Bob Hawke death LIVE: Labor legend and former Australian prime minister dies aged 89

In a moving interivew on the ABC's 730 in February 2018 Blanche d'Alpuget talked about how her husband had no fear of death and how difficut it would be for her to go on without him. 

Bob Hawke offered Chinese students living in Australia asylum in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre - he did so without consulting cabinet or the public service - watch his emotional address in 1989.

Here is the front page of tomorrow's The Sydney Morning Herald

Damien Muprhy writes that Bob Hawke was Labor's golden boy who transformed a nation.  He was a beer-skolling union star who went on to become prime minister, modernise the economy and weep in public.

Readers who would like to leave their tributes to Bob Hawke can do so here. We will publish a collection of them on Friday.

Malcolm Turnbull has also paid tribute to Bob Hawke saying "Australia is a better place because of him".

F'ormer Hawke minister Susan Ryan says there is “nothing Liberal about Bob” in response to claims from former prime minister Tony Abbott that he had a “Labor heart but a Liberal head”.

“He was absolutely Labor through and through. He loved the Labor movement. He loved nothing more in his later years than getting together with union colleagues, singing Solidarity for Ever, knowing the verses. It came from the heart,” she says.

“The idea that he would advance and create new directions in terms of deregulation was not Labor being Liberal, it was just hugely intelligent understanding of the way the world was going and making decisions that would ultimately be best for all the people of Australia.” 

Former prime minister Julia Gillard has remembered Bob Hawke as the "greatest peacetime leader Australia has ever had".

"As a teenager Bob inspired me, as a PM he guided me.

"I will miss him. I wish so very much that Bob had been able to see one more election day. My condolences to Blanche, his children and grandchildren."