REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Saturday December 21, 1991

THE wait was over and Paul Keating was finally Prime Minister.

Keating was sworn in as the nation’s 24th prime minister by Governor General Bill Hayden after successfully defeating Bob Hawke in a caucus spill for the Labor leadership.

Despite being defeated on the night of December 19, Hawke remained PM the next day and performed his final acts in the role that morning.

At 10.59am he finished an emotional speech in Parliament House and then unveiled a symbolic Aboriginal painting.

Just one minute later and five kilometres down the road Keating was sworn in.

Back on the Gold Coast, business and tourism leaders put Keating on trial in the wake of his pledge to create jobs and boost the economy.

Following the spill they adopted a wait-and-see attitude to his promises.

However business bosses said the dumping of Hawke was a “vital” first step towards restoring confidence.

They said the next step should be a further reduction in interest rates to stimulate housing and tourism.

Gold Coast Visitors and Convention Bureau chairman Peter Hughes welcomed the change.

“Tourism will only gain from the change in leadership and if we get a drop in the value of the dollar we pick up international tourism and become more competitive in the domestic market because it would then be cheaper to have a holiday on the Gold Coast than Fiji,” he said.

Keating remained PM through the 1993 election until Labor’s 1996 defeat.