Lives in Cricket No 12 - Ric Charlesworth

international economy. Close to Ric’s personal concerns was the introduction of Medicare, funded by a levy within the taxation system, providing a universal health care system that compares favourably with those of other developed countries. The incoming government’s proclaimed commitment to ‘consensus’ proved to be more than empty rhetoric. Within a month of taking office Hawke invited trade unions, employer organisations, even the other political parties, to a national economic ‘summit’. The aim was to form a national consensus on economic policy, building on the foundation of a prices and incomes accord agreed with the trade union movement before the election. Soon a tax summit and the creation of an Economic Planning Advisory Council and an Australian Labour Advisory Council helped to introduce an unusually harmonious period of industrial relations. Although all these innovations marked a shift to the right that angered the traditional left wing of the ALP, they were not ones to alienate Ric Charlesworth: ‘I didn’t want to be either right or left,’ he remarked in 2009. But he had entered a parliament that, despite the mantra of consensus, soon revealed a reality typical of most in the British parliamentary tradition, but also one exaggerated by distinctly Australian characteristics. Membership of a faction was almost mandatory for anybody seeking advancement within his own party. He felt ‘most comfortable’ joining the Centre-Left faction – ‘the one to be in if you don’t want to be in a faction’ – because the people he mixed with most were there. It included some successful new ministers, including Neale Blewett (health), Peter Walsh (finance) and John Button (industry and commerce). But it wasn’t one that exercised much clout within a parliamentary party whose caucus decided which parliamentarians would be government ministers, leaving the Prime Minister to assign portfolios, a system finally overthrown, at least for the time being, with the electoral victory of Kevin Rudd in 2007. And, as in Parliament itself, the vote in caucus was anything but free, depending greatly on the deals struck by leaders of the more powerful left and right factions. It would be some time before those factional constraints would be a clear obstacle to his hopes of advancement to a ministerial position. Still involved in international hockey, Ric at first ‘had little time for political machinations within the party’. But long before his active sporting career finally came to an end in 1988, he 1981-1993 57