Bob Hawke

Hawke was born in Border Town, South Australia in 1929, studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and spent two decades rising through the union movement - research officer to president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions by 1969. He entered parliament in 1980, became Labor leader three years later, and five weeks after that swept to power in a landslide. Over eight years his government overhauled the political economy: Medicare, superannuation for all workers, APEC, the Australia Act severing remaining UK jurisdiction, the Sex Discrimination Act, and a string of privatisations and deregulations that redrew the map. Paul Keating challenged him in June 1991 and lost, then came back six months later and won by a thread. Hawke retired from parliament, lived another 28 years in business and charity work, and died in 2019 - still Labor's longest-serving prime minister and still, by most rankings, in the top tier.