For Prime Minister Bob Hawke, it finally came down to the numbers. Last Wednesday newly released opinion polls showed not only that his Labor Party trailed the conservative opposition, 31% to 52%, but also that his own approval rating was a slim 26%--down from a 1983 high of 75%. The next day, bowing to party pressure, Hawke put his job up for grabs, and lost it by a vote of 56-51 to the party's former treasurer, Paul Keating.

Thus ended Hawke's unbroken tenure of eight years and nine months at the helm, the longest stint by a Labor Prime Minister. Although he was also the first Labor leader to be ousted while in office, Hawke, 62, bowed out graciously, pledging that he would "give Paul a hand."

The task ahead for Keating, 47, is hardly enviable. Labor fortunes continue to sag as the country's recession drags into its 18th month, with unemployment running at a 60-year high of 10.5%. Keating, who designed the economic-liberalization program that precipitated the country's slump, must now prove he is also the man to put the economy back on track. Scoffs conservative leader John Hewson: "Putting in Mr. Recession to get us out of the recession is the ultimate irony."