Hawke Labor set about reform with zeal

ALMOST three decades on, the Hawke-Keating government of the mid 1980s still retains its reputation as a reformist administration.

So what was it actually like to be there in those heady days?

Susan Ryan, a minister in the government, recalls there was a sense of history at play.

"We did from the beginning have a sense that it was a big opportunity for us as a Labor government to do big things," she told reporters at the launch of the cabinet papers for 1984-85.

"Some of our ministers had been in the Whitlam government and had been quite scarred by the short and tumultuous term of that government."

Ryan was senator for the Australian Capital Territory from 1975-87. Following Labor's election in 1983, she became minister for education and youth affairs and minister assisting the prime minister for the status of women.

She quit federal politics in December 1987 and is currently the inaugural age discrimination commissioner with the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Bob Hawke led Labor to victory in March 1983, ousting the coalition government of Malcolm Fraser.

Often referred to as a man-of-the-people, Hawke entered 1984 with a spectacularly high approval rating of 70 per cent, facing Andrew Peacock who headed a fractious coalition.

Labor's healthy lead in the opinion polls - 54-40 per cent - is something its modern-day counterpart can only dream about.

Despite this enviable electoral support, Labor wasn't on easy street, Ryan recalls.

The economy wasn't performing well. Unemployment and inflation were being pushed up by rising wages designed to cover cost-of-living pressures. Despite a floating dollar that prompted a rapid devaluation, the nation's balance of trade was bad and getting worse.

On the back of Hawke's popularity and dissatisfaction with the coalition, Labor had romped home at the 1983 election. It expected the December 1984 ballot to be a rerun, but that's not how it turned out.

Hawke was distracted by personal anguish having learned his daughter Rosslyn was addicted to heroin. As well, Peacock performed better than most pundits had expected.

"We did get back quite well, but it was a quite scary episode," Ryan said.

"However, we did not pull back at all on our program of reform and it did not make us more risk averse or more cautious."

The biggest challenge was the need to reform the tax system.

Ryan said cabinet discussion of tax reform was one of the most exciting periods of her time in politics.

"The discussions sometimes went all night," she said.

"They were at a very high level of intensity because there were lots of diverse views."

Ryan said she was swayed to the merits of Keating's Option C - a goods and services tax set at 12.5 per cent on everything, compensated by improvements in welfare benefits and pensions.

"Keating really led the charge and really instructed us all.

"He was at his best. He was fantastic. He explained all of these complex things. He'd be very dramatic, he would always stand up, his arms would be flailing around, he'd draw graphs and diagrams about what would happen."

Ryan found the then treasurer's argument totally persuasive, saying he educated the cabinet and the community about how the tax system worked and why it had to be reformed.

"He even educated those highly-educated members of the cabinet who were Rhodes scholars and the like, excepting, of course, prime minister Hawke, a Rhodes scholar who of course did know as much as Paul did about it."

A high point for Ryan was achieving progress on affirmative action at a time when few women held senior positions in the workforce.

Despite vehement opposition and dire predictions that the Sex Discrimination Act would destroy family life, Christianity and much more more, it was implemented without a significant struggle.

Ryan's low point was the reintroduction of university fees, a significant backtrack on the former Whitlam government which abolished tertiary fees in 1974.

Her "unreconstructed Whitlamite position" on fees was not shared in cabinet.

"The economic rationalists considered my position to be that not only of a dinosaur, but an innumerate dinosaur," she said.

Ryan said the government decided not to proceed with a plan to impose a $1400 fee at that time, but, once started, the debate about fees never went away.

"I won a couple of battles in the following two years. I lost the war."

In 1987, "some innocent little thing" called the administration charge ($250 for all tertiary students) was introduced.

"It was the thin edge of the wedge."

Subsequently, education minister John Dawkins oversaw the introduction of the Higher Education Contributions Scheme which still operates to this day.

Ryan said Whitlam's policy of ending university fees had allowed many women, who had left school at 15 or 17 and who never contemplated going to university because of the cost, to gain professional qualifications as mature-age students.

Whitlam still gets letters from women saying "if I hadn't been able to go to university my life would have been unlivable, but I got these professional qualifications".

"There was an important social impact," Ryan said.

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