Andrew Peacock | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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.jpg) Official portrait, 1974 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Leader of the Opposition | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 9 May 1989 – 3 April 1990 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prime Minister | Bob Hawke | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Deputy | Fred Chaney | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | John Howard | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | John Hewson | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 11 March 1983 – 5 September 1985 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prime Minister | Bob Hawke | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Deputy | John Howard | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Bob Hawke | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | John Howard | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 17thAmbassador of Australia to the United States | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 2 February 1997 – 27 February 1999 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nominated by | John Howard | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | John McCarthy | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Michael Thawley | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Member of theAustralian Parliament forKooyong | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 2 April 1966 – 17 September 1994 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Robert Menzies | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Petro Georgiou | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Personal details | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | Andrew Sharp Peacock (1939-02-13)13 February 1939 Melbourne, Victoria, Australia | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Died | 16 April 2021(2021-04-16) (aged 82) Austin, Texas, U.S. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Party | Liberal | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Spouses | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Relations | John Rossiter (father-in-law) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Children | 3 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Education | Scotch College | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alma mater | University of Melbourne | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Andrew Sharp PeacockACGCL (13 February 1939 – 16 April 2021) was an Australian politician and diplomat. He served as a cabinet minister and went on to become leader of theLiberal Party on two occasions (1983–1985 and 1989–1990), leading the party to defeat at the1984 and1990 elections.
Peacock was born inMelbourne and attended Elsternwick Primary School andScotch College before studying law at theUniversity of Melbourne. A former president of theYoung Liberals, he was elected to Parliament at the age of 27, filling the blue-ribbon seat ofKooyong, vacated by SirRobert Menzies. Peacock was appointed to cabinet in 1969 byJohn Gorton and later served underWilliam McMahon andMalcolm Fraser. He held a variety of portfolios, most notably serving asMinister for Foreign Affairs from 1975 to 1980. He unsuccessfully challenged Fraser for the Liberal leadershipin 1982, but was then elected as Fraser's successor following the party's defeat at the1983 election.
At the1984 election, the Peacock-ledCoalition slightly reduced theLabor Party's majority. He resigned the Liberal leadership the following year after failing to have his deputyJohn Howard removed; he was dulyreplaced by Howard. He remained a member of theshadow cabinet, andin 1987 unsuccessfully challenged Howard for the leadership; he was instead elected deputy leader. Peacock returned as leaderin 1989. However, his second term lasted less than a year, as he resigned after another electoral defeatin 1990; he had won the popular vote but failed to win enough seats. Peacock left politics in 1994 and was later appointedAmbassador to the United States, serving from 1997 to 1999.
Peacock was born on 13 February 1939 inMelbourne, Victoria,[1] the son of Andrew Sharp Peacock Sr and his wife, Iris Lamb. His father was a marine engineer and one of the founders of Peacock and Smith Ltd, a large shipbuilding firm. He was educated atScotch College and at theUniversity of Melbourne, where he graduated in law. In 1963, he marriedSusan Rossiter (1942–2016), the daughter of Victorian LiberalMLA SirJohn Rossiter.[2] They had three daughters, including the horse trainerJane Chapple-Hyam.[3]
Peacock unsuccessfully contested the seat ofYarra in the1961 federal election, although he bucked the national trend by increasing the Liberal primary vote, impressing party elders. He was president of theYoung Liberals in 1962, and by 1965 he was president of theVictorian Liberal Party.[4]
In February 1966, former prime minister SirRobert Menzies resigned, triggeringa by-election inKooyong, the eastern Melbourne electorate that he had held for 32 years. Peacock gained Liberal preselection, making him the favourite in this comfortably safe Liberal seat.[5] The Liberals (and their predecessors) had held the seat sinceFederation in 1901, usually without serious difficulty. As expected, he won 2 April by-election, albeit with a slightly reduced majority.[6] He easily retained his seat inthe general election held seven months later.
