Biography
Hawke was born to James Renfrey Hawke and Eliza Ann Blinman Pascoe, both of Cornish descent, in Kapunda, South Australia. Leaving school at the age of 13, he took up an apprenticeship as a clock-maker and jeweller before working in a lawyers office and joining the Australian Labor Party at 15. At the age of 23 in the 1924 elections he won the seat of Burra-Burra in the South Australian House of Assembly, making him the youngest person to have won a seat in that parliament.
After losing the seat by just 11 votes in the following 1927 election, he moved to Western Australia in 1928, becoming a country organiser for the ALP. In 1933 he caused a major political upset by defeating the sitting Premier Sir James Mitchell in the seat of Northam in the Western Australian Legislative Assembly by 460 votes. Mitchell had held the seat for 28 years previously. Hawke held the seat himself for 35 years until the 1968 general elections at which time he did not nominate.
During his Western Australian parliamentary career he was appointed Minister for Employment and Labour in 1936 in the Collier and Willcock governments. He also held the positions of Minister for Labour and Industrial Development (1939), Minister for Works, Water Supplies and Industrial Development (1943). After Labor's defeat in the 1947 elections he held various shadow portfolios before becoming Leader of the Opposition on 3 July 1951 after Frank Wise resigned.
In the 23 February 1953 elections he led Labor to victory over the two-term Liberal-Country government of Sir Ross McLarty becoming Premier as well as Treasurer and Minister for Child Welfare and Industrial Development. In June 1953, Hawke attended the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in London. In social policy, Hawke's governments enacted a series of progressive social reforms including the gradual easing of some oppressive regulations on Aborigines in WA, an accelerated construction of houses and schools, increases in workers’ compensation payments, allowing women to sit on juries, the regulation of hire purchase transactions, and the raising of the school-leaving age to 15.
Labor lost the March 1959 elections to David Brand's Liberals, but he stayed on as opposition leader until 1965 when he retired from politics and returned to live in South Australia.
Hawke's brother, Clement Hawke, a Congregational minister, was the father of Bob Hawke, the 23rd Prime Minister of Australia.
Read more about this topic: Albert Hawke
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“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)