Gary Gray (politician)

Gray was born in Rotherham, Yorkshire, England, and emigrated to Australia with his family in 1966, settling in state housing in Whyalla, South Australia. "In June 1966, Mum and Dad packed our bags and a trunk and, along with my brother, David, and sister, Carol, we sailed from Southampton, England, on the ship Fairsea. I was eight years old. Our destination was Adelaide. We were a family of £10 Poms," Gray would later recall, in a nod to a period of significant post-war European migration to Australia.[3]

He attended Whyalla High School, where he was the dux of his graduating year in 1976. After finishing high school he worked at the local BHP steelworks in Whyalla, where his father Gordon had also worked, and then at the Savings Bank of South Australia.[4] He joined the Labor Party in 1974,[5] graduated from the Australian National University with a degree in economics in 1981 and moved to Darwin in 1982.

From then until May 1985, Gray was the assistant to Northern Territory opposition leader Bob Collins. On a private visit to the UK in 1985, he worked for the British Labour Party for a year and inspecting the campaign organisation of other social democratic parties in France, Austria and Sweden. He became one of three national organisers for the ALP in March 1986, in which capacity he worked on the every state and federal ALP campaign between 1986 and 1993. As assistant national secretary during the successful 1987 and 1990 re-election campaigns by the Federal Labor government led by Prime Minister Bob Hawke, he initiated the party's marginal ("swing") seats campaign, pioneering the targeting of direct mail to voters in key seats.[6] He was also responsible for fundraising, helping rectify a long-standing imbalance which had seen corporate funding disproportionately directed to the conservative parties.[7] During this time he met and married his wife Deborah, the daughter of former Labor finance minister Peter Walsh.[8]

On 30 April 1993, just after Paul Keating won the 1993 election, Gray became National Secretary of the ALP and served as campaign director for the 1996 and 1998 election campaigns.[5][9] He was one of the few National Secretaries never to have served as a state party secretary, and his ascendancy represented a high-water mark for the influence of the national office in the party's political management.[10]

In 1994 Gray led the initiative to create a web presence for the ALP, the first time a political party in Australia had taken its presence online. It matched the then-Labor government's policy on the internet as a tool for communication. Labor's use of the internet during the 1996 Federal election was highlighted in a parliamentary research paper by Paula Williams alongside her assessment of the internet's use in the 1996 US presidential and 1997 United Kingdom elections.[11]

One of Gray's early achievements was to establish the organisational capacity within the ALP to allow it to formally support the democracy movement in South Africa. This aligned the ALP's international activities with the policy position of the Hawke and Keating governments, led by Foreign Minister Gareth Evans. It also created a practical process for implementing the ALP's enduring position to oppose apartheid. The ALP's history of opposition to apartheid and cooperation with the African National Congress are documented in Peter Limb's book A Shared History: The ALP, the ANC and the Australian Anti-Apartheid.[12]

On 10 November 1999 Gray announced his intention to resign as National Secretary. He left the post in April 2000, having served seven years in the role. At the time Gray was the youngest and longest-serving National Secretary in ALP history. Following his departure, Gray and his young family moved to Perth, Western Australia.[13]

Keating, in 2007, blamed Gray for the loss of the 1996 and 1998 elections, a view that was not shared by the leadership of the ALP at the time.[14][15]

One of the enduring political campaign strategies driven by Gray was the introduction of sausage sizzles at pre-election events. One such "free family sausage sizzle", often also referred to as Democracy Sausage, was arranged for an Australia Day event at Whiteman Park in Perth's north a week before the 1989 State Election. The event was attended by Western Australia Labor Premier Peter Dowding and Prime Minister Bob Hawke and deemed a success by Labor. However, it attracted the ire of the WA Liberal Party, which complained to police that Labor may have breached the Electoral Act. Dowding denied the Act had been breached and was later vindicated by the Electoral Commission, which found that the "dissemination of sausages" was not a bribe under the Act.[16]

In 2001, Gray was awarded the Commonwealth Government's Centenary Medal for "services to the political life of Australia as National Secretary of the Australian Labor Party".[17] He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day honours of 2003 for "service to the Australian Labor Party and to politics through the introduction of modern campaign techniques, fundraising protocols for all political parties, affirmative action guidelines, and by strengthening the party's organisational and financial structure."[18] Gray's work on affirmative action guidelines is credited with the significant increase in female representation in all subsequent Labor State and Federal parliaments.

