The ghost of Bob Hawke supports Pauline Hanson? I saw first-hand how wrong that notion is

July 30, 2026 — 7:30pm

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On the night of June 12, 1988, Bob Hawke sat by a campfire in the Northern Territory scrub about 80 kilometres north of Katherine and accepted from a gathering of painted Aboriginal elders a declaration on bark calling for a treaty between white and Indigenous Australia.

Hawke, much moved, made a promise.

He’d do all in his power to deliver such a treaty within two years.

Three and a half years later, Hawke was defeated as prime minister, the promised treaty undelivered.

Expressing remorse that no treaty had been completed, Hawke’s last action in the minutes before Paul Keating was sworn in as prime minister was to enshrine that bark request, known as the Barunga Statement, on the wall of Parliament House. He insisted it remind successors of unfinished business that must not be ignored.

A gathering of tribes - how Bob Hawke would have loved it

It happened that I was around that campfire at Barunga in 1988 when Hawke promised to work towards a treaty. I also reported first-hand Hawke’s emotional last minutes as PM as he hoisted the Barunga statement and expressed personal regret that his promise was not fulfilled.

“The important thing is what’s in our minds and in our hearts,” he said.

All these years later, Hawke dead since May 2019, the Institute of Public Affairs, a conservative “think tank”, purports to........

© Brisbane Times