Lives in Cricket No 12 - Ric Charlesworth

out of its conservative slumber. His vision excited me but, unfortunately for Paul, Australia was not ready to go with him.’ By the time that became clear, at the 1996 federal election, Ric had long since decided he was no longer ready to go on with his parliamentary career. Although he didn’t say so directly, probably a further reason for his supporting Keating had been his growing disillusionment with the Prime Minister’s leadership style. Hawke ‘realised the importance of Cabinet solidarity and consistency’, but solidarity didn’t extend beyond Cabinet, with little attention ‘given to including the backbench’. In 1990, his active sporting career over, Ric had sought election to a ministerial job. But not only was his Centre-Left faction relatively powerless in the party’s inner machinations, it gave him only modest support and his name did not go forward. No doubt he was sincere in saying he was even more disappointed in the failure in the same ballot of an admired faction colleague, the intellectual Barry Jones, to retain the position of Minister for Science he had held since 1983. But there can be little doubt that the message he was to remain a backbencher indefinitely made it certain Ric would not stand for re-election in 1993. He hadn’t sought any particular portfolio, such as sport: ‘there’s a tendency to steer people away from their areas of expertise for all sorts of reasons … What you find out is that a lot of ministries are just about administration and, if you like, leadership’. But he did find he had to get into a ministry if he ‘wanted to make a difference’. Failure to do so was frustrating, he reflected in 2009, but in the end his decision was a lifestyle choice. ‘Mind you, I never ever expected to be able to make a living in sport! I expected I would return to practise medicine.’ Perhaps devotion to his amateur sporting career – in his day even elite players received no payment beyond funding of travelling expenses to major tournaments – through much of the decade had led some colleagues to question his seriousness as a politician, as it did some members of the public – even though Ric could claim he had a better attendance record than most in the federal parliament. He led Australia to its first Champions Trophy gold medal in early November 1983 in Karachi: further golds followed at each of the trophy’s annual tournaments in 1984 (Karachi) and 1985 (Perth). Meanwhile he had captained Australia to fourth place in the Los Angeles Olympics in July 1984, some five months before he and the Hawke government were re-elected for the first time. In 60 1981-1993