The Honourable Kim Beazley AC
Official portrait, 2010
Governor of Western Australia
In office 1 May 2018 – 30 June 2022
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Premier	Mark McGowan
Preceded by	Kerry Sanderson
Succeeded by	Chris Dawson
Leader of the Opposition
In office 28 January 2005 – 4 December 2006
Prime Minister	John Howard
Deputy	Jenny Macklin
Preceded by	Mark Latham
Succeeded by	Kevin Rudd
In office 19 March 1996 – 22 November 2001
Prime Minister	John Howard
Deputy	Gareth Evans Simon Crean
Preceded by	John Howard
Succeeded by	Simon Crean
Deputy Prime Minister of Australia
In office 20 June 1995 – 11 March 1996
Prime Minister	Paul Keating
Preceded by	Brian Howe
Succeeded by	Tim Fischer
Leader of the House
In office 15 February 1988 – 11 March 1996
Prime Minister	Bob Hawke Paul Keating
Preceded by	Mick Young
Succeeded by	Peter Reith
Party leadership Leader of the Labor Party In office 28 January 2005 – 4 December 2006 Deputy Jenny Macklin Preceded by Mark Latham Succeeded by Kevin Rudd In office 19 March 1996 – 22 November 2001 Deputy Gareth Evans Simon Crean Preceded by Paul Keating Succeeded by Simon Crean Deputy Leader of the Labor Party In office 20 June 1995 – 19 March 1996 Leader Paul Keating Preceded by Brian Howe Succeeded by Gareth Evans
Cabinet positions Minister for Finance In office 23 December 1993 – 11 March 1996 Prime Minister Paul Keating Preceded by Ralph Willis Succeeded by John Fahey Minister for Employment andEducation In office 27 December 1991 – 23 December 1993 Prime Minister Paul Keating Preceded by John Dawkins Succeeded by Simon Crean Minister for Transport andCommunications In office 4 April 1990 – 27 December 1991 Prime Minister Bob Hawke Preceded by Ralph Willis Succeeded by Graham Richardson Minister for Defence In office 13 December 1984 – 4 April 1990 Prime Minister Bob Hawke Preceded by Gordon Scholes Succeeded by Robert Ray Minister for Aviation In office 11 March 1983 – 13 December 1984 Prime Minister Bob Hawke Preceded by Wal Fife Succeeded by Peter Morris
Ambassador of Australia to the United States
In office 17 February 2010 – 22 January 2016
Prime Minister	Kevin Rudd Julia Gillard Tony Abbott Malcolm Turnbull
Preceded by	Dennis Richardson
Succeeded by	Joe Hockey
Member of theAustralian Parliament forBrand
In office 2 March 1996 – 17 October 2007
Preceded by	Wendy Fatin
Succeeded by	Gary Gray
Member of theAustralian Parliament forSwan
In office 18 October 1980 – 2 March 1996
Preceded by	John Martyr
Succeeded by	Don Randall
Personal details
Born	Kim Christian Beazley (1948-12-14)14 December 1948 (age 77) Subiaco, Western Australia, Australia
Party	Labor
Spouses	Mary Ciccarelli ​ ​ (m. 1974; div. 1988)​ Susie Annus ​ ​ (m. 1990)​
Children	3, includingHannah
Parents	Kim Beazley Sr. Betty Judge
Education	Hollywood Senior High School
Alma mater	University of Western Australia (BA,MA) Balliol College, Oxford (MPhil)
Profession	Academic, politician, diplomat

Kim Christian Beazley (born 14 December 1948) is an Australian former politician and diplomat. Since 2022 he has served as chairman of theAustralian War Memorial. Previously, he was leader of theAustralian Labor Party (ALP) andleader of the opposition from 1996 to 2001 and 2005 to 2006, having previously been acabinet minister in theHawke andKeating governments. After leaving parliament, he served asambassador to the United States from 2010 to 2016 and 33rdgovernor of Western Australia from 2018 to 2022.

Beazley was born inPerth, the son of politicianKim Beazley Sr. He studied at theUniversity of Western Australia andBalliol College, Oxford, as aRhodes Scholar. After a period as a lecturer atMurdoch University, Beazley was elected toParliament at the1980 election, winning theDivision of Swan. Prime MinisterBob Hawke appointed Beazley to the cabinet following Labor's victory at the1983 election, and Beazley served as a minister continuously through to the party's defeat at the1996 election. His roles includedMinister for Defence from 1984 to 1990,Leader of the House from 1988 to 1996,Minister for Finance from 1993 to 1996 and the ninthdeputy prime minister from 1995 to 1996.

After Labor's 1996 defeat, Beazley waselected unopposed as Labor Leader, replacingPaul Keating. Despite winning the popular vote at the1998 election, Beazley could not win enough seats to form government, and after a second defeat in2001, he resigned the leadership. He attempted twice to return to the leadership, doing so in 2005 after Labor lost the2004 election, but wassuccessfully challenged byKevin Rudd in December 2006 following poor opinion polling. Beazley retired from Parliament at the2007 election, which Labor won, and in 2010 was appointed Ambassador to the United States. He held this role until 2016, before being nominated as Governor of Western Australia by thepremier,Mark McGowan, in 2018.

