A TV interview the late Simon Crean did with comedian Rove McManus demonstrates why he was the only Labor leader in more than 100 years never to front an election campaign.
Crean, a minister in the Hawke, Keating, Rudd and Gillard governments, died on Sunday during a hiking trip in Europe aged 74. He is believed to have suddenly suffered a heart attack.
Crean has been fondly remembered by politicians on all sides of the aisle and for his principled stand against the US’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.
However, one TV moment sums up his unsuccessful stint as Opposition Leader, which saw him turfed out by his party without facing voters.
In 2003, he turned up for a friendly chat on then-hit Channel 10 TV show Rove Live, hoping to connect with younger voters. But a simple segment – ‘Simon says’ – simply demonstrated he was a poor TV performer.
One part of the interview – Crean saying ‘Simon says hands up if you want universal healthcare’ – was widely panned, given his rival John Howard’s government had no plans to get rid of Medicare.
The late Mr Crean made things worse for myself when he accepted Rove’s invitation to do an impersonation of his much more popular political rival, a decade his senior who battled a lifelong hearing impairment.
‘Hello, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, wobbling his head as he attempted Mr Howard’s strained voice.
Simon Crean’s trainwreck interview with Rove McManus demonstrated why he was the only federal Labor leader in more than 100 years never to front an election campaign
Political commentator Annabel Crabb listed the interview as toward the top of her ‘private top ten list of embarrassing things they’ve witnessed politicians doing.’
The voters weren’t amused with an October 2003 Newspoll showing Mr Crean the preferred prime minister by just 18 per cent of voters, compared with 58 per cent who preferred Mr Howard.
Less than six weeks after that poll, Crean was replaced as Labor leader by 42-year-old shadow treasurer Mark Latham – the party’s youngest new federal leader since 1901.
Crean backed Latham to stop his arch rival Kim Beazley returning to the Labor leadership, after he had lost two elections in 1998 and 2001.
His jolly rival, like him, was also the son of a cabinet minister in Gough Whitlam’s government.
Since Federation in 1901, no other federal Labor Opposition Leader – acting leaders excluded – had been denied the chance to take the party to an election.
This put Crean in the same league as former Liberal leaders Alexander Downer and Brendan Nelson.
Like former Labor PM Bob Hawke, Mr Crean had been president of of the Australian Council of Trade Unions before winning a parliamentary seat in 1990 and immediately becoming a minister.
But unlike Hawke, he lacked the TV charisma of the man who won four elections to become Labor’s longest-serving prime minister.
Crean had a closer resemblance to another Labor leader who was wooden on TV and lacked the political skills to connect with voters.
Simon Crean , as a struggling Opposition Leader in 2003, turned up for a friendly chat on Rove Live, hoping to connect with younger voters
Arthur Calwell – who lost three elections in 1961, 1963 and 1966 – was opposed to Australian troops being sent to the Vietnam War, losing his last contest in a landslide against the new, telegenic Liberal prime minister Harold Holt.
In another historic parallel, Mr Crean opposed the Iraq War in early 2003 and told U.S. President George W. Bush when he addressed the Australian Parliament later that year.
In both cases these Labor leaders, who were unnatural on television, would be proven right by history if not politics.
Rove would go on to become an unwitting Labor Party powerbroker.
Beazley, in his second incarnation as Opposition Leader in November 2006, confused the TV host – grieving over the death of his actress wife Belinda Emmett to cancer – with George W. Bush’s senior adviser Karl Rove.
Rove McManus (pictured) did a friendly interview with Simon Crean but this only demonstrated he was wooden on TV
‘The first thing I want to say is this – today, our thoughts and the thoughts of many, many Australians will be with Karl Rove as he goes through the very sad process of burying his beloved wife,’ he said.
A month later in December 2006, the Labor Party replaced Mr Beazley with Kevin Rudd.
Rudd went on to win the November 2007 election – ending Labor’s almost 12 years in the political wilderness – after Rove asked him the zany question days before the election: ‘Who would you turn gay for?’
‘My wife Therese.’
At least the answer was simple for an energetic Labor leader who had built a following by appearing on Seven’s Sunrise breakfast show.
Crean would go on to serve as a minister in both Rudd governments, with his ministerial career ending in March 2013 when he called on embattled Labor prime minister Julia Gillard to allow a leadership spill before a rival candidate had declared a bid.
Timing wasn’t really his strong point.
The late former leader left a legacy, however, with Labor Party conferences now comprising a 50:50 split between unions and rank-and-file party members.
He had fought to reduce the union balance from 60 per cent, but it was an issue few voters or TV viewers cared about as Crean burnt his political capital two decades ago.
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