Bob Hawke was a larrikin

- or at least liked to be seen that way.
He was also a lot of other things - not all of them good but not all of them bad either.
Another former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, has described him as being a "Labor leader with a Liberal heart".  That isn't going to go down too well in some quarters but it may not be as far off the mark as they would like.
Hawke wasn't your usual Labor leader even if he was a  unionist. He was smart enough to realise that you had to nurture business - because business is what brings the money in. Yes, workers were important to him but he knew that it was the people who employed the workers who were taking the risks. No Labor leader since then has acknowledged that. The present man would even have you believe that he is anti-employer and pro-worker. 
Hawke knew that old-style socialism wouldn't work. The party he led still has to recognise that fact.
His "no child will live in poverty" speech was, I believe, from the heart - but it was doomed to failure. He must have known that his plans would not succeed.
I never met the man but I met his first wife and, before she married him, his second. I liked his first wife although I felt she was out of her depth on the occasion I met her. Perhaps it is why she seemed happy to chat to some mere law students while her husband mixed with the great and powerful. She was friendly and appeared to be genuinely interested in other people and their everyday lives. No, she wasn't an "intellectual" but she was more intelligent than was ever acknowledged. Hawke's treatment of her was arrogant. She stuck by him through some of his worst behaviour, his drinking in particular. Without her help he would never have become Prime Minister. 
His second wife is a writer. I met her at Writer's Week one year. She was completely dismissive of me the first time - and a good many other people too.  Was she good for Hawke? Probably. She was more openly his intellectual equal but I imagine there were some fiery moments in their marriage.
He was a complex man. There were things about him I liked and others that I loathed. Overall I am not sure I liked him as the "lovable larrikin", the womaniser, the philanderer and more. He was a better leader than Keating, Rudd or Gillard but his time was over - perhaps even before he left formal politics. Of course he never left the political arena. He was here to almost the last. He backed the Opposition Leader in the present campaign and believed that he will see victory in tomorrow's vote.
There's just one thing I would like to know. Did Hawke, on the grounds of ill health, put in an early vote this time?