Terms in Office
Hawke led the Australian Labor Party to a landslide victory against Malcolm Fraser's Liberal-National Coalition Government at the 1983 Australian Federal Election, with Labor seizing 75 seats in the Australian House of Representatives against the Liberal Party's 33 and the National Party 17. He went on to become Australia's longest serving Labor prime minister and remains the third longest serving Australian prime minister after Robert Menzies and John Howard.
Hawke again led the party to the 1983 Election and was returned with a reduced majority, in an expanded House of Representatives: with Labor taking 82 seats to the Coalition's 66. Labor went on to a third straight victory at the 1987 Election and increased its majority from 16 to 24 seats. Hawke fought his final election in 1990, with Labor winning a nine seat majority. Hawke retired from Parliament in February 1992, following the December 1991 leadership spill which saw him replaced as leader by Paul Keating.
Read more about this topic: Hawke Government
Famous quotes containing the words terms and/or office:
“My father and I were always on the most distant terms when I was a boy—a sort of armed neutrality, so to speak. At irregular intervals this neutrality was broken, and suffering ensued; but I will be candid enough to say that the breaking and the suffering were always divided up with strict impartiality between us—which is to say, my father did the breaking, and I did the suffering.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
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