Frank Crean

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Frank Crean, 1962

Francis Daniel (Frank) Crean (born February 28, 1916 in Hamilton , Victoria ; died December 2, 2008 ) was an Australian Labor Party politician . From 1951 to 1977 he was a member of the House of Representatives of Australia , from December 1972 to December 1975 Minister under Gough Whitlam and in the last six months his deputy as Prime Minister .

Career

Frank Crean was the third of five children to John Crean and his wife Alison, née Lamont, in Hamilton, Victoria. The father had worked in the mining industry and later started making bicycles, the mother was a teacher until she married. The parents raised the children according to their Presbyterian beliefs. Crean later became a member of the Uniting Church and was for many years superintendent responsible for the holding of Sunday schools , in the Australian Parliament he was a founding member of a non-partisan group of Christian MPs.

At the age of thirteen a rheumatic fever tied him to bed for about a year. During this time he made intensive use of the opportunity to read books from the private library of a neighbor who was a member of the Australian workers' union and also the local party secretary of the Labor Party. Crean continued his education, which began in Hamilton, at Melbourne High School , an elite school. After graduation, he worked in the state financial administration from 1933 , where he developed into a specialist in income tax law. In parallel, he earned degrees in art history and commercial and administrative science from the University of Melbourne over a period of ten years .

politics

Also influenced by his friendship with the later MP Standish Michael Keon , Crean joined the Labor Party in 1942. In 1945 he applied for a seat in the legislative assembly , the lower house of Victoria , in the constituency of Albert Park in Melbourne . As the latter was strongly Protestant , the influential politician Pat Kennelly recommended that he should run better than Frank instead of his Catholic-sounding first name . Crane was then also elected, but lost that mandate after two years. He now worked as a tax advisor , was elected chairman of the party's youth organization and was founding president of the Fabian Society of Victoria in 1947 . In 1949 he succeeded again in moving into the lower house again, this time for the Prahran constituency .

1951 Crean ran in Melbourne Ports for the Australian House of Representatives. The constituency was considered a secure mandate for Labor: Jack Holloway had held it since 1931, and now he has withdrawn from active politics. Crean also succeeded in making the leap into federal politics, until his voluntary resignation in 1977 he was able to defend the parliamentary seat several times. He therefore gave up his mandate in Victoria.

In the capital, Crean was seen as principled and well-informed down to the last detail, but as not very charismatic and as an outsider. Gough Whitlam trusted him in technical matters ("I leave these things (the economy) in your very capable hands"), but thought he was conflict-averse; others felt that he prefers to solve problems in-house. His relationship to communism was considered ambivalent. Although not a proven leftist , he supported Ben Chifley's plans to nationalize banks.

Because of his expertise, Crean quickly became a Labor spokesman on economic and financial issues. He advised Chifley and, after his death in June 1951, Herbert Vere Evatt . His party had been in opposition in Canberra since 1949 and was only able to return to government in the 1972 election. In the government of Gough Whitlam, Crean became Secretary of the Treasury . Due to disputes over the budget , he had to swap resorts with Jim Cairns in December 1974 and now took over his responsibility for foreign trade. After Cairns resigned as Minister of the Treasury in the course of the Khemlani Loan affair, Crean also took over his office as Deputy Prime Minister in July 1975.

The end of government came on November 11, 1975 when the Governor General of Australia , John Kerr , dismissed Whitlam and instead appointed opposition leader Malcolm Fraser prime minister, sparking a constitutional crisis. In the early parliamentary elections resulting from the events on December 13, 1975, Fraser's national-liberal coalition was able to secure a comfortable majority.

On January 27, 1976, Crean ran for the leadership of Labor faction in parliament, but ended up only in third and last place behind the elected Whitlam and former Industry Minister Lionel Bowen . Crean did not run for the parliamentary elections in 1977 and Clyde Holding was able to win his constituency again for Labor.

family

Crean had been married to Maria Findlay since 1946, the family lived consistently in Melbourne. The couple had three sons: the eldest, Stephen , born in 1947, gained national fame when he never returned from skiing at Charlotte Pass in August 1985 . A large-scale search was unsuccessful, and his remains were only found a year and a half later. The middle one, Simon , born in 1949, was like his father for many years a member of the federal parliament, held various ministerial posts there and was also chairman of the Labor Party from 2001 to 2003. The youngest, David , born in 1950, was a member of the Tasmanian Parliament and was also Treasury Secretary.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ DP Blaazer: Holloway, Edward James (Jack) , entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography , accessed December 20, 2018 (English)
  2. ^ Clear win to Whitlam. In: The Canberra Times . January 28, 1976 from the National Library of Australia website.Retrieved December 20, 2018.
  3. ↑ Holding biography on the Australian Parliament website, accessed December 21, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Crean, Frank
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Crean, Francis Daniel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian politician
DATE OF BIRTH February 28, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamilton , Victoria
DATE OF DEATH December 2, 2008