Simon Crean served four prime ministers in a career of distinction
Like his father before him, Simon Crean was a good man to have by you in a crisis, and the ACTU and Labor legend faced more than most.
Simon Crean was born into the Labor Party. His father, Frank, had been deputy prime minister in the Whitlam government. He recalled lamb roasts cooked by his mother, Mary, on Sundays and bumping elbows with dinner guests HV “Doc” Evatt, Arthur Calwell and Gough Whitlam at the family home on Harold Street, Middle Park, in Melbourne.
“Ours was a welcoming home,” Crean reminisced in one of more than a dozen interviews with me across the past decade. “In those days, there was no electorate office. So home was the electorate office. There would always be people dropping in to see Dad, who may have been mowing the lawn at the time.”
He recalled Evatt being the first Labor leader he met. The Whitlam government provided a quick study in how to run, and not run, a party and government. His father was initially close to Whitlam, who told governor-general Sir Paul Hasluck to call on him to form a government “if anything were to happen” to him or his deputy Lance Barnard.
“Dad had the same frustrations as many did about Gough’s one-man-band approach,” Crean recalled. “Dad always took the view that the economics were important to get right. Dad didn’t play games. He was a straight talker. But I think it was a relationship that ended in frustration.”
Recalling these dinner table conversations years later – often over coffee at a Middle Park cafe – Crean said they served as a political education for him and his brothers, David and Stephen. This was the genesis of a stellar career in which Crean rose to the top of the political and industrial wings of the labour movement.
As ACTU president in the mid-1980s, Crean was talked about as a future Labor leader and prime minister. When he entered parliament as the MP for Hotham in 1990, he was on the path. It was not just the political pedigree; he was smart, principled, committed to public service and respected across the political divide.
While Crean never became prime minister and never contested an election as opposition leader, he made his mark on the public policy settings of the nation, first as ACTU vice-president and president in implementing the Accord during the ’80s and, second, across a wide range of ministerial portfolios in governments led by four prime ministers.
In 1970, after studying economics and law at Monash University, Crean joined the Federated Storemen and Packers Union. He became secretary in 1979, the same year he turned 30. He was elected ACTU president in 1985. He recalled working alongside Bob Hawke and Paul Keating to implement the Accord as the “most exciting time” in his career.
“We lent credibility to a Labor government in terms of economic management because we delivered on where we had previously struggled,” Crean recalled. “For the first time, we showed what the labour movement could do for the nation when it shared the economic agenda.’’
He had made his mark as a new breed of union leader. He was educated, intelligent, politically savvy and prized working co-operatively with other unions, business and government. He was not interested in class warfare or the politics of envy. When he entered parliament, Hawke immediately handed him the ministerial portfolios of science and technology, outside cabinet.
The Labor government was soon enveloped in the epic Hawke-Keating leadership battle. Crean remained a Hawke loyalist. After Keating’s first challenge fell short, Crean was elevated to cabinet with responsibility for primary industries and energy. He is still regarded by farming groups as one of their best ministers. At the end of 1993, Keating gave Crean responsibility for employment, education and training.
Looking back, he judged Hawke and Keating as the best Labor prime ministers. “Bob was always a good chair of a meeting, at the ACTU and in cabinet,” Crean said. “There was a good feel about his and Keating’s cabinets. You felt you could contribute. There was creativity around the table. There was always a preparedness to encourage discussion and input.”
After Labor’s 1996 election defeat, Kim Beazley was elected unopposed as party leader. Crean stood against Gareth Evans for deputy but lost 42-37. After the 1998 election, Crean was elected deputy leader unopposed and was appointed opposition Treasury spokesman.
He stood by the decision to oppose the Howard government’s GST because it was “regressive” but thought using the term rollback to describe Labor’s approach was a mistake. “We put forward a plan that was tax reform without the GST,” he remembered. “Our plan also included cuts to marginal income tax rates but was not funded by a new consumption tax.”
After the 2001 election defeat, the third in a row for Labor, Crean was elected party leader unopposed with Jenny Macklin as his deputy. It was not a happy time for Labor, shell-shocked at losing another election, and Crean faced persistent undermining from within.
In Crean’s brief time as leader, from 2001 to 2003, he worked hard to address Labor’s policy weaknesses on asylum-seekers, superannuation, and education and training. Two courageous moments stand out: taking a stand against the disastrous Iraq war, and challenging factions and unions to embrace structural reforms to the party.
Labor opposed the deployment of troops to Iraq, a position Crean later said was absolutely vindicated. When the troops were farewelled at Garden Island in Sydney, Crean said Labor’s dispute was with the government sending them to war, and not with them. He delivered one of the finest speeches by an Australian political leader, even though it was unpopular at the time.
“I don’t believe you should be going,” Crean told 350 troops about to depart for the Middle East on HMAS Kanimbla in 2003. “I don’t think that there should be a deployment of troops to Iraq ahead of the United Nations determining it … I do support our troops and always will, and that distinction is fundamentally important … you don’t have a choice and my argument is with the government, not you.”
