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Kim Christian Beazley (born 14 December 1948) is an Australian former politician and diplomat. Since 2022 he has served as chairman of the Australian War Memorial. Previously, he was leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and leader of the opposition from 1996 to 2001 and 2005 to 2006, having previously been a cabinet minister in the Hawke government and Keating governments. After leaving parliament, he served as ambassador to the United States from 2010 to 2016 and 33rd governor of Western Australia from 2018 to 2022.
Beazley was born in Perth, the son of politician Kim Beazley Sr. He studied at the University of Western Australia and Balliol College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar. After a period as a lecturer at Murdoch University, Beazley was elected to Parliament at the 1980 election, winning the Division of Swan. Prime Minister Bob Hawke appointed Beazley to the cabinet following Labor's victory at the 1983 election, and Beazley served as a minister continuously through to the party's defeat at the 1996 election. His roles included Minister for Defence from 1984 to 1990, Leader of the House from 1988 to 1996, Minister for Finance from 1993 to 1996 and the ninth deputy prime minister from 1995 to 1996.
After Labor's 1996 defeat, Beazley was elected unopposed as Labor Leader, replacing Paul Keating. Despite winning the popular vote at the 1998 election, Beazley could not win enough seats to form government, and after a second defeat in 2001, he resigned the leadership. He attempted twice to return to the leadership, doing so in 2005 after Labor lost the 2004 election, but was successfully challenged by Kevin Rudd in December 2006 following poor opinion polling. Beazley retired from Parliament at the 2007 election, which Labor won, and in 2010 was appointed Ambassador to the United States. He held this role until 2016, before being nominated as Governor of Western Australia by the premier, Mark McGowan, in 2018.
Beazley contracted polio at the age of six. Polio Australia He was educated at Hollywood Senior High School and the University of Western Australia, from which he holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts. Beazley subsequently won a Rhodes Scholarship at Balliol College, Oxford and graduated with a Master of Philosophy. While at Oxford, he befriended Tony Blair, who would later become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and Geoff Gallop, who would later become Premier of Western Australia. On his return to Australia, Beazley tutored and lectured in politics at Murdoch University in Perth. A Labor Party member since his youth, he joined the right-wing Labor Unity faction, alongside fellow future Cabinet ministers Graham Richardson and John Ducker. Beazley won selection for the seat of Division of Swan in 1979, and was elected to the House of Representatives at the 1980 election.
In 1988, Hawke appointed Beazley to the additional role of Leader of the House, a position he would continue to hold until the end of the Labor government in 1996. After the 1990 election, Beazley requested to be moved to the role of Minister for Transport and Communications in order to gain greater exposure to domestic political issues. He served in this role until 1991, and fervently supported Hawke during that year's leadership tensions between Hawke and Paul Keating. After Keating successfully challenged Hawke and became Prime Minister in December 1991, he was moved to become Minister for Employment and Education, putting Beazley in charge of overseeing the creation of the government's welfare-to-work programs as part of the economic package 'One Nation'.
Beazley was considered to be a strong supporter of Keating following Labor's fifth consecutive victory at the 1993 election, and in a reshuffle that year, Keating appointed Beazley as Minister for Finance, where he helped to establish the Government's landmark reform of establishing compulsory superannuation schemes. After Brian Howe chose to retire from politics in June 1995, Beazley was elected unopposed to succeed him as Deputy Leader of the Labor Party and was duly appointed deputy prime minister, a role which he held until Labor's defeat at the 1996 election.
Beazley's hold on his seat of Swan grew increasingly tenuous over the years. He saw his majority more than halved in 1990, an election that came during a bad time for the incumbent Labor government in Western Australia. Three years later, he was nearly defeated despite a nationwide swing to Labor. Ahead of the 1996 election, Beazley successfully sought nomination for the safer Labor seat of Brand, just south of his previous seat.
Beazley made a strong start in the role, quickly gaining a lead in opinion polls, particularly after Howard broke his previous commitment not to introduce a Goods and Services Tax (GST). Beazley was Labor's lead representative at the Constitutional Convention in February 1998 which was called to discuss the issue of Australia becoming a republic. Beazley advocated "minimalist" change and described transition to a republic as "unfinished business" for Australia. He said that foreigners "find it strange and anachronistic, as many Australians now clearly do, that our head of state is not an Australian". Subsequently, at the 1998 election, Labor polled a majority of the two-party vote and received the largest swing to a first-term opposition since 1934. However, while Labor regained much of what it had lost in its severe defeat of two years earlier, the uneven concentration of their vote left Labor eight seats short of making Beazley Prime Minister. Much of the Labor swing came in seats it already held, not in the seats it needed to take back government.