Beazley was born atKing Edward Memorial Hospital inSubiaco, Western Australia, on 14 December 1948.^[1] His father,Kim Beazley, was the Labor MP forFremantle from 1945 to 1977 and served asMinister for Education in theWhitlam government from 1972 to 1975. His mother,Betty Judge, was an Australian athletics champion and record-holder. Beazley's uncle, the Reverend Syd Beazley, who was one of seven Methodist missionaries serving local people inRabaul, was one of 208 civilians and 805 soldiers taken as prisoners by the invading forces of Japan, who later died in the sinking of theSS Montevideo Maru in July 1942.^[2][3]

Beazley contracted polio at the age of six.^[4] He was educated atHollywood Senior High School and theUniversity of Western Australia, from which he holds aBachelor of Arts and aMaster of Arts. Beazley subsequently won aRhodes Scholarship atBalliol College, Oxford and graduated with a Master of Philosophy.^[5] While at Oxford, he befriendedTony Blair, who would later becomePrime Minister of the United Kingdom, andGeoff Gallop, who would later becomePremier of Western Australia. On his return to Australia, Beazley tutored and lectured in politics atMurdoch University inPerth. A Labor Party member since his youth, he joined the right-wingLabor Unity faction, alongside fellow future Cabinet ministersGraham Richardson andJohn Ducker.^[6] Beazley won selection for the seat ofDivision of Swan in 1979, and was elected to theHouse of Representatives at the1980 election.^[7]

Beazley was considered a protege of newly elected prime ministerBob Hawke, who like Beazley was a Western Australian former Rhodes Scholar. Hawke appointed Beazley to the Cabinet immediately after his election in 1983, making himMinister for Aviation. Following a reshuffle after the1984 election, Beazley was promoted to becomeMinister for Defence, a role he would hold until 1990, making him one of the longest-serving holders of that post.^[8] Beazley took a particularly active role as defence minister, appearing frequently in the press, and was responsible for establishing theRoyal Australian Navy'ssubmarine program, although this would be beset by technical problems. Beazley's time as defence minister, combined with his lifelong interest in military matters and enthusiasm for military hardware earned him the nickname "Bomber Beazley" in the press.^{[citation needed]}

In 1988, Hawke appointed Beazley to the additional role ofLeader of the House, a position he would continue to hold until the end of the Labor government in 1996. After the1990 election, Beazley requested to be moved to the role ofMinister for Transport andCommunications in order to gain greater exposure to domestic political issues. He served in this role until 1991, and fervently supported Hawke during that year'sleadership tensions between Hawke andPaul Keating. After Keatingsuccessfully challenged Hawke and became Prime Minister in December 1991, he was moved to becomeMinister for Employment andEducation, putting Beazley in charge of overseeing the creation of the government's welfare-to-work programs as part of the economic package 'One Nation'.^[7]

Beazley was considered to be a strong supporter of Keating following Labor's fifth consecutive victory at the1993 election, and in a reshuffle that year, Keating appointed Beazley asMinister for Finance, where he helped to establish the Government's landmark reform of establishingcompulsory superannuation schemes. AfterBrian Howe chose to retire from politics in June 1995, Beazley was elected unopposed to succeed him asDeputy Leader of the Labor Party and was duly appointeddeputy prime minister, a role which he held until Labor's defeat at the1996 election.^{[citation needed]}

Beazley's hold on his seat of Swan grew increasingly tenuous over the years. He saw his majority more than halved in 1990, an election that came during a bad time for the incumbent Labor government in Western Australia. Three years later, he was nearly defeated despite a nationwide swing to Labor. Ahead of the 1996 election, Beazley successfully sought nomination for the safer Labor seat ofBrand, just south of his previous seat.^[7]

After Labor's heavy defeat by theCoalition underJohn Howard in 1996, Beazley waselected unopposed asLeader of the Labor Party, becomingLeader of the Opposition.^{[citation needed]}

Beazley made a strong start in the role, quickly gaining a lead in opinion polls, particularly after Howard broke his previous commitment not to introduce aGoods and Services Tax (GST). Beazley was Labor's lead representative at theConstitutional Convention in February 1998 which was called to discuss the issue ofAustralia becoming a republic. Beazley advocated "minimalist" change and described transition to a republic as "unfinished business" for Australia. He said that foreigners "find it strange and anachronistic, as many Australians now clearly do, that ourhead of state is not an Australian".^[9] Subsequently, at the1998 election, Labor polled a majority of thetwo-party vote and received the largest swing to a first-term opposition since1934. However, while Labor regained much of what it had lost in its severe defeat of two years earlier, the uneven concentration of their vote left Labor eight seats short of making Beazley Prime Minister. Much of the Labor swing came in seats it already held, not in the seats it needed to take back government.^[10]

