Early Life
Hewson was born in Sydney, New South Wales, the son of a working-class, politically conservative engineer. He was educated at Kogarah High School and then at the University of Sydney where he graduated in economics. He then gained a master's degree from the Regina campus of the University of Saskatchewan (which since 1974 has been the University of Regina) and a second master's and a doctorate in economics from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In 1967 he married Margaret Deaves.
Returning to Australia, Hewson worked as an economist for the Reserve Bank of Australia. From 1976 to 1983 he was employed as an economic advisor to two successive Liberal treasurers; Phillip Lynch and John Howard. During this period he developed a keen interest in politics and was determined to enter politics himself. While a strong Liberal, he was critical of what he saw as the weakness and inconsistency of economic policy under Malcolm Fraser's government. He was a supporter of some of the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher.
After the defeat of the Fraser government at the 1983 election, Hewson went into business journalism and became a director of a private bank, the Macquarie Bank. This allowed the Labor Party to tag him as "a wealthy banker" when he entered politics. Having divorced Margaret Deaves in 1985, in 1988 he remarried to Carolyn Somerville.
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