John Hewson - Early working life, Entry into Politics, After politics

Australian politician and economist, born in Sydney, New South Wales, SE Australia. He studied at the University of Sydney and Johns Hopkins University, USA, worked as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund and to a range of business and industrial concerns, and became professor of economics at the University of New South Wales (1978–87). He entered federal politics in 1987, and was shadow minister for finance (1988–9) and shadow treasurer (1989–90), becoming leader of the Liberal Party in 1990 when Andrew Peacock lost the federal election. He was a strong advocate of neoclassical economics. In 1993, to the surprise of many, the Liberal Party lost their fifth successive federal election. Hewson was replaced as leader in 1994, and served as shadow minister for industry in 1994–5.

Dr. John Robert Hewson (born 28 October 1946), Australian Liberal politician and economist, was born in Sydney, New South Wales, the son of a working-class, politically conservative engineer.

Early working life

Returning to Australia, Hewson worked as an economist for the Reserve Bank of Australia.

After the defeat of the Fraser government in 1983, Hewson went into business journalism, and became a director of a private bank, the Macquarie Bank.

Entry into Politics

In 1987 Hewson was elected to the House of Representatives for the upper-class Sydney electorate of Wentworth. In May 1989, when Andrew Peacock replaced Howard as Leader, Hewson became shadow Treasurer to Paul Keating. In the lead up to the 1990 election, Hewson, the trained economist, performed well against Keating, whose grasp of economics had only developed during his time as Treasurer.

When Peacock was defeated at the 1990 elections, Hewson was elected to the Liberal leadership, despite having been in Parliament only three years. (Reith was then elected deputy leader and Hewson made him Shadow Treasurer.) His positive qualities were his strength in economic policy, and his attractive media personality. But he had no experience in other areas of policy, his views on most issues were unknown, and he had little experience of political tactics, particularly against such hardened veterans as Hawke and Keating. and the bid for Prime Ministership

Neverthless, Hewson made up ground on the Hawke government in the opinion polls, as the Australian economy went into deep recession and unemployment skyrocketed.

In December Keating successfully challenged Hawke and became Prime Minister.

Through 1992 Keating mounted a scare campaign against the Fightback package, and particularly against the GST, which he described as an attack on the working class in that it shifted the tax burden from direct taxation of the wealthy to indirect taxation of the mass of consumers. Keating memorably described the impact of Hewson's GST as "15% on this, 15% on that."

This assault forced Hewson into a partial backdown, agreeing not to levy the GST on food. But this concession opened Hewson to charges of weakness and inconsistency, and also complicated the arithmetic of the whole package, since the weakening of the GST reduced the scope for tax cuts, the most attractive element of the package for middle-class voters. 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 Willessee about whether or not a birthday cake would cost more or less under a Coalition government.

Keating's campaign was demagogic, but Hewson's personal detestation of Keating clouded his judgment, and he lacked the political skills to counter Keating effectively. At the March 1993 election Hewson was defeated by Keating, losing what many had described as "the unloseable election" for the Liberals.

Despite previously having pledged to resign the leadership in the event that he was defeated at the 1993 Federal Election, Hewson decided to continue in his position. He defeated a post-election party leadership challenge from John Howard but his 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 1994 his colleagues engineered a leadership coup, replacing Hewson with Alexander Downer.

After politics

Since his departure from politics, he has written extensively for the business and general press, and spent time on the lecture circuit.

After 1996 he became increasingly critical of Prime Minister John Howard.

He became Professor of Management at Macquarie University, Sydney, and Dean of the Macquarie Graduate School of Management in 2002 but resigned within two years after a falling out with the University's then vice-chancellor, Di Yerbury.

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.

In August 2006 Andrew Denton conducted an in-depth Interview with Hewson on the ABC TV program Enough Rope