian War Memorial. Previously, he was leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and leader of the opposition from 1996 to 2001 and 2005 to 2006, having previously been a cabinet minister in the Hawke and Keating governments. After leaving parliament, he served as ambassador to the United States from 2010 to 2016 and 33rd governor of Western Australia from 2018 to 2022.
John Robert Hewson AM is an Australian former politician who served as leader of the Liberal Party from 1990 to 1994. He led the Liberal-National Coalition to defeat at the 1993 Australian federal election.
The 1996 Australian federal election was held to determine the members of the 38th Parliament of Australia. It was held on 2 March 1996. All 148 seats of the House of Representatives and 40 seats of the 76-seat Senate were up for election. The centre-right Liberal/National Coalition led by Opposition Leader John Howard of the Liberal Party and coalition partner Tim Fischer of the National Party defeated the incumbent centre-left Australian Labor Party government led by Prime Minister Paul Keating in a landslide victory. The Coalition won 94 seats in the House of Representatives, which is the largest number of seats held by a federal government to date, and only the second time a party had won over 90 seats at a federal election.
The 1993 Australian federal election was held to determine the members of the 37th Parliament of Australia. It was held on 13 March 1993. All 147 seats of the Australian House of Representatives and 40 seats of the 76-seat Australian Senate were up for election. The incumbent government of the centre-left Australian Labor Party led by Paul Keating, the Prime Minister of Australia, was re-elected to a fifth term, defeating the centre-right Liberal/National Coalition led by Opposition Leader John Hewson of the Liberal Party of Australia, and coalition partner Tim Fischer of the National Party of Australia. This was the first, and to date only, time the Labor Party won a fifth consecutive election.
Ralph Willis AO is an Australian former politician who served as a Cabinet Minister during the entirety of the Hawke-Keating government from 1983 to 1996, most notably as Treasurer of Australia from 1993 to 1996 and briefly in 1991. He also served as Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Transport and Communications and Minister for Finance. He represented the Victorian seat of Gellibrand in the House of Representatives from 1972 to 1998.
John Sydney "Joe" DawkinsAO is an Australian former politician who was Treasurer in the Keating Labor government from December 1991 to December 1993. He is notable for his reforms of tertiary education as Minister for Employment, Education and Training, his period as Treasurer when he attempted to increase taxes in order to balance the budget and his abrupt exit from politics.
John Charles Kerin was an Australian economist and Labor Party politician who served in the House of Representatives from 1972 to 1975 and again from 1978 to 1993. He held a number of senior ministerial roles in both the Hawke and Keating governments, including six months as Treasurer of Australia and eight years as Minister for Primary Industries and Energy, holding the latter role for the longest period in Australian history.
The 1996 Blaxland by-election was held in the Australian electorate of Blaxland in New South Wales on 15 June 1996. The by-election was triggered by the resignation of the sitting member, the Australian Labor Party's Paul Keating on 23 April 1996. The writ for the by-election was issued on 13 May 1996.
The Hawke–Keating government is an all-encompassing term to describe the duration of the Hawke government and the Keating government, which together spanned from 11 March 1983 to 11 March 1996. Both governments were formed by the Australian Labor Party, and were led from 1983 to 1991 by Bob Hawke as Prime Minister, and from 1991 to 1996 by Paul Keating as Prime Minister, with Keating serving as Treasurer throughout the Hawke government. During the Hawke–Keating government, the Labor Party won five successive federal elections, its most electorally successful period to date; the 13-year uninterrupted period of government also remains the Labor Party's longest spell in power at the federal level. This period in Australia’s political history is also referred to as the Hawke-Keating era.
The Hawke government was the federal executive government of Australia led by Prime Minister Bob Hawke of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) from 1983 to 1991. The government followed the Liberal-National Coalition Fraser government and was succeeded by another Labor administration, the Keating government, led by Paul Keating after an internal party leadership challenge in 1991. Keating was Treasurer through much of Hawke's term as prime minister and the period is sometimes termed the Hawke-Keating government.
The Keating government was the federal executive government of Australia led by Prime Minister Paul Keating of the Australian Labor Party from 1991 to 1996. The government followed on from the Hawke government after Paul Keating replaced Bob Hawke as Labor leader in an internal party leadership challenge in 1991. Together, these two governments are often collectively described as the Hawke-Keating government. The Keating government was defeated in the 1996 federal election and was succeeded by John Howard's Coalition government.
The Kirribilli Agreement of 1988 was a secret meeting between the Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Treasurer Paul Keating. The two men met at Kirribilli House, the Prime Minister's official Sydney residence, to make an agreement as to when Hawke would hand over the leadership of the Australian Labor Party.
A leadership spill in the Australian Labor Party, the party of government in the Parliament of Australia, was held on 3 June 1991. It was the first of two ballots that year with Prime Minister Bob Hawke surviving the ballot against Treasurer Paul Keating, who then went to the backbench.
The early 1990s recession saw a period of economic downturn affect much of the world in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The economy of Australia suffered its worst recession since the Great Depression.
The history of the Australian Labor Party has its origins in the Labour parties founded in the 1890s in the Australian colonies prior to federation. Labor tradition ascribes the founding of Queensland Labour to a meeting of striking pastoral workers under a ghost gum tree in Barcaldine, Queensland in 1891. The Balmain, New South Wales branch of the party claims to be the oldest in Australia. Labour as a parliamentary party dates from 1891 in New South Wales and South Australia, 1893 in Queensland, and later in the other colonies.
A leadership spill of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), then the opposition party in the Parliament of Australia, was held on 16 July 1982. Shadow Minister for Industrial Relations, Employment and Youth Bob Hawke unsuccessfully challenged ALP leader Bill Hayden, with Hayden winning 42 votes to 37.
Labor in Power is a 1993 Australian documentary series about the first ten years of Labor's Hawke-Keating government produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It was divided into five one-hour episodes and originally broadcast from 8 June to 6 July 1993.
In a decade of profound change, from 1983 to 1993, the ABC Television News and Current Affairs Political Documentary Unit compiled a unique series, capturing the key elements of the Australian Labour Party's ten-year rule. The battle between Bob Hawke and Paul Keating for the Labor Party leadership was one of the most divisive in Australian political history the seeds of which can be traced back as far as 1980. The series is an intensely personal examination of the Hawke-Keating relationship, and through more than 120 interviews with Cabinet Ministers, senior bureaucrats and staff advisers, the series offers an insider's view of who wields power in Australia, and how. The five episodes are; "Taking power", "Taxing times", "Conserving power", "The recession we had to have" and "The sweetest victory".
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)