John Hogg (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with deep regret that I inform the Senate of the death on 2 December 2008 of the Hon. Francis Daniel Crean, a former minister and member of the House of Representatives for the division of Melbourne Ports, Victoria, from 1951 to 1977.

John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the government I seek leave to move a motion relating to the death of the former member and minister of the House of Representatives the Hon. Frank Crean.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the Senate records its deep regret at the death, on 2 December 2008, of the Honourable Francis Daniel Crean, former federal Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister, and places on record its appreciation of his long public service and tenders its profound sympathy to his family in their bereavement.

Frank Crean joined the Labor Party in 1942, represented the Australian Labor Party in both state and federal parliament and ultimately became Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister. Throughout all those years his devotion to the Labor cause and to the principle of social justice may have been equalled, but I doubt it was exceeded.

Frank Crean was born on 28 February 1916 in the western Victorian town of Hamilton to parents Alison and John. As a teenager during the Depression, Frank saw the way the unemployed were forced to queue publicly to accept their benefits, humiliating men who were already ashamed of their inability to support their families. He instinctively understood that it was fundamentally wrong to stigmatise people for misfortune. He instinctively understood that all people have an inherent dignity, regardless of their position in life, and that their basic human dignity ought always to be respected, and protected by government.

A year’s confinement to bed with rheumatic fever saw Frank finding solace in books. A next-door neighbour, the secretary of the local Labor branch and an AWU man, came several times a week with books on politics, the labour movement and the fight for social justice. Keenly intelligent and capable of sustained intellectual effort even then, Frank finished his high school education at Melbourne Boys High School, pursuing educational opportunities not available in Hamilton, completing his leaving honours in 1933. He commenced part-time study at the University of Melbourne in 1936 after having first completed accountancy at night classes. He graduated from the University of Melbourne with the degrees of bachelor of arts and bachelor of commerce and a diploma in public administration. He was employed as an accountant in the Victorian taxation department and later practised as a private taxation consultant.

Frank joined the Australian Labor Party in 1942. Although his time in federal parliament, especially as economic spokesman in opposition and Treasurer in the Whitlam government, is best remembered, Frank Crean also held the state seats of Albert Park and Prahran before winning the federal seat of Melbourne Ports, which he held for 26 years and 11 elections. Winning just one Labor Party preselection is difficult enough. It speaks of Frank’s tenacity and his abilities that he won preselection in three seats over so many years.

Frank had to overcome a difficulty particular of his time. I was talking to Gough Whitlam before question time today about Frank Crean’s career. Gough told me a story that Frank, christened Francis Daniel Crean, had a name altogether too Catholic sounding for preselection as far as then Senator Pat Kenneally was concerned. Kenneally explained the problem that there was a perception amongst the Victorian public that the Australian Labor Party in Victoria was dominated by those of the Catholic faith. I might say that that was a conversation apparently lengthened by Kenneally’s famous stutter. Francis Daniel Crean explained that he was in fact not Catholic but Presbyterian. A relieved Kenneally told him that that would be fine, so long as he dropped the Catholic sounding ‘Francis Daniel’. ‘From now on,’ he announced, ‘you are going to be F-F-Frank.’

In 1945 Frank Crean was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly as the member for Albert Park. He was defeated in 1947. He was re-elected in 1949 as the member for Prahran. In 1951 Frank left state politics for the federal arena. As one of the first Labor members with formal qualifications in economics he became Labor’s spokesman on economic matters. He was a member of the executive of the federal parliamentary Labor Party from 1955 until his retirement in 1977. Frank became Treasurer in 1972 in the Whitlam Labor government. In 1974 he became minister for overseas trade. He was subsequently appointed Deputy Prime Minister in June 1975 and served in that post until the Whitlam government was dismissed by Sir John Kerr on 11 November 1975. During his parliamentary career Frank served on a number of committees, including the Joint Statutory Committee for Public Accounts, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Privileges, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the ACT and the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Expenditure, to name but a few.

Frank was keenly intelligent, as his academic record showed, and passionately committed to social justice and to the role of government in achieving that justice. He was no factional foot soldier but someone who based his policy positions on his perception of Labor values and the party’s interests—something that brought him into conflict with others in the party from time to time. He was in many ways an old-fashioned Labor man, in the mould of his hero Ben Chifley—decent and unassuming. Even as Treasurer he did the family grocery shopping. There is a wonderful story about Frank Crean in Edna Carew’s book National Market, National Interest, where John Valder, then chairman of the Sydney stock exchange, was trying to build bridges with the new Labor government—history repeats itself! Mr Valder invited Frank to visit the exchange. Let me quote from Edna Carew’s book:

… Valder brought Labor politicians into the stock exchange, inviting them to seminars and lunchtime meetings. The public had run from investing in shares and now the stock exchanges were trying to win back a better image. “It was all part of trying to open up the place,” he says. “We had Frank Crean, Jim Cairns, Clyde Cameron, Rex Connor. They came to lunch at the exchange. It was early days and we were trying to build bridges. It was pioneering stuff.” He recalls Crean’s visit:

At the end of this meeting, which was held in what was then the Menzies Hotel, I said; “Is there anything else I can do to assist you while you’re in Sydney today?” Crean said: “Well, whenever I come to Sydney, I like to get some fish to make a spaghetti marinara. There’s a particularly good fish shop, I understand, on Wynyard ramp.”

