Former Hawke Government minister John Button has died of cancer. ABC News describes his career as follows:
He served as the Minister for Industry and Commerce under Bob Hawke and Paul Keating.
He played a key role in opening up car manufacturing to foreign competition.
He was also the man who tapped Labor leader Bill Hayden on the shoulder and paved the way for Bob Hawke to become Prime Minister in 1983.
His memoir As It Happened details his long involvement with the ALP, as well as his ministerial days. It was highly entertaining and quite reflective, two unusual traits in the writings of former politicians.
He’ll be missed.
UPDATE: Mark has an eloquent tribute from Paul Keating in comments.
Vale John Button
What a feisty and perceptive and effective politician. Helped in the fight to remove the Victorian Dinosaur Oligarchy from control of the Vic ALP; his small group finally wrested power from them with the assistance of E.G. Whitlam, Clyde Cameron et al. This watershed alone then credited as a major factor in the ALP Federal election victory of 1972.
In his memoirs he describes encountering narrow-minded CPA girls at Melbourne Uni in the early 50s (ex-MLC girls); thank heavens he joined the social democrat ALP rather than the CPA.
Many thanks John Button,
rest in peace.
cheerio
That’s sad news indeed. Also sad to learn that he died of pancreatic cancer, which I understand is particularly awful.
I had a lot of time for the guy. His own record, and that of the “participants” and Independents that he was associated with in the Victorian party - and the Centre Left - should be a refutation of all the crud about “the dregs of the middle class” that those unfriendly to the labour movement often dredge up with the obligatory Beazley senior quote. Button and his factional allies showed the contribution that could be made to politics and public policy by independent minded folks.
Sad to see him go.
Although if he had joined the CPA he probably would have been expelled in 1956 for holding revisionist views on the invasion of Hungary and for thinking the Khrushchev secret speech was genuine.
Apart from that, what Mark said. Some of Button’s policy positions were a bit conservative for my tastes, but there’s no denying that he was a decent person and a formidable intellectual force in a government which had its fair share of them.
I’m very sad to hear this news too. He was a terrific bloke — clever, rational and civilised.
A great lover of the Geelong Football Club:
[link]
2007 was a wonderful consummation.
He was an old school mate of my old man. I remember being enormously surprised when they bumped into each other (with teenage me in tow) and chatted away about everything and nothing while waiting for a flight.
After John left I asked my old man just who that was. “That, my boy, is the federal industry minister”. I was impressed!
Years later, this initial meeting lead me to buy, on a whim, Button’s book about post parliament life “On The Loose”. A great read.
Vale indeed
Tom
Thanks for noting his love of the GFC Katz - I was lucky enough to have a couple of conversations with him in recent years, and they always turned quickly to the Cats. They should be in the black armbands this weekend for their biggest fan.
Another blow for us tiny people.
He were cute as a button, hit well above his height and seemed like a good bloke, for a politian.
Well, good that he lived to see the Cats triumph last year then!
I might add that on one occasion, when I was a febrile 20 year old anarchist, I had the opportunity to tell John Button, at a public meeting, thet his views on a policy issue (higher education funding) were a bit conservative for my tastes. He was very courteous and rational in his response, although we ended up agreeing to disagree.
He seemed a lovely bloke. Warm, sceptical and witty and he sure could write.
At least he got the double last year; the Cats and the ALP.
Yeah I met him once. He was promoting his memoirs. He was a tough old buzzard. Polite enough but weary man, real weary. He’d seen it all thru the yellow windows of the evening train.
Here’s what Keating had to say in Crikey late this afternoon:
That’s such a lovely and heartfelt tribute. It gives a real sense of the man and doesn’t indulge in cliche.
Ah yes, John Button, the only Australian Cabinet minister in living memory that you’d want to pick up, put in your shopping bag and take home.
Last time I saw him was at an Australian Universities Alumni pissup at Melbourne Museum about five or six years ago. Even though he was five foot tall and nearly 70, he still had no problem attracting a bunch of throughly entertained women to listen to him telling yarns in his great mellow smoky voice.
