Bill Hayden
William George Hayden AC (born 23 January 1933), Australian politician and 21st Governor-General of Australia, was born in Brisbane, Queensland, the son of an American-born sailor of Irish descent. Bill Hayden was educated at Catholic schools and joined the Queensland Police Force when he was 20. He furthered his education through private study, completing an economics degree at the University of Queensland and becoming a convinced socialist. He became active in the Labor Party, and in the 1961 federal election he surprised everyone including himself by winning the House of Representatives seat of Oxley, held by a Liberal cabinet minister.
Hayden was a diligent member of parliament and in 1969 he joined the Opposition front bench. When Labor under Gough Whitlam won the 1972 elections, Hayden became Minister for Social Security, and in that capacity introduced Medibank, Australia's first system of universal health insurance. In June 1975 he was appointed Treasurer (finance minister), a position he held until the Whitlam Government was dismissed by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, on November 11.
When Labor lost the 1977 election, Whitlam retired as leader and Hayden was elected to succeed him. His political views had shifted to the centre and he advocated economic policies which favoured the private sector and supported the American alliance. At the 1980 elections he improved Labor's position but failed to defeat Malcolm Fraser's Liberal government. At this election the popular union leader Bob Hawke, known to harbour leadership ambitions, was elected to Parliament.
By 1982 it was clear that Fraser was manoeuvring to call an early election, and Hawke began mobilising his supporters to challenge Hayden's leadership. On 16 July Hayden narrowly defeated Hawke's challenge in a party ballot, but Hawke continued to plot against Hayden. In December Labor failed to win a vital by-election, reinforcing doubts about Hayden's ability to win an election.
On 3 February, 1983, in a meeting in Brisbane, Hayden's closest supporters told him that he must resign, which he did. Hawke was then elected leader unopposed. Later that morning, unaware of the events in Brisbane, Fraser in Canberra called a snap election for 5 March. At a press conference that afternoon Hayden, still emotional, said that "a drover's dog could lead the Labor Party to victory at the present time". Labor under Hawke won the election, and Hayden became Foreign Minister, a position he held until 1988, performing competently but without evident enthusiasm.
After the 1987 federal election Hawke offered Hayden the post of Governor-General to give him a dignified exit from politics and some consolation for having robbed him of the chance to become Prime Minister. Hayden's appointment as the next Governor-General to succeed Sir Ninian Stephen was publicly announced in mid-1988, and he immediately left parliament and severed all connections with the Labor Party. He assumed the post in early 1989, and served with discretion during the transition from the Hawke government to the Keating government in December 1991. Early in his term, he accepted a Companionship of the Order of Australia to fulfil the Governors-General's role as Chancellor of the Order, despite having previously said he would never accept any honours.
After Hayden left office in 1996, however, it became apparent that he still resented how he had been treated by the Labor Party. He had a particular animus against Paul Keating, who, he believed, had engineered the 1983 leadership change. In 1998 he used the occasion of a defamation case involving two Liberal cabinet ministers, Tony Abbott and Peter Costello, and their wives, to deliberately publicise rumours about Keating's personal life. By the late 1990s Hayden had become a conservative, joining the board of the conservative magazine Quadrant. During the 1999 debate on an Australian republic, Hayden adopted a monarchist position, completing his alienation from his former party and the left generally.
Further reading
- John Stubbs, Hayden, William Hienemann 1989
- Bill Hayden, Hayden, An Autobiography, Angus and Robertson 1996 ISBN 0207 18769X