Kim Beazley

Beazley (middle) in 1986

Beazley was considered a protege of newly elected Prime Minister Bob Hawke, who like Beazley was a Western Australian former Rhodes Scholar. Hawke appointed Beazley to the Cabinet immediately after his election in 1983, making him Minister for Aviation. Following a reshuffle after the 1984 election, Beazley was promoted to become Minister for Defence, a role he would hold until 1990, making him one of the longest-serving holders of that post.[6] Beazley took a particularly active role as Defence Minister, appearing frequently in the press, and was responsible for establishing the Royal Australian Navy's submarine programme, although this would be beset by technical problems. Beazley's time as Defence Minister, combined with his lifelong interest in military matters and enthusiasm for military hardware earned him the nickname "Bomber Beazley" in the press.

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 moved Employment and Education, putting Beazley in charge of overseeing the creation of the Government's welfare-to-work programmes as part of the economic package 'One Nation'.[5]

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.[5]

After Labor's heavy defeat by the Coalition under John Howard in 1996, Beazley was elected unopposed as Leader of the Labor Party, becoming Leader of the Opposition.

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".[7] 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.[8]

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.[9] 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.

Beazley outside Parliament House, Canberra in July 2004

Although Labor's loss in 2001 was narrow, having lost two elections in a row, Beazley felt obliged to resign as Labor Leader; he was succeeded by Simon Crean, and sat on the backbench for the first time since 1983. Despite initial improvements in Labor's opinion polling, by mid-2003 Crean was performing very badly against Howard as preferred Prime Minister, and Labor MPs began to fear that the Coalition would easily win the next election. Beazley was persuaded to challenge Crean for the leadership in June, although Crean was comfortably re-elected.

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 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 United States–Australian alliance 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.[10][11]

Beazley in November 2005 declaring Labor would "oppose the Howard government's industrial relations legislation in every respect, at every stage until the next election".

Kim Beazley before a crowd protesting proposed WorkChoices legislation, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground 30 November 2006

Labor was comfortably defeated at the 2004 election, at which Beazley also became the longest-serving Labor MP. After Mark Latham resigned the leadership, Beazley was elected unopposed to replace him in January 2005. Rejecting doubts from some that Labor could win the 2007 election with a leader who had already lost two elections, Beazley said: "There's no doubt in my mind that I can lead a winning team in the next election." Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard had considered standing in the election, but withdrew at the last moment.[12]

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.[13]

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 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".[14]

Beazley's leadership was fatally undermined following several public gaffes, including at a press conference on 17 November 2006 when Beazley confused the name of grieving TV host Rove McManus with George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove.[15] 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.[16]

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."[17] It was subsequently revealed that Beazley's brother David had died of a heart attack 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.[18]

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.[19] After her own fall as Prime Minister, Julia Gillard expressed regret in working with Rudd to roll Beazley as leader.[20]

In September 2009, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that he would appoint Beazley as Australian Ambassador to the United States.[3][25] His appointment began on 17 February 2010.[26] In his role as Ambassador, he promoted global free trade through the Trans-Pacific Partnership and has opposed protectionism.[3] He was succeeded by former Treasurer Joe Hockey in January 2016.[27]

In February 2016, shortly after returning to Australia, Beazley was made President of the Australian Institute of International Affairs.[28] Beazley was also named a Distinguished Fellow of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.[29][30]

In September 2017, it was reported that Beazley was the favoured choice of Premier Mark McGowan to replace Kerry Sanderson as Governor of Western Australia when her term expired in 2018.[31] On 3 April 2018, McGowan confirmed that on his advice, Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia had approved Beazley to replace Sanderson. Beazley was sworn in as Governor on 1 May 2018.[32][33] In an interview with John Anderson in 2018, Beazley explained why he continued in public life:

I've always had a concern with Australian survival, when you look at the various commitments I've had in political life, an awful lot of it revolves around our national defence. And the sense that I have is that survival is a close run thing for Australia. Survival on many fronts. The quality of our community is part of that. Our education system is part of that. Our family life is part of that. But also the physical defence of our approaches is part of that. You think about your kids. You think about your grandkids. You think about everybody else's kids. You think about your friends. And you think, what we've got here is a society worth preserving and worth improving. And if you find yourself lucky enough to engage with it... then you must continue.[34]

Viceregal styles of Kim Beazley (2018–2022)
Reference style	His Excellency the Honourable
Spoken style	Your Excellency

Beazley was appointed Chairman of the Australian War Memorial Council on 2 December 2022.[35][36]

• Beazley, Kim C. & Ian Clark (1979). The politics of intrusion: the super powers and the Indian Ocean. Sydney: Alternative Publishing Cooperative.
• Beazley, Kim (1989). Australia and Asia: our strategic neighbourhood. Sydney: Research Institute for Asia and the Pacific, University of Sydney.
• — (1997). 'New images': an Australian perspective. London: Sir Robert Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, Institute of Commonwealth Studies.

• Beazley, Kim E. (2009). Father of the house: the memoirs of Kim E. Beazley. Annotations by Kim C. Beazley and John Bond. North Fremantle, W.A.: Fremantle Press.
• Dean, Peter J., ed. (2013). Australia 1942: in the shadow of war. Foreword by Kim Beazley. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107032279.
• Beazley, Kim (March 2018). "Without America". Correspondence. Quarterly Essay. 69: 125–129.

• FitzSimons, Peter (1998). Beazley: a biography. Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-7322-5876-6. OCLC 39444847.