John Hewson Biography
John Robert Hewson AM (born October 28, 1946) is a former Australian politician who served from 1990 to 1994 as Liberal Party leader. At the federal election in 1993, he led the Coalition to defeat. Born in Sydney, Hewson. He holds an economics doctorate from Johns Hopkins University, as well as degrees from Sydney University and Regina University.
Before going into politics, Hewson worked for periods as an economist for Australia’s Reserve Bank, as a Fraser government economic advisor, as a business journalist, and as Macquarie Bank’s director.
Hewson was elected to Representatives ‘ House in 1987. The following year, under John Howard and Andrew Peacock, he was appointed to the shadow cabinet. Hewson was elected Liberal Party leader in his place after Peacock lost the 1990 election, thus becoming opposition leader.
He started the Fightback in 1991! A political manifesto that proposed a series of major economic reforms centred on the tax on goods and services (GST).
The federal election of 1993 focused primarily on economic policy, particularly on how Australia should respond to the recession of the early 1990s. At that point, the Labor Party — led by Paul Keating — was in power for 10 years, and many polls suggested a victory for the Coalition.
Labor was able to mount a successful countercampaign, however, with net seat increase from the party allowing Keating to remain prime minister. Hewson continued for another year as Liberal leader, losing Alexander Downer’s leadership spill in 1994. He left parliament the following year, but as a business leader and political commentator, he has remained a public figure since.
John Hewson Age
he is 72 years old as of 2018.
John Hewson Birthday Cake
John Hewson reflects on ‘birthday cake’ interview following death of Mike Willesee.
Former Liberal leader John Hewson has paid tribute to legendary reporter Mike Willesee.
The veteran journalist has lost his battle with throat cancer aged 76.
Throughout his career, he became known as a fearless interviewer and pioneer of current affairs television.
Among his notable achievements is the famous ‘birthday cake’ interview, where he cornered then-opposition leader John Hewson on the issue of GST.
But Mr Hewson tells Ben Fordham there aren’t any hard feelings.
“I think he was a journalist with a genuine passion… he made an enormous contribution.”
Mr Hewson laughs as Ben replays the memorable interview on-air.
“A good question and a particularly bad answer now I hear it again!”
Ray Martin, who worked with Willesee at the ABC, says it’s an example of his immense talent as an interviewer.
“That was a groundbreaker in that election… it may well have cost the Liberal Party the whole government.”
Many believed the interview was a turning point in the election, which Hewson would go on to lose.
John Hewson Wife| Spouse| John Hewson Family
Hewson married Margaret Deaves in 1967. Having divorced Deaves in 1985, in 1988 he married Carolyn Somerville, described by news media as “a formidable figure in investment banking”. They divorced in 2004.
In 2007, John Hewson married publicist Jessica Wilson. As of 2010, they reside in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. He has six children.
Since leaving politics, Hewson has been involved in a range of non-profit organisations, including the Arthritis Foundation of Australia and KidsXpress, a charity providing expressive therapy for children.
John Hewson Early Life And Career| Professional Career
Hewson returned to Australia and worked as an economist for Australia’s Reserve Bank. From 1976 to 1983, two successive Liberal treasurers, Phillip Lynch and John Howard, were employed as economic advisors. He developed a keen interest in politics during this period and was determined to enter politics himself. While a strong Liberal, he was internally critical of what he saw as an unconvincing and inconsistent economic Liberal Party policy.[8] He supported some of Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies.
Hewson went into business journalism after the defeat of the Fraser government at the 1983 election and became a director of a private bank, the Macquarie Bank. When he entered politics, this allowed the Labor Party to tag him as “a wealthy banker.” Having divorced Margaret Deaves in 1985, he remarried to Carolyn Somerville in 1988.
John Hewson Politics
Hewson was elected to the House of Representatives at the 1987 election for Wentworth’s affluent Sydney electorate. He had been told before his election that he would have to give up his Ferrari in order to be pre-selected. Hewson, however, retained his car despite attracting controversy. He entered Parliament at a time when the conservative side of politics had a leadership vacuum.
The Coalition, led by John Howard, lost the 1987 election and a majority of Liberal MPs voted to hold him over his predecessor Andrew Peacock as a leader. Howard appointed Hewson as shadow finance minister in September 1988. Hewson became a shadow treasurer in May 1989, when Andrew Peacock replaced Howard as Leader.
