The Money Men by Chris Bowen (superbooks4u .txt) 📕

12

WAYNE MAXWELL SWAN

A Treasurer Stimulating

Born: June 1954, Nambour, Queensland

Treasurer: 3 December 2007 – 27 June 2013

THERE IS SOMETHING about Labor treasurers from Queensland. They don’t get the easy jobs. Ted Theodore became treasurer two days before the Wall Street Crash, which was the harbinger of the Depression.1 Bill Hayden was called upon too late to undertake the mammoth task of reducing expenditure in the last six months of the Whitlam government. When Wayne Swan was sworn in as Australia’s thirty-seventh treasurer in December 2007, there had already been some rumblings in financial markets. But neither he nor anyone else could have predicted that these would develop into an economic cataclysm. Avoiding a debilitating recession would consume much of his energy, intellect and almost all of his waking hours during his tenure as treasurer. In this, though, he would be successful, a result that even Swan had doubted was achievable as the GFC unfolded.

Swan’s critics argue that his stimulus response was too big and wasteful, and that the fears of a recession were overblown. An objective analysis will find that these claims cannot be sustained. The stimulus package, necessarily designed in a very short time frame, did have problems, but it was also highly effective in avoiding a massive increase in unemployment. Swan’s former staffer and now MP Dr Jim Chalmers has described the stimulus package and Australia’s avoidance of a recession as an ‘imperfect miracle’, which is hard to disagree with.

An oft-stated theme of this book has been the importance of a good working relationship between a prime minister and a treasurer. Swan’s relationships with his two prime ministers were among the most complex of all such bonds. Swan and Kevin Rudd had once been close, with Rudd becoming the godfather of Swan’s son, but they had fallen out when Swan refused to support Rudd in his 2005 bid to become Labor leader. On coming to office, they then developed an effective working relationship, despite not reverting to their previous closeness, before their relationship spectacularly collapsed in June 2010 when Swan supported a challenge to Rudd by Julia Gillard. Their on-again, off-again relationship was now irrevocably ruptured. When Rudd reclaimed the prime ministership in June 2013, both protagonists knew that a return to an effective prime minister – treasurer relationship was impossible.

Swan and Gillard had previously been distrustful rivals. However, on being elected Gillard’s deputy prime minister in 2010, Swan became the effective head of her Praetorian Guard. They went on to develop as close a working relationship as any prime minister and treasurer have ever achieved.

The global financial turmoil that marked Swan’s period as treasurer meant that he had to engage with international colleagues much more than any of his predecessors, adding considerably to his already substantial workload. In one sense, Swan was a kind of de facto foreign minister as he took international avenues when navigating the crisis. By the time he left the portfolio, Swan was the third-longest-serving finance minister in the G20. As his successor as treasurer, I can attest that other finance ministers talked fondly of his engagement with them.

Swan saw the Treasury portfolio as an opportunity for macroeconomic management and for efficiency-enhancing reform, but he also believed he had a responsibility to promote equity. Advocating greater social justice had been a hallmark of Swan’s political career, and his reform ledger must be examined through this prism. It is Swan’s response to the GFC, however, that qualifies him to be remembered as an effective treasurer in the most difficult of circumstances.

Beginnings

Swan was born in Nambour, in the hinterland of Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, in 1954. Swan’s father Morrice had been an Air Force mechanic and had served in South-East Asia in World War II. Although of Scottish origin, family legend has it that his French-sounding Christian name was inspired by his own father’s experiences on the Western Front, where he had been gassed, leading to his death at the relatively young age of fifty-six. On leaving the Air Force, Morrice would become a long-serving secretary/manager of the Nambour RSL. Swan’s mother Maida was the daughter of sugar-cane cutters. Swan was the family’s fourth-born son, joining Alan, Ian and Trevor. A daughter, Jeanette, would follow him.

Swan attended Nambour State High School before matriculating to the University of Queensland, where he studied public administration. He joined the Labor Party while at university, spurred on by the Coalition attack on the Whitlam government that culminated in the double-dissolution election of 1975. He first pursued an academic career as a lecturer in management at the Queensland Institute of Technology before becoming a political adviser in 1978, working primarily for shadow immigration minister Mick Young. Swan was briefly married to Toni Jensen in his twenties. In 1984 he married Kim Williamson, with whom he has three children.

Swan developed his political skills as a staffer and became secretary of the Queensland Labor Party in 1988. Labor in that state had been the political plaything of premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen for three decades, but the party’s time was coming. Led by the politically attractive 38-year-old Wayne Goss, Labor defeated the corrupt and decrepit National Party regime in 1989. As campaign director as well as state secretary, Swan played a key role in engineering Labor’s victory.

Swan remained party secretary for four years after the election victory, working closely with premier Goss and his chief of staff Rudd on the government’s political strategy. He also supported Bob Hawke when he faced challenges from Paul Keating in 1991. In 1993 he was elected the new member for Lilley, a seat that takes in some of Brisbane’s northern suburbs, replacing the retiring Labor member Elaine Darling. Swan emphasised the insidious nature of unemployment and the importance of fighting joblessness in his maiden speech.

Swan was appointed chairman of the Caucus Economics Committee on his election to parliament. The 1993 federal Labor Budget was a tough one, and Swan led