Before the upcoming election, then-prime minister Bob Hawke took 20 backbenchers to dinner to tell them the government could still win, The Canberra Times' political correspondent Tony Wright reported on its front page on this day 30 years ago.
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Mr Hawke asked his backbenchers for ideas on how to communicate better with the electorate.
The dinner was held in the Members' Dining Room at Parliament House, the first of a series of such morale-boosting exercises. He admitted the WA Inc scandal and deep problems of the Labor government in Victoria were "not helpful" for electoral chances. However, Mr Hawke told the MPs the debacles in WA and Victoria were not enough to sink the federal government, according to sources at the dinner.
He believed voters would recognise that state and federal issues were separate. Mr Hawke told the backbenchers he was developing a strategy to place the government in a winning position by election time.
Part of the strategy relied on the economy recovering from the recession. Low and middle-income earners would begin to realise they would be hurt by the opposition's' "savage" education and welfare policies, he said.
