But the bulk of Brown’s autobiography is an anecdote-laced account of his significant achievements in sport and tourism.
Hawke and Brown were responsible for the establishment of the Australian Sports Commission,the federal government’s funding and policy arm. Brown initiated Aussie Sports,a program for primary school children where the rules of sports,as well as its equipment,were modified,such as Kanga cricket and Mini League.
He advocated tax averaging for sportspeople and a Sports Aid Foundation which granted tax deductibility for donations,re-routing the money to the sporting organisation;promoted sport for the disabled and introduced the Olympic Insignia Bill to federal parliament,granting the Australian Olympic Committee protection from any unauthorised commercial use. This was a factor in Sydney winning the bid for the 2000 Olympics. Brown was also a pioneer of the removal of tobacco sponsorship from sporting promotion.
Like Hawke,Brown loved the races,revealing he won the money for his first house when he backed his horse La Das at Gosford at odds of 33/1.
The two politicians helped transform the Australian racing industry,as Hansard cites on August 20,1985,quoting Brown:“The government did three simple things. It took away from racing clubs the necessity to pay income tax,which put them on the same basis as every other sporting club in Australia. We took away the sales tax that was payable on the import of thoroughbreds to race in Australia and allowed breeders to write off their sires and mares in exactly the same way as breeders have been able to do in New Zealand for the last 10 years.”
Hawke took all the credit in his bookThe Hawke Memoirs,writing that all these achievements took place after Brown had left the ministry in 1987. TheHerald reported this example of historical revisionism,with an accompanying caricature of Hawke’s photo masquerading as a brand on the rump of a horse.
But,as Brown writes in his own autobiography,“Bob contacted me with a very gentle apology” and “laughed at the imputation that he had made a horse’s arse of himself.”
Hawke’s language on the phone to Brown was very different to when he once spoke to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Brown had earlier received a phone call from his UK equivalent,Neil McFarlane,who was alarmed the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh would be boycotted by African nations if a British and Irish Lions tour of South Africa proceeded. The opening game of the tour coincided with the Opening Ceremony of the Games.
Brown,who was present at the phone call,quotes a frustrated Hawke telling a defiant Thatcher,“Listen,you f---ing bitch,get that f---ing team to withdraw from South Africa or otherwise the Commonwealth Games will implode and possibly the British Commonwealth of Nations.”
Thatcher finally agreed and Hawke apologised for his language.
Brown writes,“I remember their conversation vividly”. He will be 92 in December and his memory remains sharp. A year older than Hayden,he is determined to outlive him.