THE HON. BOB HAWKE
PRIME MINISTER

Mr Hawke, thanks for joining us.

Thank you for inviting me.

You gave Archbishop Hollingworth a caning this week.

Oh, I don’t know that I gave him a caning.

Mr Hawke, you gave him a caning.

Well look, the man has to understand to stay out of the economic debate. He’s an archbishop; it’s all very well for him to favour us with a few noble observations, but he should stay out of the debate. I’m not running an ideal world, I’m running a real economy, in a real country, in the real world.

But surely, Mr Hawke, he has the right to criticise an apparent shortcoming in government policy?

I didn’t say he doesn’t have the right to do that. I said he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He knows absolutely nothing about economics.

Do you have to be an economist to have an opinion about the way the country’s being run?

Well, obviously you’ve go to know something about economics if you’re going to make statements that bear on the economic debate. If you don’t, your comments are going to be irrelevant. Now the archbishop’s were, and I took the liberty of pointing that out to him.

But if your economics program can’t accommodate a basic level of caring for the people that live here, surely the policy must be changed. That’s what he was arguing.

Does anybody disagree with that? That’s just a rhetorical statement. Do we need an archbishop to point that out to us? Frankly, I don’t need a lecture about Christian ethics. I grew up with the Christian morality, I frankly don’t need it described to me. Who was it for instance, in this country, who got up and promised to get rid of child poverty? Who was that?

Mr Hawke, it hasn’t happened.

It hasn’t happened yet.

You said it was going to happen by the beginning of this year.

It hasn’t happened by the beginning of this year yet.

But Mr Hawke…

Who was it—let me finish—who was it who got up in this country and quite openly wept, quite openly wept for the massacre of the innocents in Tiananmen Square? Was that the archbishop? That was you.

That was me. Who was it who again quite openly got up, and confessed freely to having fooled around with other women and hopped into the turps sightly as a younger man? Was that the archbishop?

The archbishop probably wasn’t unfaithful to his wife.

Well is that my fault? Am I to be crucified because some archbishop didn’t monkey about with other women?

Mr Hawke, I’m sorry I doubted you.

Are you happy?

(Sotto voce.)

Yeah.

If it’s all right with you, I think I’ll go.

OK.

Open the door.

(Door opens to thunderous Hallelujah Chorus.)

Have you got any bread and perhaps a bit of fish?

Surely to God you’re not going to try and feed all them out here?

No, of course not.

What are you going to do?

I’m going to make myself a sandwich; I haven’t had any lunch.