Despite defeat, by securing a majority of the vote just two years after a landslide defeat, Beazley was re-elected unopposed as Labor Leader. The party spent much of the following three years well ahead in the opinion polls, and seemed set to win the next election, but in August 2001, following the Tampa affair when the Howard government refused to allow several hundred asylum seekers to disembark on Christmas Island, Beazley was judged to have failed in response.See, for example, Pat Secker MP, House of Representatives Debates, 24 September 2001, p. 31282 Beazley's momentum was further stalled by the September 11 attacks, which saw an increase in support for Howard, who pledged to support the United States, and Labor subsequently lost the 2001 election.
Despite this, Crean continued to perform poorly in opinion polling, and on 28 November 2003, Crean announced that he would be resigning as Labor Leader. Beazley immediately announced that he would be contesting the leadership, but was narrowly defeated by Shadow Treasurer Mark Latham by 47 votes to 45. After the result, Beazley announced he would remain in Parliament, but was unlikely to return to the frontbench again. In July 2004, however, Latham arranged for Beazley to return to the Labor frontbench as Shadow Defence Minister. This followed controversy over Latham's policy of withdrawing Australian troops from Iraq by the end of 2004. Beazley's return to the front bench was generally seen as a move by Latham to reassure Australian public opinion that a Labor government would not put the ANZUS at risk. Later that month, Beazley was forced to battle claims he had a "special relationship" with Ratih Hardjono when he was Defence Minister; it was alleged this relationship posed a security risk.Sim, Susan (19 February 2000). All the President's whisperers, Straits Times
In the first half of 2006, Beazley focused much of the Labor Party's efforts on the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) scandal and the government's WorkChoices legislation; the former allegedly involved bribes and kickbacks with the then-Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein that breached UN sanctions. The situation reached a climax in the aftermath of treasurer Peter Costello's 2006 budget, whereby for the first time in Australian political history, the opposition leader ceased questioning the budget papers in favour of further questioning on the AWB scandal. This led to heavy media criticism for the Labor Party, although some acknowledged the need for the government to be held accountable for the AWB scandal.
These perceived tactical deficiencies plagued Beazley's return to the leadership and were amplified by factional infighting in the broader Labor Party, raising many questions concerning Beazley's ability to lead. At the time, opinion polls by ACNielsen and Newspoll for preferred prime minister had him at record lows. This was confirmed in a forum on the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) Insight television program on 2 May 2006. Beazley said that, whilst winning an election would be difficult, he was adamant that the 2007 election would be a "referendum on the Howard government's unfair industrial relations laws".
Beazley's leadership was fatally undermined following several public gaffes, most notably at a press conference on 17 November 2006 when Beazley confused the name of grieving TV host Rove McManus (who had lost his wife Belinda Emmett to cancer at the age of 32) with George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove. Following this, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard reached an agreement to challenge Beazley as a joint-ticket, with Rudd as Leader and Gillard as Deputy Leader, and on 30 November 2006, Rudd declared his intention to challenge for the leadership. At the ballot held on 4 December, Rudd defeated Beazley by 49 votes to 39.
Following the ballot, Beazley said of his political future, "For me to do anything further in the Australian Labor Party I would say is Lazarus with a quadruple bypass. So the time has come for me to move on but when that gets properly formalised I will let you know."This refers to John Howard's response to a journalist's question after his loss of the leadership of the Liberal Party to Andrew Peacock on 9 May 1989. The journalist asked, "Do you see yourself as having another chance at the leadership at some future time?" and Howard replied: "Oh, that'd be Lazarus with a triple bypass". From It was subsequently revealed that Beazley's brother David had died of a heart attack that same day at age 53 shortly before the vote took place; Prime Minister John Howard led tributes to Beazley, saying that he was a "thoroughly decent man" and expressed his "genuine sorrow" both for his political demise and for his family tragedy.
Several figures later speculated that the removal of Beazley as leader in 2006 may have been a mistake in retrospect given the subsequent leadership chaos that engulfed the Labor government from 2010 to 2013. After her own fall as Prime Minister, Julia Gillard expressed regret in working with Rudd to roll Beazley as leader. Mr Beazley has been referred to as "the best prime minister we never had".
Beazley was appointed a professorial fellow at the University of Western Australia, teaching politics, public policy and international relations. He also served as Chancellor of the Australian National University for the duration of 2009, having succeeded Allan Hawke. He was also appointed as a member of the Council of Advisors of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.
In February 2016, shortly after returning to Australia, Beazley was made president of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. Beazley was also named a distinguished fellow of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
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