Australia Decides 1993: Bob Hawke (ALP) vs. John Hewson (LIB)

[Smid]

In the RL race, Keating was doing exceptionally poorly and the election was being dubbed "the unloseable election" for the Liberals. The Liberals obviously did lose the election, and the point it was lost was John Hewson's infamous birthday cake debacle, while trying to explain how the GST would be imposed on a purchased birthday cake.

The election was the Liberal Party's to lose, not Labor's to win and John Hewson scared the electorate with the GST to the point that they couldn't bring themselves to vote for him.

Unless Hewson gave a different answer or the media didn't ask him the question about the birthday cake, I don't see this election playing out any differently to the 1993 election against Keating.

[Smid]

Keating!'s strong response promted Hewson to launch Fightback II, the original Fightback had GST on EVERYTHING, arguably, without Keating's strong responese. Fightback II never gets launched and Hewson doesnt look foolish as the cake incident would never have occured.

Very good point and probably actually what would have happened.

[Smid]

So do we agree that a Hawke vs Hewson campaign in 1991 is a bloodbath for Labour?

Will Keating finally roll Hawke after the election?

Bloodbath, yes. I contemplated for a while as to whether to say it would be of a 1996 magnitude. It's possible that some of the size of the 1996 swing was caused by Labor being in power for so long... three years earlier, that was probably the case but slightly less so. There were seats that Labor lost (such as Kevin Rudd in his first run for Griffith, and a one-term Wayne Swan in Lilley, Minister Con Sciacca in Bowman and Attorney-General Michael Lavarch in Dickson) - Labor was reduced to just two electorates in Queensland, Minister Arch Bevis just managed to hang on in Brisbane, there were a lot of seats that Labor shouldn't have lost that they did still lose in Queensland. It's possible that a very large Liberal win in 1993 may have been at that sort of a level, but I just couldn't say.