Gareth Evans (politician)

Gareth Evans

Gareth Evans (left) with Les Aspin , 1993

Gareth John Evans AC , QC (born September 5, 1944 in Melbourne , Victoria ) is an Australian politician . Among other things, he was the country's foreign minister . In 2010 he was honored with the Four Freedoms Award in the Freedom from Fear category.

Early life

Evans was born in Melbourne , Victoria , to a tram driver. He attended Melbourne High School and Melbourne University , where he graduated in arts and law, and the prestigious University of Oxford , where he completed a combined degree in philosophy, politics and economics. In 2004 he became an honorary member of Magdalen College , Oxford . He worked as a lawyer in Melbourne, specializing in trade unions. From 1971 he was lecturer in law at the University of Melbourne.

Evans had been a member of the Australian Labor Party since college but did not get into the Senate in the 1975 election. After the failure of Whitlam's government, Evans supported Bob Hawke as a member of the Labor Party right wing . He was also active as a civil rights activist and became Vice President of the Victoria Council for Civil Liberties .

Political career

In 1977 Evans was elected to the Senate for the first time and was Attorney General of the opposition from 1980 . He helped replace Bill Hayden with Hawke as Laboratory Chair. Hawke won the subsequent federal election in 1983. Evans eventually became Attorney General and caused controversy when he had the Royal Australian Air Force take surveillance photos of a dam in Tasmania . The government was accused of abusing military internal affairs units, which earned Evans the nickname Biggles, after a famous cartoon character, a pilot.

In December 1984 Evans was transferred to the post of Minister of Resources and Energy. In 1987 he became Minister of Transport and Telecommunications - a job in which he showed little interest. His ambition was to succeed Hayden as Secretary of State , which happened in September 1988 when he became Governor General of Australia.

Evans was Secretary of State for the next seven and a half years. His aim was to steer his country's foreign policy away from its traditional partners, the United States of America and Great Britain , and to deal more with its Asian neighbors. While this succeeded, relations with the US and Britain quickly cooled, as Evans did not share the political views of these governments.

He helped, among other things, in the liberation of Cambodia from the occupation by Vietnam , which led to free elections in 1993. As a result of the improved relations with the Asian neighbors, the trade cooperation APEC and ASEAN emerged . In 1995 he received the Grawemeyer Award . Under Keating, Evans became head of government in the Australian Senate in 1993, helping to improve some important domestic affairs; so one managed u. a. the obligation to depend on the small parties in any bill to facilitate government.

Evans had long expressed a desire to move from the Senate to the Australian House of Representatives, hoping that it would be easier to implement his leadership ambitions there. While he failed in 1984 on the socialist left, he was able to move into the House of Representatives in 1996 for the Melbourne constituency of Holt. Since the Keating government lost in the election, he moved to the Senate as an opposition MP and became vice leader of the Australian Labor Party .

Due to his party's defeat in the 1998 federal elections, he resigned from active politics in September 1999.

Since 2008 he has been a member of the jury of the Nuremberg International Human Rights Award and, together with the former Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, is chairman of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament .

Private

Evans is married with two children.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Home . Liberty Victoria. Retrieved January 25, 2007.
2. ↑ Stateline Tasmania, ABC ( Memento of the original from January 13, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. June 27, 2003 
3. ^ Papers on Parliament. No. 4, 1989, p. 27: “In preparing the Commonwealth's case for the inevitable High Court challenge by Tasmania, Evans earned the popular title of 'Biggles' for arranging to have Royal Australian Air Force planes fly 'spy flights' over the dam site to collect court evidence. "