The building at 133 Sydney
Road Brunswick was originally the Phoenix Hotel, but was bought
by the Storemen and Packers Union (the precurser to the NUW),
who decided in 1973 to rename it after the then trade union
supremo (and future prime minister and local federal MP) Bob
Hawke.
Hence in May 1973, the recently elected
Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam ventured out to Brunswick
to officially open the renamed hotel. He expounded the fact
that it was the only hotel in the southern hemisphere owned
by a trade union.
This did cause problems for one State Labor
Minister who was connected with the Storemen and Packers,
and who had to resign from the Cain ministry in 1983 after
he had continued to sign cheques on behalf of the holding
company which owned the hotel for the union after he had left
the company's board.
The union sold the hotel sometime in the
late 1980s, and by 1989 (while Bob Hawke was still both PM
and local MP with a rarely visited electoral office just down
the road), it had been renamed the Candy Shop Tavern, and
painted pink. A sign of the times, perhaps.
After a short lived run as the Candy Shop
Tavern it then became The Paris Tavern (1992 ish). The Paris
ran for about 12 years as a nightclub then as a Greek Bouzouki
venue in its twilight years.
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