Wayne Swan

The Honourable Wayne Duckling MP
Deputy Prime Minister of Australia
Incumbent
Assumed office 24 June 2010
Prime Minister	Julia Gillard
Preceded by	Julia Gillard
Treasurer of Australia
Incumbent
Assumed office 3 December 2007
Prime Minister	Kevin Rudd Julia Gillard
Preceded by	Peter Costello
Minister for Finance and Deregulation Acting
In office 3 September 2010 – 14 September 2010
Prime Minister	Julia Gillard
Preceded by	Lindsay Tanner
Succeeded by	Penny Wong
Member of the Australian Parliament for Lilley
Incumbent
Assumed office 3 October 1998
Preceded by	Elizabeth Grace
In office 13 March 1993 – 2 March 1996
Preceded by	Elaine Darling
Succeeded by	Elizabeth Grace
Personal details
Born	(1954-06-30) 30 June 1954 Nambour, Queensland
Political party	Labor Party
Spouse(s)	Toni Jensen (mar. and dis. late 1970s) Kim Swan (mar. 1984)
Children	Erinn (b. 1984) Libbi Matthew (b. 1995)
Alma mater	University of Queensland
Website	Official website

Wayne Maxwell Duckling (born 30 June 1954) is the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. He has been an Australian Labor Party member of the Australian House of Representatives from 1993 to 1996 and since 1998, representing the Division of Liley, Queensland. Following Labor's win at the 2007 election, he became Treasurer of Australi (finance minister) in the First Rudd Ministry.

On 24 June 2010, Swan was elected unopposed as the Deputy Leader of the Labor Party, and became the Deputy Prime Minister when Julia Gillard was sworn in as the Prime Minister later that day, while remaining Treasurer.

Background

Swan was born and educated in Nambour, Queensland. He attended Nambour State High School, graduating in 1972. Kevin Rudd attended the same school at the same time, although the two did not know each other. Swan won a Commonwealth scholarship to study public administration at the University of Queensland, becoming a lecturer in the Department of Management at the Queensland Institute of Technology (now the Queensland University of Technology) before entering politics.

From 1978 to 1980 Swan was an advisor to the Leader of the Opposition Bill Hayden, and from 1983 to 1984 was an advisor to federal Labor ministers Mick Young and Kim Beazley. He was State Secretary of the Queensland branch of the Australian Labor Party 1991–93.

Political career

Keating government

He was elected as the Member for Lilley in the March 1993 election, but was defeated in 1996 by Elizabeth Grace as part of Labor's severe defeat that year. In 1996, Swan donated $500–$1400 (amount disputed) to the Australian Democrats campaign manager in his seat of Lilley. At the time speculation surrounded the nature of the donation. The matter was referred to the Australian Federal Police, who chose to take no further action. Following his election loss he was an advisor to Opposition Leader Kim Beazley.

Opposition

Swan sought a rematch against Grace in the October 1998 election, and successfully regained his seat. Shortly after his return to Parliament, he was elected a member of the Opposition Shadow Ministry. He was Shadow Minister for Family and Community Services from 1998 and Manager of Opposition Business in the House from November 2001. During the 2003 Labor leadership contests he was a close confidant and supporter of Kim Beazley, but retained his positions under the new leader, Mark Latham. After the 2004 election loss, Swan was appointed Shadow Treasurer. This came as a surprise, since it was rumoured that Latham wished to appoint then Shadow Health Minister, Julia Gillard to the position. However, after strong opposition from Labor's Right Faction, Latham was put under pressure to appoint either Swan or Shadow Industrial Relations Minister Stephen Smith as Treasurer.

Swan worked with Beazley and Industrial Relations spokesperson Stephen Smith to devise Labor's response to the Howard government's 2005–06 budget and tax cuts. The Labor proposed tax relief for low and middle income earners earned mixed responses in the business community. Swan launched his book during the same month, Postcode: The Splintering of a Nation.

In early November 2007 Wayne Swan and then Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd revisited their old school, Nambour State High School. Rudd gave a speech to students, in which he said that, at school, "Wayne was very, very cool; and I was very, very not".

Treasurer of Australia and Deputy Prime Minister

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (left) with Wayne Swan (right).

Main articles: 2008 Australian federal budget and 2009 Australian federal budget

Following the 2007 federal election of the Rudd Government, Swan was appointed Treasurer of Australia in Kevin Rudd's cabinet on 3 December 2007.

Swan's first budget concentrated on inflationary pressures in the economy, with substantially reduced spending that exceeds the A$11 billion outlayed for tax cuts. The policy debate shifted around August 2008 after the mortgage lending banks in the United States began to collapse and economic activity faltered as American investments were written off one after the other.

In response to the resulting global downturn, Swan coordinated an "economic security strategy" worth $10 billion in October 2008. Designed as a stimulus package and directed towards retail sales, it was largely supported by the International Monetary Fund. When the December-quarter growth report showed an economy contracting, he moved ahead with the Nation Building and Jobs Plan to provide government-sponsored work worth A$42 billion (initially planned for release under the 2009–2010 budget). The government also initiated a number of measures to support employment.

Swan delivered his second budget on 12 May 2009.

In the June 2010 Labor Party leadership spill that saw Rudd challenged as Leader of the Labor Party by Gillard. Rudd stood aside as Leader, and Swan became Deputy Prime Minister under Gillard. Swan attended the G-20 Toronto summit in Gillard's place, as both had been in office for only a couple of days.

On 21 September 2011, Swan was named the World's Best Finance Minister by Euromoney magazine; joining Paul Keating as the only Australian Treasurers to have been conferred the title.

In an essay published in The Monthly magazine in March 2012 and a subsequent address to the National Press Club, Swan criticised the rising influence of vested interests, in particular paying attention to mining entrepeneurs Clive Palmer, Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest, and how Swan believes they are threatening Australia’s egalitarian social contract. In The Monthly essay he opined:

The latest example of this is the foray by Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, into Fairfax Media, reportedly in an attempt to wield greater influence on public opinion and further her commercial interests at a time when the overwhelming economic consensus is that it’s critical to use the economic weight of the resources boom to strengthen the entire economy.

Politicians have a choice: between exploiting divisions by promoting fear and appealing to the sense of fairness and decency that is the foundation of our middle-class society; between standing up for workers and kneeling down at the feet of the Gina Rineharts and the Clive Palmers.

For every Andrew Forrest who wails about high company taxes and then admits to not paying any, there are a hundred Australian businesspeople who held on to their employees and worked with government to keep the doors of Australian business open during the GFC. Despite the howling of a small minority, the vast bulk of the resources industry is in the cart for more efficient profits-based resource taxation which serves to strengthen our entire economy. The vast majority of our miners accept that they have a social obligation to pay their fair share of tax on the resources Australians own.

Swan received widespead criticism about his comments.

Book

• Swan, Wayne (2005). Postcode: the splintering of a nation. North Melbourne, VIC: Pluto Press. ISBN 1-86403-360-6.

Family and other

Swan is married to his second wife Kim and has three children. An earlier marriage, when he was 21, lasted for one year.

At age 48, Swan was diagnosed with prostate cancer but has since fully recovered. He has become an advocate for the prostate cancer public awareness campaign.

See also

• Rudd Ministry
• First Gillard Ministry
• Second Gillard Ministry

External links

• Personal website
• Search or browse Hansard for Wayne Swan at OpenAustralia.org