Bob Hawke in his Canberra office on his first day as president of the ACTU in 1970. Source: Supplied
THE US Embassy in Canberra clearly considered Bob Hawke, who was then president of the Labor Party and the ACTU, a potential national leader, but also considered him capable of giving less than straightforward accounts of himself.
The latest WikiLeaks revelations, of almost two million mostly unclassified State Department documents from 1973 to 1976, show that American diplomats believed Hawke was prepared to risk the ANZUS alliance for his own personal political gain.
A cable dated September 17, 1976, titled ''Meeting with Robert Hawke'' states that the Consul General and embassy officers had a ''long conversation'' with Mr Hawke the day before, which began with him complaining he had been misreported on his position on ANZUS.
Mr Hawke had the week before signed a petition in the National Times, calling for a rethink on ANZUS.
He told the consular officials he felt ANZUS should move from being a military alliance and take on economic issues.
''He added somewhat weakly that it was for those reasons that he signed the petition which appeared in the Sept 12 edition of the National Times,'' the officials said.
''His reasons for signing it were not persuasive. We believe it was a tactical move on his part to gain left-wing support for parliamentary pre-selection.''
They said the ploy ''failed miserably,'' as evidenced by his announcement he would not go for preselection at that time.
But Mr Hawke, who eventually won preselection for the seat of Wills in 1980, was clearly seen an important player by the Americans, who assisted him meeting powerful players in the US, and considered him a ''powerful and effective'' force in industrial dispute resolution.
The Americans also gave Malcolm Fraser's government of the day ''low marks'' for its industrial relations policy, saying it had a ''heavily paternalistic approach.''
''If one takes position that success in achieving Fraser Government's number one domestic goal - reducing inflation - depends on working out some sort of mutually acceptable accommodation with country's trade union movement, one has little choice but to give Fraser government low marks for its performance to date in industrial relations,'' the US Embassy said in an August 1976 cablegram.
