The rhetoric of consensus

Bob Hawke has used the notion of consensus in three distinct ways. The term was first employed as a polemic to discredit the Fraser government and establish Hawke's claim to the ALP leadership. It then became shorthand for the political program Hawke put forward during the 1983 election campaign. Finally — and perhaps most ambitiously — it sought a new philosophical twist for Australian politics. By 1985, however, the concept lacked credibility and was quietly abandoned as polemic, program or government philosophy. The rhetoric of consensus, for all its success, was short‐lived in its usefulness.