In November 1969 Peacock was appointed to theSecond Gorton Ministry asMinister for the Army, and in this role played a minor part in the drama which brought down then prime ministerJohn Gorton in 1971.[7] In 1972,William McMahon made him Minister for Territories, in charge of Australia's colonial possession,Papua New Guinea, where he was responsible for bringing in self-government.[8]
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When the Liberals went into opposition in December 1972, Peacock became a senior member of the Liberal frontbench. As a party moderate, he was a supporter of the new leader,Billy Snedden. When Snedden lost the1974 election, Peacock began to be seen as a leadership candidate,[9] but it wasMalcolm Fraser who took the initiative and deposed Snedden in 1975. Fraser made Peacock foreign affairs spokesperson, and when Fraser became caretaker prime minister, Peacock becameminister for foreign affairs, a position he retained when Fraser led the Liberals to victory in the subsequentDecember 1975 election.[10][11] Peacock said before the 1975 election that "the US has no needs to take sides" because the ANZUS treaty had bipartisan support.[12]
He served as foreign minister until 1980. He had a number of acrimonious disputes with Fraser, particularly over the recognition of theKhmer Rouge regime inCambodia.[13] After the1980 election he asked for a change of portfolio, and Fraser made him Minister for Industrial Relations in a swap withTony Street. He also challenged for the deputy leadership against incumbentPhillip Lynch, but was defeated 47 votes to 35.[14] In April 1981 he resigned suddenly, accusing Fraser of constant interference in his portfolio. Fraser called aparty meeting, at which Peacock tried to depose him as party leader and therefore prime minister. Fraser managed to fend off this challenge.John Howard succeeded Lynch as deputy leader in the same meeting.[15] Peacock returned to cabinet in October 1982, replacing the retiring Lynch asMinister for Industry and Commerce and holding that position until the defeat of theFraser government.[10]
Fraser's government was defeated in theMarch 1983 election by theLabor Party underBob Hawke. Fraser immediately retired from politics, and Peacockcontested the party leadership, defeating Howard, who remained as deputy leader.[16]
As opposition leader, Peacock faced an uphill battle against the hugely popular Hawke.[4]
Unlike the previous time his party was in opposition between 1972 and 1975, first led by Billy Snedden and then by Malcolm Fraser, Peacock did not push for an early election. When an early election was called however in late 1984, he described it as unnecessary and accused Hawke of calling one for fear of the economy turning down in the following year 1985.[17]
At the1984 election he was given little chance of winning, but he performed better than expected by reducing Hawke's majority. In 1985, as Labor's position in opinion polls improved, Peacock's popularity sank and Howard's profile rose, keeping leadership speculation alive. Peacock said he would no longer accept Howard as deputy unless he offered assurances that he would not challenge for the leadership. Following Howard's refusal to offer such an assurance, in September 1985 Peacock sought to replace him withJohn Moore as deputy leader.[18] The party room re-elected Howard as deputy, contrary to Peacock's wishes. Despite possessing greater support in the parliamentary party than Howard,[19] Peacock resigned on 5 September 1985,[20] concluding the situation was untenable. Howard was comfortablyelected opposition leader on 5 September,[21] and he appointed Peacock shadow foreign minister. However, after a private car-phone conversation between Peacock and then-Victorian opposition leader (and future Premier)Jeff Kennett severely attacking Howard was leaked to the press, Howard dismissed Peacock from his shadow cabinet in March 1987, calling Peacock's actions "damaging" and "unloyal".[22]
Howard lost the1987 election to Hawke, largely due to the Nationals pulling out of the Coalition in support of Queensland PremierJoh Bjelke-Petersen'squixotic bid to become Prime Minister. After the election, Peacockstood against Howard for the leadership losing 41 votes to 28, but was elected deputy leader in a show of party unity. Peacock's supporters began to plot against Howard, and in May 1989 they mounted aparty room coup which returned Peacock to the leadership. Peacock, now 50, cultivated a new mature image, enhanced by a second marriage to Margaret St George.
On 18 March 1990, Peacock was interviewed byLaurie Oakes on the television programSunday, regarding his stance on theMultifunction Polis (MFP), a proposal to build a Japanese funded technology city in Australia.[23]Peacock attacked the MFP concept, saying it would become an Asian "enclave".[24] According toRoy Morgan Research, Peacock's attack on the MFP did not help him politically, and theLabor Party used the issue to highlight division within the Liberal Party, as the party federal presidentJohn Elliott and others supported the MFP.[23] The following day,The Australian newspaper ran a headline titledPeacock a 'danger in the Lodge'.'[25]
At the1990 election the Coalition won a slim majority (50.10 per cent) of the two-party vote and took seven seats from Labor. It also reduced Labor's majority from 24 seats to nine. However, it only garnered a 0.93 per cent two-party swing. Combined with a three per cent swing against the Nationals (who saw their leaderCharles Blunt ousted in his own seat), this prevented the Coalition from picking up the additional seven seats they needed to make Peacock prime minister. This was all despite Hawke's government being in political trouble, with record high interest rates and a financial crisis in Victoria. Although Peacock was credited with helping the non-Labor forces regain much of what they had lost three years earlier, it was not enough to save his job, and he resigned after the election, promising not to make another attempt to return to the leadership. He became shadow attorney-general (1990–92) and shadow trade minister (1992–93) under the new leader,John Hewson, whom Peacock had supported in getting the job in 1990 overPeter Reith and to stop Howard returning.[26] After Hewson's election as leader, he endorsed Peacock as his deputy, which caused a furore with Howard supporters. Peacock, however, had no interest in becoming deputy leader again and withdrew happily. Reith was instead elected deputy in a close contest against Peacock supporterDavid Jull. The closeness of the deputy's contest was seen as a reflection of the tensions in the Peacock-Howard rivalry that still existed as Reith had been Howard's running mate when Peacock overthrew Howard almost a year earlier. This tension was not reflected in the leadership contest as both Hewson and Reith had supported Howard and Hewson was elected with a lopsided margin of 62 votes to 13 votes for Reith.[27][page needed] Peacock believed Hewson to be the best man for the job after seeing that Hewson was a hard-working shadow treasurer.[28]
