John Hewson
John Robert Hewson is an Australian former politician who served as leader of the Liberal Party from 1990 to 1994. He led the Liberal-National Coalition to defeat at the 1993 Australian federal election.
Hewson was born in Sydney, New South Wales, and earned a PhD in Economics from Johns Hopkins University. He has also attained degrees from the University of Sydney and the University of Regina. Before entering politics, Hewson worked as an economist for the Reserve Bank of Australia, an economic advisor to the Fraser government, a business journalist, and a director of Macquarie Bank.
In 1987, Hewson was elected to the House of Representatives. He was appointed to the shadow cabinet in 1988, serving under John Howard and Andrew Peacock. After Peacock lost the 1990 election, Hewson was elected leader of the Liberal Party in his place, thus becoming Leader of the Opposition. In 1991, he launched the Fightback! policy manifesto, which proposed a series of major economic reforms with a goods and services tax as its centrepiece.
Political platforms in the 1993 federal election focused mainly on economic policy, especially on how Australia should respond to the early 1990s recession. The Labor Party – led by Paul Keating – had been in power for 10 years at that point. Many polls suggested a Coalition victory, however Labor was able to mount a successful campaign, with the party's net increase in seats allowing Keating to remain Prime Minister. Hewson continued on as Liberal leader for another year, losing a leadership spill to Alexander Downer in 1994. He left parliament the following year. Since then, Hewson has continued to be a public expert in business and political commentary. He resigned his Liberal Party membership in 2019, having been a critic of its policy direction for a number of years, particularly on climate change.
Early life
Hewson was born at Baroda Private Hospital in Carlton, Sydney, New South Wales. He was the first of four children born to Eileen Isabella and Donald Hewson. His mother was born in England and arrived in Australia at the age of six. His father worked as a fitter and turner. Hewson spent his early years in Carlton, where his parents lived with his paternal grandmother and his father's three sisters. His father eventually saved enough money to buy a house in Beverly Hills. Hewson attended Carlton Primary School and Beverly Hills North Primary School before attending Kogarah High School, graduating in 1963. He subsequently completed a Bachelor of Economics degree at the University of Sydney in 1967. He then completed a master's degree at the Regina, Canada campus of the University of Saskatchewan and a second master's and a doctorate in economics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In 1967, he married Margaret Deaves.Upon returning to Australia, Hewson worked as an economist for the Reserve Bank of Australia. From 1976 to 1983 he was employed as an economic advisor to two successive Liberal treasurers, Phillip Lynch and John Howard. During this period he developed an interest in politics and became determined to enter politics himself. While he espoused strong liberal views, he was critical of what he saw as unconvincing and inconsistent Liberal Party economic policies. He was a supporter of some of the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher.
After the defeat of the Fraser government in the 1983 election, Hewson went into business journalism and became a director of a private bank, the Macquarie Bank. After divorcing Margaret Deaves in 1985, Hewson would go on to marry Carolyn Somerville in 1988. Deaves claims that Hewson left her because he was under the impression she would not be able to cope with the responsibilities of public life as the wife of a prominent public servant despite her working to support him while he was studying overseas.
Politics
Hewson was elected to the House of Representatives for the affluent Sydney electorate of Wentworth in the 1987 federal election. Before the election he was told he would have to give up his Ferrari to be pre-selected. However, Hewson kept his car despite it attracting controversy. He entered Parliament at a time when there was a leadership vacuum among the conservatives. The Coalition, led by John Howard, lost the 1987 election, but a majority of Liberal MPs voted to keep him as leader over his predecessor Andrew Peacock.Hewson was Howard's advisor when Howard was Treasurer and the two formed a friendship. However their friendship hit a low point when Hewson won Liberal preselection for Wentworth. After Hewson's preselection, Howard was seen talking to Dr. Jane Munro, who like Hewson was also an academic and was Hewson's main rival for the preselection. Hewson then angrily accused Howard of supporting Munro for the preselection instead of Hewson. Government and Opposition MPs who are new to Parliament usually take their place on the backbench but Hewson believed he was an exception to this due to his personal history with Howard. Hewson was therefore disappointed not to be offered a shadow portfolio by Howard.
Hewson instead sat on the backbench until September 1988 when Howard appointed Hewson as shadow finance minister. In May 1989, when Andrew Peacock replaced Howard as Leader after a challenge in which Hewson voted for Howard, Hewson became shadow treasurer. Even prior to Howard's removal, when Peacock was the shadow treasurer, Hewson had been seen as the real shadow treasurer. In the lead-up to the 1990 election, Hewson, the trained economist, was seen to have performed well against the then-treasurer Paul Keating. In December 1989, Hewson claimed that Keating was reluctant to debate with him on the economy.
