Two years after Bob’s death, Blanche is ‘looking for the right companion’

Sunday will mark two years since former Prime Minister Bob Hawke died, and his wife Blanche d’Alpuget says she’s now ready to move on with a new companion.

Of course, it’s common for those who have lost a partner to struggle with the idea of sharing their life with someone else, but the 77-year-old, who’s spent the last year battling breast cancer, told Network Seven’s The Latest on Thursday night that she’s ready to start looking toward the future.

“I would love to be able to travel around Australia but one really needs a companion for that,” she told journalist Michael Usher. “So I guess I am looking for the right companion.”

d’Alpuget revealed that her cancer treatment made it all the more difficult to grieve after the former Labor leader died in 2019, as she had to focus so much of her energy on her own health. She discovered a lump about the size of a 10c piece in her left breast just nine months after Hawke died and underwent eight weeks of chemotherapy before she having surgery to remove the cancer.

“It took up so much of my time, because first I had months of chemotherapy, and then I had to recover from that,” she revealed. “Then I had a big surgery and recover from that, and then have more drugs pumped into me.

“So in a way, the first anniversary of his death wasn’t as bad because I was just struggling to survive.”

Remembering her late husband, d’Alpuget said Hawke became “sweeter and sweeter” as he got older.

“It was really wonderful,” she said. “Our love just got stronger and stronger.”

She also joked that life was now a lot simpler without him, but conceded “it’s missing an element, a very large element”.

Hawke’s larger-than-life personality meant that he always kept d’Alpuget on her toes at home, but he also used that energy to fuel change across Australia’s political landscape as Labor leader and prime minister.

Asked what she thought her husband of 24 years would think of today’s Labor Party, d’Alpuget said he’d be disappointed that the relationship between unions and business had “fallen apart” and that he’d have hoped to see more equality for women.

“He’d be upset that wages have flatlined for so many years and workers, especially women, have been getting the rough end of the pineapple,” she said.

“People think of Bob as a womaniser, but he really was a feminist, he really did believe in equality for women and the equal treatment of women.”