Peacock returned to Foreign Affairs when Hewson lost the1993 election toPaul Keating. He retained Foreign Affairs when Hewson was displaced byAlexander Downer, whom Peacock supported after Hewson initiated the May 1994 spill. Peacock believed Hewson made a mistake in calling a spill; Peacock was not aware of Hewson's intention before it happened but decided afterwards to support Downer as he felt no longer obligated to support Hewson.[28]
Peacock resigned from Parliament on 17 September 1994.[29] In 1996, when asked about blocking John Howard, Malcolm Fraser said Peacock obviously had been, while Peacock claimed he supported John Hewson continuing.[30] When Howard became Prime Minister in1996, he appointed Peacock as theAustralian Ambassador to the United States.[31] Following the close of this appointment in 1999, Peacock mostly resided in the United States.[32]
In 2002 he marriedPenne Percy Korth, aWashington, D.C., society figure and formerUnited States Ambassador to Mauritius. Midway through 2002 Peacock joinedBoeing Australia Holdings as President of Boeing Australia.[33] He retired from Boeing in 2007, and joined Gold Coast-basedfund managerMFS Ltd as chairman.[34] He held the position for 15 months, resigning shortly before the firm collapsed with debts of $2.5 billion. He later stated: "I should have looked more carefully at MFS before going into it. The business wasn't going well, and I thought I could turn it around but I couldn't."[35]
Peacock and his American-born third wife retired toAustin, Texas, where she had gone to university. He visited Australia regularly and did not intend to become a U.S. citizen, although he held agreen card. He gave up drinking after moving to the U.S., after experiencing heart problems. Peacock supportedDonald Trump in the2016 U.S. presidential election, after originally supportingMarco Rubio in the Republican primaries. He placed a bet on Trump to become president even before the first primary, at odds of 16–1. In a January 2018 interview with theAustralian Financial Review, he said he was "disquieted by the first year's performance", praising Trump's tax cuts but expressing his disappointment with Trump's decisions to withdraw from theTrans-Pacific Partnership and recogniseJerusalem as the capital of Israel. Peacock said that his wife is a staunch conservative and regards him as "the mostliberal person she's ever met". He expressed dismay at the disappearance ofmoderate Republicans, and the general polarisation of American politics.[35]
Peacock died at hisAustin home on 16 April 2021, aged 82.[36] No cause of death was given, although it was noted byDerryn Hinch that he had "significant medical problems".[37] Obituaries took note of, and emphasised "his impact on Australia's foreign policy and international relations" and described Peacock as having "left an indelible mark on the country".[38]
Upon his death, Peacock's former rivalJohn Howard reflected that Peacock was "a hugely significant figure in Australian politics of the 70s and 80s" and "played a dominant role in the development of the Liberal Party", praising Peacock as a "quite outstanding foreign minister" who asMinister for External Territories "helped lay the foundation forPapua New Guinea to become independent".[39] His friend and former Victorian PremierJeff Kennett said that "As the Colt ofKooyong he and his then wifeSusan carried the aspirations of the Liberal Party", and lamented "that he did not become Prime Minister of the country was probably a reflection more of his generous character more than crass ambition".[36]
Then-Prime MinisterScott Morrison described Peacock as "one of our greatest Liberals, who helped shape Australia and the Liberal Party over three decades", and praised his record as Foreign Minister, noting that "he was vocal in his denunciation of thePol Pot regime inKampuchea, despising what he called that 'loathsome regime'".[36] Tributes were also paid by, among others, then-Opposition LeaderAnthony Albanese,[38] deputy Liberal leaderJosh Frydenberg,[40] former Liberal Prime MinistersMalcolm Turnbull andTony Abbott,[41] former Labor Prime MinistersKevin Rudd[42] andJulia Gillard,[43] and former Opposition leaderJohn Hewson.[44]
Peacock was given a state memorial service atSt Paul's Cathedral in Melbourne on 11 February 2022; the 10 month delay being attributed to the effects of theCOVID-19 pandemic.[45]
In the 1997Queen's Birthday Honours, Peacock was appointed a Companion of theOrder of Australia.[46]
For his role in bringing in New Guinea independence, Peacock was appointed a Chief Grand Companion of theOrder of Logohu in 2006.[47]
In 2017, Peacock was awarded the Grand Cordon of theOrder of the Rising Sun by the government of Japan, "for his contribution to strengthening and promoting friendly relations between Japan and Australia".[48]
| Parliament of Australia | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member for Kooyong 1966–1994 | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Minister for the Army 1969–1972 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister for External Territories 1972 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister for Environment 1975 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister for Foreign Affairs 1975–1980 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister for Industrial Relations 1980–1981 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister for Industry and Commerce 1982–1983 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Leader of the Opposition 1983–1985 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Leader of the Opposition 1989–1990 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Leader of the Liberal Party of Australia 1983–1985 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party of Australia 1987–1989 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Leader of the Liberal Party of Australia 1989–1990 | Succeeded by |
| Diplomatic posts | ||
| Preceded by | Australian Ambassador to the United States 1996–1999 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