Election to Leadership of the Opposition
When the Coalition were defeated at the 1990 federal elections, Peacock quit and supported Hewson, who was elected to the Liberal leadership despite having been in Parliament for only three years, as Hewson had been one of the top Liberal players in the 1990 election campaign. In the contest for leadership, Hewson defeated Peter Reith 62 votes to 13. Reith was then elected deputy leader over David Jull, with Hewson making Reith Shadow Treasurer. One of the reasons for Hewson's election to the leadership was that Peacock wanted to prevent Howard from regaining leadership. Another reason for Hewson's election was a desire by the Liberal party to have generational change, according to John Howard, who believed Hewson was not ready to be leader. Previously, Hewson had endorsed Peacock as his deputy, which created much resentment for him among Howard's supporters. Peacock, however, had no interest in becoming deputy leader again and withdrew his candidacy. In 1991, Hewson's ex-wife Margaret declared on 60 minutes that she would vote for him at the next election, as did his son Tim, who claimed Hewson had placed politics before his family and that was why his father had divorced Margaret. Margaret claimed the first six months of her divorce was the hardest and she had not realised someone else was on the scene. Hewson's shadow ministry included newly elected Member for Higgins Peter Costello; Hewson had told Costello he would not be a Minister in a Hewson government, a joke Costello would relay years later. In 1991, Hewson spoke at the Australian Council of Social Services, where he stated that the organisation was reinforcing the biblical reminder that "the Poor are with us forever" by making welfare provisions larger and otherwise want to acquire more money for welfare and making bureaucracies larger. This caused controversy for Hewson, who came to be seen as harsh and untrustworthy in the mind of Australian reporter Laurie Oakes.Fightback! and the 1993 federal election
Shortly after gaining the leadership, Hewson made up ground on the Hawke government in the opinion polls as the Australian economy struggled with the early 1990s recession. Hewson was determined to make a break with what he saw as the "weak pragmatism of past Liberal leaders." In November 1991, the opposition launched the 650-page Fightback! policy document − a radical collection of economic liberal measures including the introduction of a Goods and Services Tax, various changes to Medicare including the abolition of bulk billing for non-concession holders, the introduction of a nine-month limit on unemployment benefits, various changes to industrial relations laws including the abolition of awards, a $13 billion personal income tax cut directed at middle and upper income earners, $10 billion in government spending cuts, the abolition of state payroll taxes, and the privatisation of a large number of government owned enterprises − representing the start of a very different direction from the keynesian economic conservatism practiced by previous Liberal/National Coalition governments. The 15 percent GST was the centrepiece of the policy document.In December 1991, Keating successfully defeated Hawke and became prime minister. In 1992, Keating mounted a campaign against the Fightback package and particularly against the GST, which he described as an attack on the working class, as it shifted the tax burden from direct taxation of the wealthy to indirect taxation as a broad-based consumption tax. Keating memorably described the impact of Hewson's GST as "15% on this, 15% on that", and Hewson as a "feral abacus."
In 1992, Hewson attacked New South Wales Labor leader Bob Carr for his lack of a family life when compared to Liberal Premier John Fahey, stating, "You've got to be suspicious of a guy that doesn't drive, doesn't like kids and things like that. When he's up against a full-blooded Australian like John Fahey, he hasn't got a hope". Keating responded by saying "I don't think Ben Chifley had any trouble being a full-blooded Australian and he didn't have any children", and Hewson was later forced to withdraw the remark. Carr and his wife Helena did not respond to Hewson's attack.
Keating won the 1993 election, marking a record fifth consecutive Labor term, with the Coalition losing what many had described as "the unlosable election" for them. The issue of the GST was dropped from the Liberal Party's agenda until the 1998 election campaign. Apart from the GST, other factors were believed to have contributed to the 1993 election defeat, including the fear of changes to Medicare and the zero Tariff policy. Peter Costello stated that he believes Hewson's Fightback! campaign caused unnecessary confrontations and that Hewson lacked the experience to know which policies to fight for and which ones to leave alone. Notable confrontations including the GST proposal receiving opposition from Churches and Welfare as well as opposition to abolishing bulk billing and changing superannuation. An additional reason for the defeat was the partial backdown Hewson made in Fightback! policy in 1992 by agreeing not to levy the GST on food. This concession caused Hewson to be exposed to assertions of weakness and inconsistency, and also complicated the financial arithmetic of the whole package, as the weakening of the GST reduced the scope for tax cuts, the most attractive element of the package for middle-class voters. The complications of the revised Fightback! package were demonstrated in the "birthday cake interview", in which Hewson was unable to answer a question posed by journalist Mike Willesee about whether or not a birthday cake would cost more or less under a Coalition government. Hewson was instead forced into a series of circumlocutions about whether the cake would be decorated, have ice cream in it and so on, considered by some as a turning point in the election campaign. In reference to the birthday cake interview in an August 2006 interview, Hewson said: "Well I answered the question honestly. The answer's actually right. That doesn't count...I should have told him to get stuffed!". According to Channel 9's 20 to 1 episode Unscripted and Unplanned, the Birthday Cake Interview incident was the moment Hewson lost the election with the interview held 10 days before polling day, even though polls supported a Coalition victory right up to election day.