His “Flying The Kite” is a great read. Which also features a cameo appearance by Nick Gruen.
They never made politicians quite like him before and I doubt they will again.
Is there anyone who actually didn’t like John Button?
I say rest easy as a true labor mate. I just love my new cheap Korean car.
thanks again from those like me that you helped so much.
So sad that he had pancreatic cancer, it is a particularly nasty one.
Vale to a great intellect and a man with the vision and energy to reform the industrial sector of this country. His legacy lives on.
That’s a wonderful tribute by Keating. It says a lot about both of them. It seemed to me he was a straight shooter and told it like it was.
Speaking of straight shooting, there was a nice bit on the TV news tonight where they showed Button at a press conference on resigning from Parliament in 1993. He said he’s miss many of the people, but there were a few he wouldn’t miss, epecially if he had a shotgun in his hands!
Button’s Quarterly Essay of June 2002, What Future for Labor? should be re-printed sand re-read. The fundamental structural weakness of the Labor Party is as true now as then, and has only been obscured by Rudd’s win.
The perfect epitaph for a fan of any sport.
“Is there anyone who actually didn’t like John Button?”
Possibly his first few wives?
And jayzus Paul Keating, while your Button obit contained many good and inimitably expressed points, you’ve gottta stop dictating it all while marching around your office. Or at least proof the transcripts properly. There were at least two major and egregiously dangling participles there.
“They never made politicians quite like him before and I doubt they will again.”
Wherever Button is now, I bet John Gorton is buying him the next drink.
So there were, and a few feral gerunds as well. But he still writes amazingly well for a bloke who left school at fifteen.
You’re looking up my bum again.
Spiros, that essay was a great read. Anyone who has spent more than half a minute in a school classroom enduring an ALP branch meeting knows that what he said was true.
Vale Mr Button. Great sense of humour and a great sense of what’s right.
“Anyone who has spent more than half a minute in a school classroom enduring an ALP branch meeting”
There’s nothing quite like sitting s drafty classroom in the middle of winter freezing your bum/tits off listening to someone reading the correspondence and the minutes of the previous meeting, and then going home.
If you sat down and designed a meeting of a political party with the express purpose of killing people’s interest in politics, let alone any instinct for political activism, you wouldn’t do it any other way.
And a schoolboy howler homophone. (That isn’t a communication device lodged up Nabs’ fundament.)
A very ine tribute from P J Keating, focussing on Senator Button’s major role in the Hawke Govt, rather than just fondly recalling his wit and sense of fun. Amazing that John Button’s eues still sparkled after years at the top. “Age shall not weary them…”
Earlier, Paul Norton wrote:
“Although if he had joined the CPA he probably would have been expelled in 1956 for holding revisionist views on the invasion of Hungary and for thinking the Khrushchev secret speech was genuine.”
Yes, Paul: most likely. The waves of resignations around Hungary, (then later around Czechoslovakia in ‘68)… but then wasn’t there a fairly steady drop-out rate, say after the Great Patriotic War had been won in 1945, and the Depression became a distant memory?
Completely OT, but I’d be interested to hear of ex-CPA persons doing well in the ALP, even gaining Parliamentary seats. Jean M in Victoria? Jenny G in NSW? Others?? The reason I’m interested is, we hear so much about other renegades such as Ian Tuner (later Prof) and Stephen Murray-Smith (later Prof) and writers like Frank Hardy, Dorothy Hewett.
cheeio
Everyone:
Sorry to speak ill of the dead - but I didn’t like what Button did.
That said, I am bloody-well annoyed that much of the “prosperity” claimed to have come about through what was done by Howard, Reith, Costello, Abbott and all that mob was actually a result of the changes that had been brought about by Hawke, Keating …. AND JOHN BUTTON.
The other bunch just got a free ride on the results of all the radical changes that Hawke, Keating and Button had already carried out. Oh yes, they did add a little bit of brummy ornamentation - like the Waterfront Dispute, AntiWork [Choices?], 457 visa dodginess - but absolutely nothing substantial.
Australia has indeed lost one of its most influntial politicians ever.