Before the dumping of Howard, when Peacock was the shadow treasurer, Hewson was seen as the real shadow treasurer. Hewson, the trained economist, performed well in the lead up to the 1990 election against then-Treasurer Paul Keating. In December 1989, Hewson claimed that Keating was reluctant to discuss the economy with him.
John Hewson Election to Leadership of the opposition
Hewson was elected to the Liberal leadership when Peacock was defeated at the 1990 elections, despite having been in parliament for only three years. In the 1990 election campaign, he had been one of the top players. Hewson defeated 62 votes to 13 for Peter Reith. Reith was then elected Deputy Leader, making him Shadow Treasurer by Hewson.
John Hewson Fightback! Economic Policy
To make this summary more specific to a. Strict Scan topic, add keywords here? Shortly after the change in leadership, Hewson gained ground in opinion polls on the Hawke government as the Australian economy struggled with the recession of the early 1990s. The 15% GST was at the heart of the policy document.
While Hewson, leader of the opposition, supported abortion, gay rights, and working mothers as well as supporting right wing economies.
Through 1992, Keating mounted a campaign against the Fightback package, and especially against the GST, which he described as an attack on the working class by shifting the tax burden from direct taxation to indirect taxation as a broad – based consumer tax.
Keating memorably described Hewson’s GST impact as “15% on this, 15% on that.” Keating famously described Hewson as a “Feral Abacus.” This assault forced Dr. Hewson into a partial back down, agreeing not to levy GST on food.
This concession opened Hewson to charges of weakness and inconsistency, and also complicated the whole package’s arithmetic, as the weakening of the GST reduced the scope for tax cuts, the most attractive element of the middle – class voters package.
The complications of the new package were famously demonstrated in the “Birthday Cake Interview,” in which Hewson was unable to answer a question posed by journalist Mike Willesee as to whether or not a birthday cake under a coalition government would cost more or less.
Instead, Hewson was forced into a series of circumlocutions as to whether the cake would be decorated, have ice cream in it, and so on, considered by some as a turning point in the election campaign. Hewson said, referring to the birthday cake interview in an interview in August 2006: “Well, I answered the question honestly.
Polls up to election day supported a victory for the Coalition. Some of the proposals were later adopted in some form in law, to a small degree during the Keating Labor government, and to a greater degree during the Howard Liberal government, while the Abbott Liberal government re-targeted unemployment benefits and bulk billing for a while.
Keating won a record fifth consecutive Labor term at the 1993 election, with Hewson losing what many had described as “The unlosable election” for the liberals.
The issue of the GST was dropped from the Liberal Party’s agenda until the1998 election campaign.
Despite previously having pledged to resign the leadership in the event that he was defeated at the 1993 election, Hewson decided to continue in his position.
He defeated a post-election party leadership challenge from John Howard andBruce Reid after March 1993 however Hewson’s leadership position was never secure from that point onward and political colleagues such as Peter Costello, Alexander Downer and Bronwyn Bishop consistently undermined his leadership over the subsequent year.
In 1993 Hewson in Parliament declared directly to Paul Keating that the passing of the Mabo act would be a day of shame for Australia, while also trying to find a solution for the Aborigines.
In 1994 Hewson declared Fightback! to be dead and buried.
In May 1994, he was surprised by a party internal polling on an episode of Lateline.
Later that month he attempted to quell leadership speculation in general by calling a leadership ballot for 23 May 1994, but he lost the vote and the leadership to Alexander Downer.
Several days later Hewson joined Alexander Downer’s shadow ministry as shadow minister for Industry, Commerce, Infrastructure and Customs.
During August 1994 Downer dismissed him from the shadow ministry Durin January 1995, following his controversial joke about domestic violence policy several months prior, Downer resigned as Liberal Leader.
John Howard was elected Liberal leader for the second time.
In February 1995 Hewson resigned from Parliament, after having one of the shortest careers of any political party leader in Australian politics.
He is the only Liberal leader to leave politics without serving as a minister.
Future Prime Minister and Hewson’s former chief of staff Tony Abbott who had just entered Parliament in the Warringah by-election was among those who voted against Hewson in the May 1994 spill.
In the immediate aftermath of the spill, Abbott told The 7.30 Report that Hewson should be remembered for his first three years as a leader when he united the party following divisions with the Peacock-Howard rivalry, and not for his last twelve months.
Since his departure from politics, he has written extensively for the business and general press and spent time on the lecture circuit.
In his writings, he demonstrated an increasing focus on corporate social and environmental responsibility.
Business and academic activity In 1995, Hewson was invited to join IT&TServices as a non-executive director in one of his few private enterprise successes.
