Bob Hawke

Bob Hawke, star Brendan Fevola, and some of Australia's most notorious underworld figures all have one thing in common.
They are linked to legendary bookmaker Alan Tripp, father of Matthew Tripp who founded controversial new betting agency Betr.
The News Corp-backed upstart, which along with its boss has no connection to the elder Tripp's underworld former clients, started with a bang by offering outrageous odds on the Cup.
Alan Tripp became known as 'the most convicted bookie in Australia' during the 1980s and '90s crackdown on the then-illegal industry.
In those days, the TAB was a collection of state government-owned monopolies, and privately run start-price (SP) bookies were illegal.
Matthew Tripp is the founder of Australia's newest betting agency, Betr, and his father Alan Tripp was a legendary bookmaker said to be 'the most convicted in Australia'
But punters hungered for alternatives as the TAB took a commission of at least 17 per cent and rounded down winnings by as much as nine cents on the dollar.
As the country's biggest SP bookie, Tripp Sr was public enemy number one of police vice squads in NSW, Victoria, and the ACT and arrested numerous times.
He was famously raided in 1992 when ACT Police discovered he was running a betting operation from the luxury Hyatt Hotel in Canberra.
According to ledgers seized in the 1992 raid, Alan Tripp was raking in $20 million a year ($40 million in today's money) at between $30,000 and $60,000 a day.
Investigators calculated this figure from ledgers of bets taken the day before the raid.
Ledgers for the day of the raid - written in dissolvable ink - were destroyed when Tripp Sr threw them into a bin full of water.
His earnings, according to the seized ledgers, dwarfed the $140,000 he was fined over 14 years for numerous illegal betting convictions.
Two police officers were convicted of taking a $10,000 bribe to give him back a ledger taken during a 1988 raid.
Keen gambler and former prime minister Bob Hawke (pictured with his wife Blanche) also became a close family friend after he and Alan Tripp met through Coburg Football Club during the 1980s
Lewis Moran, gangster of Underbelly fame, was another prominent client of Alan Tripp
Despite his many run-ins with the law, Tripp Sr kept operating his very profitable enterprise with high-rolling clients ranging from the cream of Australian society to notorious gangsters.
They included media mogul Kerry Packer and underworld figures - like Lewis Moran and Alphonse Gangitano - made famous by TV series Underbelly.
Keen gambler and former prime minister Bob Hawke also became a close family friend after meeting Tripp Sr through Coburg Football Club in the 1980s, when they were club committee members and sponsors.
Moran was also known to frequent the club as Coburg became a social magnet and Tripp Snr flushed it with cash and made it an on-field success.
Mr Hawke often bet enough to keep Tripp Sr afloat in hard times and they once shared a pizza and drained a $2,000 bottle of Penfolds Grange Hermitage at the former prime minister's home.
They were such good friends that when police raided Tripp Sr's home they found a photo of the pair at Coburg stuck on the fridge. 
When Beating The Odds, a book about Alan Tripp's career, was published in March 2011, Mr Hawke even took photos with his bookie mate. 
Alan Tripp eventually moved to the Pacific island of Vanuatu, where sport betting was legal, and opened Number One Betting Shop to remotely wager in Australia.
Hon RJ Hawke former Australian PM enjoying on holiday in Port Vila wi His son's first time running a gambling business came when Tripp Sr sold the company to British agency Sportingbet for $35 million.
Much to the new owner's shock, it was blocked from getting a gambling licence in the newly legalised industry because of its association with Tripp Sr.
Eventually a deal was struck for it to be licenced in the Northern Territory, still a haven for betting agencies, so long as the colourful old bookie wasn't involved.
Matt Tripp was tasked with transferring the operation to Australia and keeping hold of its clients, before handing over to new Australian boss Michael Sullivan.
Tripp Sr has mostly retired to the town of Yarrawonga on the Victoria-NSW border, where Matt Tripp and his sister Elizabeth grew up, but still spends time in Vanuatu.
Mr Hawke was photographed by Vanuatu media in 2017 playing golf with his old mate, saying he was on the island to 'have a very relaxed visit with my good friend Alan Tripp'.
AFL star and self-confessed gambling addict Brendan Fevola was spotted on the Tripp family superyacht Majestic II with his wife Alex and their three children in 2013.
AFL star, and self-confessed gambling addict, Brendan Fevola was spotted on the Tripp family superyacht Majestic II with his wife Alex and their three children in 2013
Fevola was at the time playing for the Yarrawonga Pigeons team years after his AFL retirement, of which the Tripp family was a major sponsor
He stayed in Alan Tripp's villa but even on holiday with his family made several solo trips to the Grand casino siteleri next door to indulge his gambling addiction.
Fevola was at the time playing for the Yarrawonga Pigeons years after his AFL retirement.

