Eyewitness - Dr Fred Dagg on Australian Politics

It has been a government of the privileged, by the privileged and for the privileged.

– Rising Labor Party star Bob Hawke talks about Malcolm Fraser's Liberal Coalition

In order to understand Chipp you've got to understand the Australian political system, which is unfortunately insane. So it's very difficult to do.

– John Clarke on Senator Don Chipp and his Australian Democrats party

Broadly, he's Australia's Hayden. Which is the closest analogy I can draw off the top of my head.

– John Clarke tries to compare Australian Labor Party leader Bill Hayden to other politicians

To fully understand Hawke's popularity, it's probably necessary to be Australian, but his mixture of brains and macho bellicosity endears him to Australians like no other leader ... he has a remarkable personal charisma.

– Reporter Neil Roberts on rising Labor Party star (and future Prime Minister) Bob Hawke

He is a grazier, to the extent that he owns most of Victoria...but he's not a grazier in the sense that he actually grazes ... he doesn't actually, so far as anyone's ever been able to ascertain, do any actual yakka.

– John Clarke is asked about the agricultural experience of Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser

I think that the ultimate winner...will be rugby.

– John Clarke is asked to make his election prediction at the end

Supremely self-confident, Hawke had a well-known love of drink and women. His second wife and biographer, Blanche d’Alpuget, said in 2015 that the more intrusive media of today would have rendered him unelectable. In his memoirs, Hawke speculated that the world record he had set for downing the equivalent of a yard of ale, while a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, probably endeared him to more voters than any other single act.

– Excerpt from former Prime Minister Bob Hawke's obituary, The Guardian, 16 May 2019

No one's been able to explain John's role. His role appears to be that of a numbers man, although it's been quite well established that he doesn't actually have a genuine concept of numbers ... he gives the impression of rationality without actually ever transgressing into rationality — it's an awfully difficult line he walks.

– John Clarke on Australian treasurer (and future Prime Minister) John Howard

...Australians are about to conduct a general election in a political climate which has many parallels with New Zealand's ... like New Zealand, Australia has spent the second half of the seventies under a conservative administration which is elected by a landslide after a single-term Labour government lost the confidence of the people.

– Neil Roberts introduces his report