In April 2000, he quit working for the party hierarchy entirely[9] and took up a role with Wesfarmers as the Executive Director of the Western Australian Institute of Medical Research, now known as the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research. Within a year, he was engaged by Woodside Petroleum as an adviser on the Perth oil and gas company's ultimately successful bid to repel a hostile takeover by the Shell Oil Company. Gray was then asked to join Woodside, becoming the Director of Corporate Affairs on the company's executive board. During his time at Woodside, Gray represented the company before governments on four continents in the roles of negotiator, advocate and leader. He is one of a number of federal parliamentarians who are subject to allegations of conflict of interest over their service to Woodside, including participation in the Australia–East Timor spying scandal of 2004.[19][20]

As a parliamentary secretary in the Rudd government, Gray was asked to chair the National Resources Sector Employment Taskforce comprising employment and training agencies, unions and employers to examine ways of dealing with the expected shortage of workers on major resource projects.[26] In July 2010, the taskforce put recommendations to the Federal Government, including a proposed enterprise migration agreement (EMA). After consideration by the Government, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Chris Bowen, and the Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson, announced on 25 May 2012 that the first EMA would be for the proposed $US10 billion Roy Hill world-scale iron ore mine, being developed in Western Australia's Pilbara region by businesswoman Gina Rinehart and her partners Marubeni Corporation, POSCO and China Steel Corporation. The announcement said more than 8000 workers would be required for the construction phase and to meet labour demand, the Government would allow up to 1715 skilled workers or 457 visas for overseas workers for the three-year construction phase. Roy Hill's construction coincided with an acute skills shortage in Western Australia's North West, driven by the concurrent investment of more than $100 billion in resources projects including Chevron's Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG plants, Woodside Petroleum's Pluto LNG project and Fortescue Metals Group's Solomon iron ore hub.

The day after the Government's EMA announcement, Australian Workers Union secretary Paul Howes, who was a member of the original taskforce, declared it "sheer lunacy" and an "ideal Christmas present" for Gina Rinehart. Later, five West Australian unions launched an advertising campaign against Gray in his electorate of Brand, linking his support of the EMA policy and the 26% youth unemployment rate in the electorate areas of Kwinana and Rockingham. The advertisements called for a protest outside Gray's electorate office on Saturday, 16 June 2012. Unionists also attacked Gray personally and Prime Minister Gillard issued a statement of her support for Gray, published in The Australian on 2 June, in which she described him as a "valuable member of the Government" who was a "dedicated, hard-working and effective minister". Ms Gillard also told Parliament "the Roy Hill agreement will go ahead (because) it supports Australian jobs and I support Australian jobs".[27] Later, the WA unions cancelled their planned "community protest". Despite the PM's support, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott claimed "we have a prime minister who is not prepared to defend one of her most capable ministers"[28] and went on to criticise the involvement of the unions in the Labor Party, referring to them as "the faceless men".[28]

The Roy Hill consortium secured $US7.2 billion in debt finance to construct the 55Mtpa mine, 344 km rail and port operation. Roy Hill heralded the size of the debt financing as the "largest ever ... for the development of a land-based mining project worldwide".[29] Up to 6000 workers were employed during the construction phase. First iron ore was shipped from Port Hedland in December 2015. The mine is one of the world's largest single sources of iron ore and has created permanent employment for about 2000 workers in the Pilbara and in Perth.[30]

On 26 June 2020, the Commonwealth Government of Australia announced the appointment of Gray as Australia's next ambassador to Ireland. Gray succeeded Richard Andrews, who left Ireland early in 2020 and had has held the Dublin-based role since late 2016. Gray's ambassadorship triggered his resignation at Mineral Resources Limited and the boards of ASC Shipbuilding, Channel 7 Telethon Trust and the Perth Observatory. Gary took up his new role in Dublin in August 2020 and presented his credentials to President Michael D. Higgins in September 2020. Gray is appointed to the role for four years.

In 2021, Gray ensured that the Embassy in Dublin became the first Australian embassy in the world to permanently fly the Australian Aboriginal Flag alongside the Australian Flag.[36]