The Tripp family was a major sponsor of the club.
Fevola said he got a call from Matt Tripp out of the blue in December 2011 and thought 'oh s**t, what the f**k is he calling for, because I used to bet with him'.
The then-Sportsbet chief executive was playing golf with club president Glenn Brear and the pair worked out a plan to bring Fevola to the country town team.
Fevola said he was 'in a pretty bad way' at the time, after being booted from the AFL, and credited playing for the Pigeons with turning his life around.
He got back with his ex-wife Alex Cheatham in 2015 - which she said would never happened if he hadn't gone to play in Yarrawonga - and they had a third child.
Fevola won two premierships with Yarrawonga in 2012 and 2013, playing with the team until the end of the 2015 season. 
  Why you shouldn't bet against Betr boss Matt Tripp despite launch controversy
Betr launched in a flurry of hype and controversy just weeks before the  Cup.
Desperate to grab market share from rivals TAB and Sportsbet, it took an outrageous risk offering 100-1 odds on every horse, even hot favourite Deauville Legend.
Gold Trip's storming victory on Tuesday meant the firm dodged a disastrous $50million payout, but not everyone is happy with the stunt.
Betr is now facing fines from the gambling regulator and the wrath of furious punters who claim their accounts were deactivated so they couldn't collect their winnings.
But no one who wants to see the upstart agency fail should bet against Mr Tripp.
Mr Tripp, 47, bought a near-bankrupt Sportsbet for just $250,000 in 2005 and sold it to Irish betting giant Paddy Power for $388million just six years later.
He then snapped up BetEasy for $6million and sold it twice, first with a 66 per cent stake to James Packer's Crown in 2014 and then to The Stars Group in 2019.
Desperate to grab market share from rivals TAB and Sportsbet, it took a huge risk offering 100-1 odds on every horse, even hot favourite Deauville Legend 
When Mr Tripp took it on, the company had just 20,000 punters signed up.

When TSG snapped it up, it was valued at $1.255billion and Mr Tripp walked away with $94.5million for his last stake alone.
Despite being a diehard AFL fan, he weeks later became executive chairman of the Melbourne Storm NRL team, in which he had long owned a 12.5 per cent stake.
But his close friend professional gambler Scott Woodward revealed meticulously studying betting odds isn't the only secret to his method.
'He is superstitious and always wears his underpants inside out and insists on double-strength toilet paper and a bottle of water near his bed,' he wrote in his book. 
Making noise with a huge risk like Betr's Melbourne Cup stunt is nothing new to its hard-charging founder, who wagered $1million on Hawthorn to win the 2008 AFL Grand Final - and won.
In the 2022 Melbourne Cup, Gold Trip stormed home at Flemington to win 
Betr was so worried about paying out on Deauville Legend that it hedged millions with other bookmakers and offered punters $150 to cancel their bets.
But after Gold Trip crossed the line, Mr Tripp was hailing the launch as a masterstroke and one of the most successful of all time. 
'It's been literally the talk of every pub and bar in the country,' he said after 300,000 punters signed up in just two weeks. 
Mr Tripp celebrated after the race with close mate Todd Buckingham, part owner of Gold Trip and chief executive of Betmakers, which provides the wagering technology for Betr.
They dined and partied at upscale Melbourne restaurant Coda, which Mr Tripp owns along with similarly priced Tonka.
Adding to a year of high emotions was the death in April of Mr Tripp's daughter Isabella in April, aged just 14, after a battle with leukemia.
Despite his high-flying life running billion-dollar betting agencies and sport teams, Mr Tripp finds time to go on exotic holidays with his wife Yasmina, son Alex, and daughters Matti and Bella, before her death.
Family photos show them boating on the River Nile and posing with Millie Mouse at Disneyland.
Matthew Tripp with his son and eldest child Alex Tripp
<div class="art-ins mol-factbox news" data-version="2" id="mol-ad0b1b80-5be8-11ed-a1d3-6d35a74e3220" website Bob Hawke, Fevola, Underbelly gangsters and Betr have in common