Crean, Valder and the federal secretary of the Securities Institute of Australia, Jenny Crivelli, walked the short distance from the Menzies to Wynyard. As the SIA’s journal, JASSA (Journal of the Australian Society of Security Analysts) later recorded:

Crean’s style was ever humble. No commonwealth limousine was summoned; this treasurer planned to take the bus to Sydney airport. But it was a Friday, the day of the week when the Crean family traditionally had spaghetti marinara for dinner … the federal treasurer [made] a satisfactory purchase and, opening his briefcase, dropped the parcel of fish in with the state papers he was carrying.

Valder says: “I thought, wasn’t that a nice homely sort of touch. He’d done his official bit. Now let’s get on with the spaghetti marinara.”

I do not think that anyone would argue with the statement that Frank Crean was not the most flamboyant Labor parliamentarian of his time—a time, after all, that included Gough Whitlam and Jim Cairns, just to name two. But he won widespread respect for his diligence, honesty, technical expertise and capacity for hard work. His former comrades from the Victorian branch of the ALP recall him as absolutely and utterly reliable, always ready to do what was required in Labor’s interests, not just as a parliamentarian and a minister but also at the local level.

He was described by Don Whitington as someone who his caucus colleagues knew could be relied upon at all times, who was always courteous, always friendly, stubborn but not aggressive, insistent but not offensive. His leader for 10 of the years he served in the federal parliamentary Labor Party was Gough Whitlam, who, today, said about Frank:

… he had the distinction and challenge of becoming the first Labor Treasurer since Ben Chifley, twenty-three years previously. His first Budget in August 1973 was monumental in its sweep and ambitions. It set out fully and faithfully to implement the Program on which we had been elected. It laid the financial foundations for the work of the Schools Commission, urban renewal and regional development and universal health care.

In his statement, Gough went on to say:

These essential reforms were strong enough to endure and withstand the immense pressures of the 1973 “oil shock”, which broke the almost uninterrupted period of post-war economic growth and disrupted international trade; in the apt words of Henry Kissinger, “all Western governments floundered.”

And further:

Frank enjoyed Sir Robert Menzies’ joke that they were both “simple Presbyterians” who always had to be on the look out for the traps set for them by more wily persons, including their own party colleagues.

Frank was Deputy Prime Minister in November 1975. Called to the Lodge by Gough Whitlam to be informed of the dismissal, Frank was in the extraordinary position of having to return to the House of Representatives as the first speaker after the lunch adjournment on Malcolm Fraser’s censure motion against the government. Graham Freudenberg recalled that Whitlam, still working on his parliamentary response to Kerr’s ambush, asked Frank not to reveal to the House what had happened. Freudenberg wrote that Frank’s speech ‘must be one of the most remarkable efforts in restraint in the annals of the Australian parliament or of any parliament’, and, I might say, more so given Frank Crean’s deep and abiding respect for parliamentary process and democratic principles.

It was a respect he passed on to his sons, along with an instinctive knowledge of politics, the operations of the parliament and his strong Labor values. His son Simon, the current Minister for Trade, became the member for Hotham in 1990 and has distinguished himself in the federal parliament. And I must say that we really do feel this loss more deeply because Simon is such a good friend; we know him so well. He himself is not only a respected colleague but is a former leader of the federal parliamentary Labor Party. Another son, Dr David Crean, became Treasurer in the state Labor government in Tasmania. His eldest son, Stephen, served Australia as a public servant, before his death in a skiing accident in 1985. Today our sympathies are with Frank’s wife of 62 years, Mary, with Simon and David and all the Crean family.

Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on behalf of the coalition to support the motion moved by Senator Faulkner. We also extend our very sincere sympathies to all the family of Frank Crean—especially Simon Crean—upon his sad passing yesterday. I did not know Frank Crean personally but I observed him firsthand in the old parliament during the years of the remarkable Whitlam government, when I worked as a casual waiter while I was studying at the ANU. I was able to observe at firsthand all the goings-on of the Whitlam government and its ministers, including Frank Crean. He was the Labor Party Treasurer while I was studying for my economics degree at the ANU, and I took a keen academic and professional interest in his activities at that time. It seemed to me way back then that he was one of the few sane people in that Whitlam government. From where I sat, he seemed to be an island of common sense in the Mad Hatter’s tea party that represented that government. I observed at that time that he was one of the few Whitlam ministers who seemed to know exactly what he was talking about and one of the great strengths of that very exciting government.

