Bob Hawke

And that leads into the question of the relationship of anti-Zionism with antisemitism, but let's go firstly.

If we really understood our history, as Bob Hawke said, "When the bell tolls," my listeners have heard me say this, quote him a million times, but he was a Labor Prime Minister, as you know.

I know.

"When the bell tolls for Israel, it tolls for all mankind." Show me in history where antisemitism has ended well.

The Leopardi goes down the neoliberal experiment, the most neoliberal experiment in the whole Western world.

And across from Australia, Bob Hawke and Keating are going down the incremental line.

In the space of 25 years, they grew 35% in real terms globally.

Bigger than New Zealand.

But you weren't allowed to dress up as Harry Potter or any of the Harry Potter characters.

What if you were fascinated with the biography on Bob Hawke or Lazarus Rising, you know, John Howard? What if you wanted to dress up as Bob Hawke?

Yeah.

I believe, and I'll just say this to you.

In the end, the big foreign policy questions how we see other countries and how we relate to other countries always boils down to questions about how we see ourselves.

And for Australians, that's the great question which has always loomed over the European settlement on this continent, and that is, how long does it take us to work out that we're Asian? It's an unsayable thing to say today, but when Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, as they often did, talked about Australia looking for its security, not from Asia, but in Asia, not looking to other Anglo-Saxon powers to keep Asia safe for us and keep it at arm's length, but working with other Asian countries in an Asian context to try and make the best way we can for ourselves.

That's what they meant.

And when I was working on the book, actually, I went back to a pamphlet that I first came across that had been written by Gough Whitlam in 1968, in which almost the last line was, Australians must understand as a fact of ineluctable geography that Australians are Asians.

[timer beeping] You got it.

It was Bob Hawke.

Question number five, and finally, Prince George, heir to the British throne and eldest son of Prince William and Princess Catherine, trotted off to high school this week.

What is the name of the posh school on the outskirts of London that he now attends? Yep, well done to you if you said Eton College.

There are a few more.

[laughs] Among writing other works, she is perhaps best known for her work as former Prime Minister Bob Hawke's biographer, having written the best-selling 1982 classic, Robert J. Hawke: A Biography, which won the New South Wales Premier's Award.

Blanche continued Bob's story in Hawke: The Prime Minister in 2010, and to mark the late Prime Minister's extraordinary life and legacy, Blanche combined the two books for the first time in an updated and revised commemorative edition, Bob Hawke: The Complete Biography, an in-depth look at who Bob was, both on and off the political stage.

Um, it's just so remarkable.

I mean, the book is a brick, um, but it's beautiful, beautifully produced.

Would you say that?

Uh, y- yes.

And for years he'd, he'd, he'd ring up to, uh, order a pizza or something or other and, and he'd say, "It's Bob Hawke," and there'd be a slight scream on the other end of the phone.

Charlie says, that's just great.

Remember Bob Hawke said, no Australian child will live in poverty.

Yeah, right.

Well, we voted in and paid taxes.

All right.

Look, 13 minutes to nine.

I want to run this because, as you probably saw last night, there was a lot of lovely things said and written and lovely piece on television by Chris Reason on the passing of Blanche Delpuget, who was and she didn't like the term Bob Hawke's second wife.

She hated that.

Well, the first story is about a half page pictorial on the death of Blanche d'Alpougier.

There's a big photo of her with Bob Hawke.

And the second story on the front page is about the Bruce Master Plan and it's titled Stadium Steps.

And I'll read that story now.

A Full Force of Generosity and Vitality by Duncan Murray and Catlin Catanzariti.

Blanche Dalpuge was a young embassy wife in Jakarta and a budding writer when she was introduced to a passionate young trade unionist with a fire in his belly.

Her tumultuous on-again, off-again affair with the married, soon-to-be Prime Minister Bob Hawke would become one of the most scandalous events in Australian politics.

But Dalpuge said their relationship was a slow burn I had no idea who he was.