BOB HERO IN SEA OF BLUE

FOR a city long considered a blue-ribbon conservative heartland, the Gold Coast had a soft spot for Bob Hawke.

The fondness was reciprocated. While he was ACTU president, throughout his life in politics and in the years that followed, the former Labor prime minister was often seen on the Glitter Strip, attending conferences, popping in to party at some of the big hotels, pitching business deals, playing golf and going to the races.

Only two prime ministers ever made it to the Gold Coast Turf Club event that carried their moniker – the Prime Minister’s Cup – while in office. Malcolm Fraser attended in 1989 and John Howard in 1999. Mr Hawke had promised to attend in 1990 and was a certain starter until he ended up in hospital that week. But true to his word, he made it after he left politics.

Mr Hawke, who died on Thursday, was without doubt a man of the people – at all levels of society. He was equally at home chatting to ordinary punters in the street, at the footy or the cricket as he was in the boardrooms of Melbourne and Sydney, or in meeting world leaders. His former media adviser, ABC commentator Barrie Cassidy, told yesterday of how Mr Hawke – having hosted a visiting group of US officials at a football match – grumbled about having to line up for a bus back to the hotel where they were staying . When a couple of young blokes in a passing car shouted “Hawkie you legend’’, he called back “If I’m such a legend, give me a lift to the hotel’’. They did, and he chatted to their mums on their mobile phones on the way.

Bob Hawke had a larrikin reputation and in the early days, a love of grog. In an interview a few years ago, former mayor Denis O’Connell recalled having a beer or three with Hawke at Evandale, along with some of the Labor-leaning aldermen. “He was a lot of fun and loved to drink,’’ O’Connell observed – which was not surprising given Hawke earned a spot in the Guinness Book of Records for skolling beer.

But putting drinking exploits and love of sport to one side, Mr Hawke also earned the Gold Coast’s lasting admiration by ensuring tourism was given the status it deserved – as a stand-alone portfolio in Cabinet from the moment he became prime minister in 1983.

He had no trouble pulling a crowd when he visited, and in 2007 – while here to talk about setting up a ferry system – he wryly told 250 business leaders that despite achievements in international relations, his government’s environmental record, saving Antarctica from mining, and in helping end apartheid, people instead would remember him from his comment when Australia won the America’s Cup in 1983. In the excitement of the victory, he said any boss who sacked a worker for not turning up that day would be “a bum’’.

Mr Hawke was also guest speaker at a Gold Coast Media Club lunch during that visit and when asked offstage by compere Richard “Chook’’ Fowler how he would know when the former PM had finished his speech, he replied: “By the thunderous applause.’’ The nation today continues to applaud a bloke who understood Aussies at all levels and who introduced reforms that set the country up for the challenges it continues to face. The Gold Coast is among those clapping loudest.

FORMER Prime Minster Bob Hawke brought into prominence what it is that makes our Australian identity.

It is of course kinship, we have with the great natural heritage of our southern land, guarded for millennia by our original people.

Without this, in uniform, tightly packed “deserts” of suburbia or the deserts we create via clearing and careless usage of our bushland and water resources, we lose that indefinable Aussie character and love of place, its sights, scents and sounds that original people call “country.”

Protection of Franklin Wilderness, Kakadu and Antarctic are all attributable to guardianship of the Hawke leadership of our nation (GCB 17/5, Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke dies in sleep).

Although states have substantial control of natural heritage, Commonwealth, in view of our international treaties and agreements, has rights to protect precious areas under threat.

Commonwealth Government has recently had to call for submissions from community on Australia’s fauna species extinction crisis.

There is room for scepticism in philosophies or faiths but not “science scepticism”, promulgated, often, ironically, via the tech communication revolution brought to us by evidence-based, logically researched scientific endeavour.

One million plant and animal species are at risk of extinction on our planet. The Millenium Report, newly released, is based on longitudinal study, via 145 major reports, 310 additional inputs, 15, 000 contributions from scientific analyses.

A first Nation elder, asked why he thought a fauna species was in decline, said, “no-one is singing its song anymore”.

Personal predisposition and concerns count but hopefully polling at Commonwealth level for representatives and senate also reflects wider concerns for our natural heritage, our “commonwealth”.

SALLY SPAIN, OXENFORD

I WOULD like to suggest that all our trains which travel to Brisbane from the Gold Coast retrofit with solar and braking feature. This could also apply to any intercity train in Australia.

I do not see why big trucks, buses, cars etc – particularly those doing long-haul jobs – cannot also be retrofitted. The present gas stations can install battery exchanges and chargers but the flexible solar panels developed by the CSIRO in Australia would be perfect for this.

A SUTHERLAND, ROBINA

AUSTRALIA is at the cross roads with serious choices to make.

I agree with Kerri-Anne Kennerley, who said on TV if we vote for a Shorten Labor socialist government, Australia will “never be the same again”.

I have personally been surprised to receive comments from voters at a pre-polling booth saying: “If Labor is elected the country is stuffed.”

I am of the firm view that Australians must decide their own fate. That is the nature of democracy. (Today) will be a very telling day.

WARREN JAMES, TWEED HEADS

OVER the eons, nature has extracted billions of tonnes of carbon compounds from the surface and buried them in extensive beds of limestone, dolomite, magnesite, dead corals, sea shells, animal skeletons, methane hydrate and hydro-carbons. This process has been so efficient that plants today are semi-starved of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Luckily, burning coal, oil, gas, peat and wood and making cement and fertiliser is restoring some of this valuable plant food to the surface and atmosphere where plants can again extract it and thrive. This is called the carbon cycle.

Wasting heaps of money and scads of energy trying to separate, compress and rebury this benign valuable plant food in pressurised carbon sequestration cemeteries is green lunacy. If this compressed gas escapes in a rush, it will be deadly for nearby animal life.

Naturally thermal coal producers love “carbon sequestration” – it will greatly increase the consumption of coal energy for separation, compression, pumping and burial.

VIV FORBES, WASHPOOL

MANY will remember Bob Hawke as the leader who berated employers for being tough on absenteeism after Australia won the America’s Cup. (GCB, 17/5). Now that he’s flown the coup, I’m sure though his flag will fly aloft for years to come.

KEN JOHNSTON, ROCHEDALE SOUTH