The obituary in the Australian today, which I think is a very good one, notes ‘Frank Crean’s diligence and fiscal competence, rare in the Labor Party’. That was a rare trait in the Whitlam government but one that he certainly had. That obituary also notes Frank Crean’s later recollection of his time as Treasurer. It quotes him as saying:

I had 23 ministers who each reckoned he could spend as much as the total budget was.

That shows that his task as Treasurer during that period must have been quite overwhelming and, frankly, appalling. The pent-up spending ambitions of all those Labor ministers, after that incredible and obviously painful 23 years in opposition, all came to the fore at a time when, as Senator Faulkner has observed, the world collapsed around them. I wonder if history is repeating itself.

Despite having been our government’s Minister for Finance and Administration for six years, and having fought back the spending ambitions of coalition ministers throughout that time, I cannot even begin to imagine what Frank Crean had to put up with as Labor Treasurer in the Whitlam government after those 23 years of frustration that they had to bear. I know Gough personally and well, as we are both old boys of Knox Grammar School, in Sydney, and we bump into each other. I enjoy Gough’s company very much, but I can imagine, knowing Gough, how frustrated he would have got at the dour Frank Crean saying, ‘No, you can’t spend the money, Gough.’ I guess that was one of the factors that led Gough to make the biggest mistake that he made in his time in government, and that was to replace Frank Crean with the hapless Jim Cairns. History shows that that was a complete disaster.

The obituary in the Australian today, to which I referred earlier, records that Frank Crean believed that the events leading up to the dismissal of the Whitlam government would not have occurred if he had remained Treasurer. I suspect that Frank Crean may well have been right. If he had remained Treasurer, all the events surrounding Jim Cairns and Khemlani et cetera would not have happened and the Whitlam government might not have ended up being dismissed as it was. It is certainly true that the government would not have had what turned out to be a disastrous economic record if Frank had remained Treasurer and had been able to have more influence on that government. In that sense, I think he was a great man, ill-served by the times and the circumstances.

It was Frank Crean’s enormous misfortune to serve 23 of his 26 years in this parliament—nearly a quarter of a century—in opposition. It says much for his diligence, persistence and tenacity that he hung in there for that length of time. He was then, on the one hand, rewarded with the opportunity to serve in government but, on the other hand, was part of what ended up being a political tragedy, with him being an observer of the dismissal of the government and thinking, ‘If only Gough hadn’t made that mistake, none of this would have happened.’

Frank Crean is one of the great but unsung heroes, I think, of postwar politics. I endorse everything that Senator Faulkner has so eloquently said about Frank Crean’s life and career. It was a remarkable one. Again, as that obituary today notes:

What he lacked in charisma he made up for in quiet principle.

I say amen to that. I think it is a great pity that in Australian politics there is insufficient premium paid to the virtue of quiet principle, as opposed to the elusive concept of charisma which so fascinates our media. Frank Crean was one of those giants of men whose great virtues go unsung in the more modern political era. I think up-and-coming young aspiring politicians should take great note of that. They should aspire to pursue that and to follow his example. I certainly believe that Australian politics could do with more people like Frank Crean, who was clearly a diligent, hardworking, honourable servant of his party and his nation.

On behalf of the opposition, I extend our sympathies to Frank’s wife, Mary—they were married for 62 years, which is remarkable—and particularly to his son Simon Crean. While Frank was 92 and had a fantastic innings, no doubt it is a very difficult time for Simon and David and their families. I gather Frank has six grandchildren, all of whom will no doubt miss him very much. We place on record our appreciation of Frank Crean’s long and exemplary public service and we tender our profound sympathy to his family in their bereavement.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a brief statement to add to Senator Minchin’s words. I also concur with the sympathies that were conveyed to Mary, Simon and David. I want to acknowledge that Mr Crean was a founding member of the federal Parliamentary Christian Fellowship, which is something that I think should be noted for the record. I also want to acknowledge the fact that he was an accountant. Being someone who is also an accountant, I thought it was worthwhile coming down here to acknowledge someone who was widely respected.

The Crean family are widely respected in country areas, although we take them on as political foes at times. They are seen as people who have their heads screwed on, especially, as Senator Minchin pointed out, at the tumultuous times of the dying days of the Whitlam Labor government. It is always peculiar in the extreme how Dr Jim Cairns managed to take Mr Crean’s position. I concur with Senator Minchin and Senator Faulkner and convey on behalf of country people our sympathies to the Crean family.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Greens, I associate with and support the motion from Senator Faulkner and recognise that here, in Frank Crean, was a man who gave this country great and very honourable service. I join in condolences to his family, associates and friends.

John Hogg (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to be personally associated with the condolence motion to the Crean family on the loss of their husband, father and grandfather—to Mary, his wife, and in particular to Simon, David and the extended family. My thoughts are with them at this difficult time.

Question agreed to, honourable senator standing in their places.