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William George Hayden (23 January 1933 – 21 October 2023) was an Australian politician who served as the 21st governor-general of Australia from 1989 to 1996. He was Leader of the Labor Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1977 to 1983, and served as Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade from 1983 to 1988 under Bob Hawke and as Treasurer of Australia in 1975 under Gough Whitlam.
Hayden was born in Brisbane, Queensland. He attended Brisbane State High School and then joined the Queensland Police, working as a police officer for eight years while studying economics part-time at the University of Queensland. Hayden was elected to the House of Representatives at the 1961 federal election, aged 28 – along with Manfred Cross and Doug McClelland, Hayden was the earliest elected Labor MP still alive at the time of his death. When Gough Whitlam led the Labor Party to victory in 1972, Hayden was made Minister for Social Security. He replaced Jim Cairns as treasurer in 1975, but served for only five months before the government was dismissed.
In early 1977, Hayden challenged Whitlam for the party leadership and was defeated by just two votes. He defeated Lionel Bowen to succeed Whitlam as Leader of the Opposition at the end of the year, following Labor's defeat at the 1977 election. Hayden led the party to the 1980 election, recording a substantial swing but falling short of victory. He was replaced by Bob Hawke just a few weeks before the 1983 election, after months of speculation. Hayden served as Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade from 1983 to 1988, then left parliament to assume the governor-generalship. He held that position for seven years; only Lord Gowrie has served for longer.
Hayden's father was an American seaman, probably born in California, who jumped ship in Sydney a few years before World War I. He worked as a piano-tuner and musical instrument salesman, moving to Rockhampton, Queensland, in the early 1920s. He held radical political views and was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. Hayden's mother was born in Brandon, Queensland, to a working-class family of Irish descent. After the death of her first husband, a sheep shearing, she worked in Rockhampton as a barmaid. The couple moved to Brisbane during the Great Depression.
Hayden spent his first year at a boardinghouse in Fortitude Valley, before the family moved to a rented cottage in the working-class area of Highgate Hill. The family became more financially stable after his father enlisted in the army in 1941. He began his education at St Ita's Catholic Primary School in South Brisbane, but was withdrawn from the school when it rescinded his father's contract to tune the school pianos. He switched to Dutton Park State School and was later highly critical of the quality of education that he received. Hayden went on to South Brisbane Intermediate School, where he passed the state scholarship exam in 1947. This allowed him to complete his secondary education at Brisbane State High School in 1948 and 1949. After leaving school, he found work as a junior clerk in the State Government Stores, where he worked until joining the police. He was conscripted to the Royal Australian Navy for six months following the passage of the National Service Act 1951, having earlier unsuccessfully applied to join the Royal Australian Air Force as an 18-year-old.
In October 1960, Hayden won ALP preselection for the federal seat of Oxley, running as the Trades Hall candidate against Australian Workers' Union (AWU) candidate Bert Warren. At the 1961 federal election he unexpectedly defeated incumbent Liberal MP and cabinet minister Donald Cameron, winning 53 percent of the primary vote on an 11-point swing. Hayden's win was part of a 15-seat swing to Labor that nearly brought down the Menzies government.
Overcoming initial resistance to his membership of the Labor party, Hayden was soon popularly elected as one of the then youngest members of the federal parliament (only 28 years old at the time he entered it). He proved to be a diligent, well-spoken parliamentarian.Hayden spent a good deal of the 1960s thinking through Australian public policy issues and his own approach to politics. He discusses this in his autobiography (Hayden, 1996, op. cit, Part II). As part of this process he produced a pamphlet on democratic socialism published as W.G. Hayden, 1968, The Implications of Democratic Socialism, Victorian Fabian Society. In 1969, he became a member of the Opposition front bench.Murphy, op. cit., p. 48.
At the 1980 election, Labor finished a mere 0.8 percent behind Fraser's government on the two-party vote, having gained a nationwide swing of over four percent. Yet, due to the geographically uneven nature of the swing (strong in Victoria and, to a lesser degree, Western Australia and New South Wales, but comparatively weak everywhere else), Labor fell 12 seats short of making Hayden prime minister. Hayden did, however, regain much of what Labor had lost in the landslides of 1975 and 1977. He also slashed Fraser's majority in half, from 23 seats to 11.
By 1982, it was evident that Fraser was manoeuvring to call an early election. But the main threat to Hayden came less from Fraser than from elements in Hayden's own party. Bob Hawke, a former union leader who had been elected to Parliament two years earlier, began mobilising his supporters to challenge Hayden's leadership. On 16 July 1982 Hayden narrowly defeated a challenge by Hawke in a party ballot but Hawke continued to plot against Hayden.
