Simon Crean

Early life and education

Crean was born in Melbourne. He is the son of Frank Crean, a federal Labor MP 1951–77, who was at separate times Treasurer, Minister for Overseas Trade, and Deputy Prime Minister in the Gough Whitlam government. Dr David Crean, a former Labor member of the Parliament of Tasmania, is his brother. Another brother, Stephen Crean, died while skiing alone at Charlotte Pass, New South Wales in 1985, aged 38, and his body was not found for two years.

Crean was educated at Middle Park Central School, Melbourne High School and Monash University where he graduated with a Bachelor of Economics and Bachelor of Laws.

Union movement

Following his graduation from Monash University, Crean worked in a number of trade unions before becoming an official with the Storeman and Packers Union, of which he became General Secretary in 1979.

In 1977, his father, Frank Crean, retired from Federal politics. Simon contested the Labor preselection for his father's comfortably safe seat of Melbourne Ports, but lost to former state Labor leader Clyde Holding.

In 1981, Crean became Vice-President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), and in 1985 he was elected the organisation's President. As President, he played a key role in negotiating agreements on wages and other industrial issues with the Labor government of Bob Hawke. In 1990, he left the ACTU to go into politics.

Hawke and Keating Governments

At the 1990 election, Crean was elected to Parliament as the member for the safe Labor seat of Hotham. He immediately entered the Hawke ministry as Minister for Science and Technology. He became Minister for Primary Industries and Energy in 1991, a portfolio he kept under Paul Keating. He became Minister for Employment, Education and Training in 1993.

Opposition

Following the Labor Party's 1996 election defeat, Crean contested the deputy leadership of the party but was defeated by Gareth Evans, 42 votes to 37. Crean was an Opposition frontbencher until Labor's defeat at the 1998 election. He was then elected Deputy Leader of the Opposition and became shadow Treasurer in succession to Evans. In January 2001, Crean was awarded the Centenary Medal.

In November 2001, following Labor's third consecutive election defeat, Crean was elected unopposed as the Leader of the Labor Party and Leader of the Opposition following the resignation of Kim Beazley.

On 4 February 2003, Crean led the Labor Party in condemning Prime Minister John Howard's decision to commit Australian troops to the Iraq War.

Through most of 2003, consistently poor polling led to constant speculation of a leadership challenge by Beazley, though a reasonably successful Budget reply speech and the controversy over Peter Hollingworth gave Crean a small boost in popularity. Nevertheless, to end the constant rumblings over a challenge, Crean called for a leadership spill. Polls continued to suggest that the public much preferred Beazley to Crean; nevertheless, when the vote was taken on 16 June 2003, Crean won by 58 votes to 34.

By November, however, polls continued to show Crean losing more ground to Howard as preferred Prime Minister. On 27 November 2003 a group of his senior colleagues told Crean that he had lost the party's support and should resign. Crean said he would "sleep on it". On 28 November 2003, Crean announced that he would resign as Leader of the Labor Party, becoming the first federal Labor leader to be replaced without having contested an election since the expulsion of Billy Hughes in 1916.

After Crean's resignation, Beazley and the Labor Party's Treasury spokesperson, Mark Latham, announced that they would contest the Labor leadership. At the meeting of the federal Labor caucus on 2 December 2003, Latham defeated Beazley by 47 votes to 45.

Latham appointed Crean as Shadow Treasurer, which gave him a continued prominent role in Australian politics. In the aftermath of Labor's defeat in the 2004 election, Crean resigned from his Shadow Treasurer position. However, at Latham's insistence he was re-elected to the Opposition front bench as Shadow Minister for Trade.

Crean retained this position when Beazley returned to the leadership in January 2005. However, in a reshuffle of the shadow ministry in June 2005, Crean was demoted to Shadow Minister for Regional Development. He faced a preselection challenge for his seat from Martin Pakula, a member of his former union, a move which he blamed on Beazley, Hong Lim, and the Labor Right. Beazley refused to publicly support either candidate, but several frontbenchers, including Julia Gillard, supported Crean. Crean recorded around 70% of the votes in the first stage of voting, which led to his opponent's withdrawal. Since his victory Crean has singled out Senator Stephen Conroy for his part in the preselection challenge, describing his front bench colleague as "venal" and "one of the most disloyal people I've ever worked with in my life".

Following the defeat of Kim Beazley and election of Kevin Rudd as Federal Labor leader in December 2006, Crean was reappointed as Shadow Minister for Trade and also retained responsibility for regional development.

Rudd and Gillard Governments

In 2007 after Labor's election victory, Crean was appointed Minister for Trade in Kevin Rudd's ministry.

Crean visited Singapore and Vietnam from 21–26 July 2009 to pursue Australia's trade and economic interests at a range of ministerial and other high level meetings. From 21–23 July, Crean attended the APEC Meeting of Ministers Responsible for Trade and the OECD Roundtable on Sustainable Development in Singapore. On 24 July, Crean co-chaired the 8th Joint Trade and Economic Cooperation Committee with the Vietnamese Minister of Planning and Investment Vo Hong Phuc in Hanoi. The aim of the meeting was to discuss key sectors in the bilateral relationship including education and training, infrastructure and environmental management, financial services and agribusiness.

Following Julia Gillard's election unopposed as Prime Minister in June 2010, Crean was appointed Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, and Minister for Social Inclusion, with the Trade portfolio moving to Stephen Smith. After the 2010 federal election, Crean was made Minister for the Arts and Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government.

On 21 March 2013, amidst disunity within the Gillard Labor Government arising from sinking public opinion polls, Crean called for a spill of the Labor Party leadership, with the aim of encouraging Kevin Rudd to challenge for the position of Prime Minister. This was a marked shift on Crean's part, as his attacks on Rudd had been a factor in Rudd being forced to resign as Foreign Minister a year earlier. Crean said he would challenge Wayne Swan for the Deputy Leader's position if Rudd ran for the leadership. However, Rudd declined to run for the leadership, leaving Gillard to retain the leadership unopposed. After Crean asked for a leadership spill, Gillard sacked Crean from Cabinet, citing "disloyalty" to her. Before his sacking, Crean had been one of the few federal politicians to have never spent a day on the backbench, having been either a Cabinet minister or opposition frontbencher for his entire quarter-century in Parliament.

Crean is the first person to serve as a minister under four Labor Prime Ministers (Hawke, Keating, Rudd and Gillard) since Jack Beasley (who served under James Scullin, John Curtin, Frank Forde and Ben Chifley).

On 26 June 2013, after Kevin Rudd was re-elected as party leader replacing Julia Gillard, Crean stood for the position of Deputy Prime Minister (a job once held by his father) but was defeated in the Caucus vote by Anthony Albanese by 61 votes to 38.

On 1 July after failing to become Deputy Prime Minister, Crean announced that he would retire from Parliament at the 2013 election.