Crean told me the speech was unscripted and his purpose was “to remind the Australian people that it was possible to voice opposition to a war without in any way diminishing our respect and support” for those who served our country. He later reiterated Labor’s opposition when US president George W. Bush addressed the parliament that year.
Hawke and former NSW premier Neville Wran were appointed to review the 2001 election defeat and the state of the party. Their report was the springboard for a protracted battle between Crean and faction and union leaders. In 2002, he succeeded in reducing union delegates to state party conferences from 60 per cent to 50 per cent, doubling the size of national conference and introducing member election of the party president. These reforms made his enemies more determined to end his leadership.
Yet Crean’s performance as leader was also found wanting by many on the party’s front and backbenches, and assessed as such by the press gallery. The polls were often diabolical. John Howard, the Great Houdini of Australian politics, was on track to win a fourth election. Crean often struggled in parliament and in the media to cut through. And the knives were always out.
To end the feverish leadership speculation, Crean called a spill in mid-2003. Beazley stood, with Crean the victor by 58 votes to 34. As the polls continued to slide, and faced with more internal destabilisation, Crean was persuaded to stand down as leader. In December that year, Labor turned to Mark Latham rather than return Beazley to the leadership. Beazley did become leader again after Latham spectacularly imploded after losing the 2004 election.
Beazley’s challenge was viewed as a betrayal by Crean. “I had given him absolute loyalty,” he reflected. “If you give it, you should get it.” While Crean never led Labor to an election, he noted that Beazley had never won a leadership ballot.
Yet he assessed Beazley favourably. “(He) was probably the best prime minister the country never had,” Crean said. “He was an inclusive leader. The shadow cabinet worked well. I was very close to him as deputy leader and I thought we were an effective team.”
Crean remained on the opposition frontbench and served in the Treasury, trade and regional development portfolios. In 2006, Crean survived factional manoeuvring and a preselection challenge from Martin Pakula, winning 70 per cent of the local vote, and was re-elected to parliament in 2007.
Crean returned to cabinet and served under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard in a range of portfolios across the next six years: trade, education, employment, workplace relations, regional development and arts. Delivering a cultural policy, overhauling employment and training programs, rewriting drought policy, developing the co-operative research centres model and advancing free trade were the things of which he was proud.
Now in his elder statesman phase with Hawke-Keating-era lineage, Crean garnered respect from across the political spectrum. But some ministers saw him as yesterday’s man who made longwinded contributions in cabinet, while others found him to be highly effective as he drew on a well of experience and they appreciated his kind and generous counsel.
Although a long-time supporter of Gillard, he became increasingly concerned about the government’s political and policy judgments, as reflected in a downward trend in the polls, and he wanted Rudd to mount a second leadership challenge. He met with Rudd in late 2012, who made the case for why he should be leader. Crean was eyeing the deputy position in a Rudd restoration but not as part of a formal ticket.
He spoke to Gillard three times in March 2013 to try to persuade her to initiate a ballot. “It’s not just the leadership destabilisation that is the problem,” Crean told her. “It is your own performance.” Gillard flatly refused. Crean publicly declined to back her and then publicly called for a spill. Gillard finally agreed. But Rudd refused to stand and Gillard was re-elected leader unopposed. It was a train wreck.
Gillard was furious and wanted revenge. Crean was instructed to resign. He refused. Before question time, Gillard phoned Crean. “I want your resignation,” she demanded. “No,” he replied. Gillard had on her desk a letter to governor-general Quentin Bryce advising the termination of Crean’s ministerial commission. “It’s done,” Gillard said as she signed the letter.
When Rudd eventually challenged Gillard in June 2013, Crean stood as deputy leader against Anthony Albanese but was defeated by 61 votes to 38. Crean told me he expected the Rudd camp to back him, not Albanese, for deputy. He was mistaken. Crean offered to serve in cabinet again but was rebuffed. He decided to retire at the next election.
He said Gillard would be remembered for school education and disability reform, and the misogyny speech. For Rudd, it would be the apology to the Stolen Generations, the response to the global financial crisis and the National Broadband Network. But the failure to effectively manage their relationship, he said, would damage their respective legacies.
“He’s an egotist; she’s a denialist,” Crean said of Rudd and Gillard. “And that’s what we were dealing with. Two people who believed they were the best asset for the party, rather than them being part of a process that had really set this country up and build on it.” He added: “Their strength was in their combination.”
Looking back on his career in politics and the union movement, and how it ended in acrimony and division, he reflected that he had always acted with integrity and honesty – co-operation rather than conflict – and with the party and the nation always put first. “I have no regrets,” he said. “None.”
Crean was in Berlin, leading a European Australian Business Council delegation, when he died suddenly after his morning exercise on Sunday. He had been dealing with heart problems. He is survived by his wife, Carole, whom he married more than 50 years ago in 1973, and their daughters Sarah and Emma.
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