In December, Labor surprised many pundits by its failure to win the vital Flinders by-election in Victoria, further raising doubts about Hayden's ability to lead the ALP to power.Editorial, "Flinders fallout", The Australian Financial Review, 6 December 1982, and Gregory Hywood, "'Kingmaker' Button ponders Hayden's future", The Australian Financial Review, 24 December 1982. On 3 February 1983, in a meeting in Brisbane, various leading Labor figures, including Paul Keating and Senator John Button, told Hayden that he must resign. He reluctantly accepted their advice.Simon Balderstone, "The 'Little General' who had to drop a friend", The Age, 5 February 1983. Hawke was then elected leader on 8 February, unopposed.
Fraser had been well aware of the infighting within Labor and wanted to call an election before the party could replace Hayden with Hawke. He believed that if he put Parliament into "caretaker mode" early enough, Labor would essentially be frozen with Hayden as its leader. On the same morning that Hayden resigned, Fraser asked for, and was granted, an election for 5 March. Unknown to Fraser, however, Hayden resigned two hours before Fraser travelled to Yarralumla. He only learned of Hayden's resignation a few hours before the election writs were issued. At a press conference that afternoon Hayden, still chagrined, said that "a drover's dog could lead the Labor Party to victory, the way the country is". Hayden's quip about a "drover's dog" became part of Australian political history. Hayden himself referred to it good-humouredly many years later when he said, "There are so many things I did in my political life that I am very proud of. ... But the one thing I am remembered for is damn well saying 'A drover's dog could win the next election'. It seems to have settled into political idiom. The only person who didn't like it was Bob Hawke."
Upon his appointment as governor-general, he became, ex officio, Chancellor and Principal Companion of the Order of Australia.
Other governors-general had been appointed by the Scouts Australia as its Chief Scout of Australia but Hayden declined because he was an atheist, which was incompatible with the Scout Promise. Instead, the Scout Association of Australia appointed him as its national patron.
After retiring as governor-general, Hayden continued to contribute to public policy discussion in Australia. While on the board of Quadrant, he took time to lend personal support to the publication and wrote a tribute to its editor Padraic McGuinness on his death in 2008. "Workingman's friend", The Australian, 29 January 2008. He also continued to write opinion and comment pieces for other magazines and newspapers in Australia about current social, economic and political issues including foreign affairs.See his article on gay rights in Australia, 'We've come so far on gay rights but it's not enough', The Punch, 6 October 2009 [3], and his comment on US-China relations in Asia 'Caught in the US-China wash', The Australian 11 June 2011 [4].
In September 2018, Hayden was baptised in the Roman Catholic Church at St Mary's Church, Ipswich. He told The Catholic Leader that "there's been a gnawing pain in my heart and soul about what is the meaning of life". See also Kristian Silva, ' Bill Hayden, former Labor leader, turns to God despite atheist past', ABC News, 19 September 2018. The baptismal ceremony was attended by a gathering of family, friends and former colleagues. Hayden's siblings, Patricia Oxenham, John Hayden and Joan Moseman, along with other family members, were present.
Hayden's wife, Dallas, a Member of the Order of Australia, died on 15 January 2024, less than three months after her husband.
Hayden received an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of Queensland in 1990 for his distinguished contributions to Australian life. Other awards included admission to the Order of St John Australia and also the Gwanghwa Medal of the Korean Order of Diplomatic Merit. University of Queensland, Alumni and Community
In 1996, Hayden was recognised as the Australian Humanism of the Year by the Council of Australian Humanist Societies. Australian Humanists of the Year In 2007 at the 45th State Conference of the Queensland Branch of the Australian Labor Party, Hayden was made a Life Member of the party.
In September 2017, in delivering the second Hayden Oration at the University of Southern Queensland in Ipswich, former Australian prime minister Paul Keating spoke at length of Hayden's contribution to the Labor Party. Keating spoke, in particular, of the reform period during the Hawke Labor government in the 1980s in Australia. He noted that the foundations for the reforms had been set down before the Labor Party won office in 1983 during the period when Hayden was Leader of the Opposition and was working to prepare the party for government. "Those great reforms", Keating said, "began with the frameworks Bill Hayden brought to the front bench, the day he became Leader of the Labor Party."Paul Keating, "The Hayden Oration 29 September 2017" , University of Southern Queensland, Ipswich Campus, Queensland. A summary of Keating's remarks was carried in several major Australian newspapers, including in Mark Kenny, "Bill Hayden, the most visionary PM we never had, says Paul Keating", The Age, 30 September 2017.
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