IT&T was a specialist IT and telecommunications design and project management group who delivered major technology projects for both corporate and government clients such as Citigroup, Department of Defence, NewsLimited and Ernst & Young across the Asia Pacific region.
IT&T Services was acquired by public company Powerlan Ltd in 2000.
He became Professor of Management at Macquarie University, Sydney, andDean of the Macquarie Graduate School of Management in 2002 but resigned within two years.
While at Macquarie University, he also served as a consultant to ABN AMRO. In2005, Hewson was elected onto the Touring Car Entrants Group of Australia board as an independent member.
He left in June 2006 after a dispute with V8 Supercars Australia Chairman Toni Cochrane.
John Hewson held the position of chairman of the board of directors for the Elderslie Group, a company whose primary interests lie in the areas of corporate finance and property investments.
Hewson touted investors in the group to increase their investment at a time when Elderslie was in difficulties but left them to face liquidation and big losses on their own when he resigned saying that he was unsatisfied with the direction the Group, was heading in.
On 2 July 2008, global accounting firm, PWC was appointed as receiver and administrator of the failed Elderslie Group.
Since circa 2005, Hewson has been a member of the Trilateral Commission, an alliance of top political and economic leaders from North America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe.
He is Chairman of General Security Australia Insurance Brokers Pty Ltd. In December 2012, Hewson was appointed as a non-executive director of LarusEnergy, an oil and gas company developing operations in Papua New Guinea.
In 2003 he opposed Howard’s decision to take part in the Iraq War although in2004 argued it would be electoral “Suicide” for the Liberal Party to replace Howard with an alternate leader at the time.
In July 2006, Hewson gave an interview to ABC’s Four Corners program in which he voiced concern at the growing influence of what he characterised as a“Hardline right religious element” in the NSW branch of the Liberal Party.
This was in breach of a Liberal Party rule about speaking to the media and reports at the time claimed he could face expulsion from the party.
Hewson has repeatedly appeared in television interviews and on political panels and has been a regular columnist for the Australian Financial Review since2004.
In 2011, he and former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser were among 140Australian community leaders who pledged support for an emissions trading scheme, despite the fact the Coalition and its leader Tony Abbott oppose the Carbon tax.
John Hewson Net Worth
He has an estimated net worth of $10 million.
John Hewson News
The Mike Willesee question that turned the ‘unlosable election’.
Mike Willesee — who has died at the age of 76 from cancer of the throat — was a giant of current affairs journalism.
Willesee has been described by peers as “quality and class”, a journalist with a sharp mind and a great instinct for the right question for ordinary Australians.
A bad interview with him could turn an “unlosable election”. And that’s exactly what happened to former Liberal leader John Hewson during the 1993 federal election.
The interview that sank a political leader’s career
During the campaign, Willesee interviewed the then opposition leader on Channel Nine’s A Current Affair program.
Mr Hewson was trying to spruik his party’s proposed tax reforms, but a simple question from Willesee about the cost of a birthday cake seemed to throw him off completely.
Willesee: “If I buy a birthday cake from a cake shop and GST is in place, do I pay more or less for that birthday cake?”
Hewson: “…If it is a cake shop, a cake from a cake shop that has sales tax, and it’s decorated and has candles as you say, that attracts sales tax, then of course we scrap the sales tax, before the GST is…”
Willesee: “OK — it’s just an example. If the answer to a birthday cake is so complex — you do have a problem with the overall GST?”
Mr Hewson couldn’t say whether or not a birthday cake would cost more or less with the proposed tax.
His answer made the policy look too complicated for voters, and that question is said to have put the nail in Mr Hewson’s election campaign coffin.
Speaking on ABC TV on Friday, Mr Hewson reflected on the question that dogged him for years.
“Good question, bad answer,” he said.
“Mike Willesee was a great journalist, he made a huge contribution through Four Corners, A Current Affair and This Day Tonight. He was a bit of a benchmark for the journalistic community.
“I think he’ll be remembered particularly fondly — even by me.”
Former 7.30 presenter Kerry O’Brien remembers that interview as “the turning point in the whole campaign for John Hewson”.
“I think he’d probably say that himself,” O’Brien said.
“That was a kind of Mike Willesee classic. He was excellent at hitting the mark for ordinary Australians, who weren’t necessarily highly informed, who were looking to him to do the work for them, and he did.”
More broadly, O’Brien described Willesee as “an absolute trailblazer on Australian television”.
“I regarded him right through my career as the benchmark.”
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