Despite defeat, by securing a majority of the vote just two years after a landslide defeat, Beazley was re-elected unopposed as Labor Leader. The party spent much of the following three years well ahead in the opinion polls, and seemed set to win the next election, but in August 2001, following theTampa affair when the Howard government refused to allow several hundred asylum seekers to disembark onChristmas Island, Beazley was judged to have failed in response.^[11] Beazley's momentum was further stalled by theSeptember 11 attacks, which saw an increase in support for Howard, who pledged to support theUnited States, and Labor subsequently lost the2001 election.^{[citation needed]}

Although Labor's loss in 2001 was narrow, having lost two elections in a row, Beazley felt obliged to resign as Labor Leader; he was succeeded bySimon Crean, and sat on the backbench for the first time since 1983. Despite initial improvements in Labor's opinion polling, by mid-2003 Crean was performing very badly against Howard as preferred Prime Minister, and Labor MPs began to fear that the Coalition would easily win the next election. Beazley was persuaded tochallenge Crean for the leadership in June, although Crean was comfortably re-elected.^{[citation needed]}

Despite this, Crean continued to perform poorly in opinion polling, and on 28 November 2003, Crean announced that he would be resigning as Labor Leader. Beazley immediately announced that he would becontesting the leadership, but was narrowly defeated by Shadow TreasurerMark Latham by 47 votes to 45. After the result, Beazley announced he would remain in Parliament, but was unlikely to return to the frontbench again. In July 2004, however, Latham arranged for Beazley to return to the Labor frontbench as Shadow Defence Minister. This followed controversy over Latham's policy of withdrawingAustralian troops from Iraq by the end of 2004. Beazley's return to the front bench was generally seen as a move by Latham to reassure Australian public opinion that a Labor government would not put theUnited States–Australian alliance at risk. Later that month, Beazley was forced to battle claims he had a "special relationship" withRatih Hardjono when he was Defence Minister; it was alleged this relationship posed a security risk.^[12][13]

Labor was comfortably defeated at the2004 election, at which Beazley also became the longest-serving Labor MP. After Mark Latham resigned the leadership, Beazley was elected unopposed to replace him in January 2005. Rejecting doubts from some that Labor could win the2007 election with a leader who had already lost two elections, Beazley said: "There's no doubt in my mind that I can lead a winning team in the next election."Kevin Rudd andJulia Gillard had considered standing in the election, but withdrew at the last moment.^[14]

In the first half of 2006, Beazley focused much of the Labor Party's efforts on theAustralian Wheat Board (AWB) scandal and the government'sWorkChoices legislation; the former allegedly involved bribes and kickbacks with the then-Iraqi dictatorSaddam Hussein that breached UN sanctions. The situation reached a climax in the aftermath of treasurerPeter Costello's2006 budget, whereby for the first time in Australian political history, the opposition leader ceased questioning the budget papers in favour of further questioning on the AWB scandal. This led to heavy media criticism for the Labor Party, although some acknowledged the need for the government to be held accountable for the AWB scandal.^[15]

These perceived tactical deficiencies plagued Beazley's return to the leadership and were amplified by factional infighting in the broader Labor Party, raising many questions concerning Beazley's ability to lead. At the time, opinion polls byACNielsen andNewspoll for preferred prime minister had him at record lows. This was confirmed in a forum on theSpecial Broadcasting Service (SBS)Insight television program on 2 May 2006. Beazley said that, whilst winning an election would be difficult, he was adamant that the 2007 election would be a "referendum on the Howard government's unfair industrial relations laws".^[16]

Beazley's leadership was fatally undermined following several public gaffes, most notably at a press conference on 17 November 2006 when Beazley confused the name of grieving TV hostRove McManus (who had lost his wifeBelinda Emmett to cancer at the age of 32) withGeorge W. Bush adviserKarl Rove.^[17] Following this, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard reached an agreement to challenge Beazley as a joint-ticket, with Rudd as Leader and Gillard as Deputy Leader, and on 30 November 2006, Rudd declared his intention to challenge for the leadership. Atthe ballot held on 4 December, Rudd defeated Beazley by 49 votes to 39.^[18]

Following the ballot, Beazley said of his political future, "For me to do anything further in the Australian Labor Party I would say isLazarus with a quadruple bypass. So the time has come for me to move on but when that gets properly formalised I will let you know."^[19] It was subsequently revealed that Beazley's brother David had died of a heart attack that same day at age 53 shortly before the vote took place; Prime MinisterJohn Howard led tributes to Beazley, saying that he was a "thoroughly decent man" and expressed his "genuine sorrow" both for his political demise and for his family tragedy.^[20]

Several figures later speculated that the removal of Beazley as leader in 2006 may have been a mistake in retrospect given thesubsequent leadership chaos that engulfed the Labor government from 2010 to 2013.^[21] After her ownfall as Prime Minister, Julia Gillard expressed regret in working with Rudd to roll Beazley as leader.^[22] Mr Beazley has been referred to as "the best prime minister we never had".^[23][24]

Beazley announced on 13 December 2006 that he would retire from Parliament at the2007 election, which Labor won in a landslide.^[25] In 2009, Beazley was appointed Companion of theOrder of Australia (AC) for his service to the Australian Parliament.^[26]

Beazley was appointed a professorial fellow at theUniversity of Western Australia, teaching politics, public policy and international relations.^[27] He also served asChancellor of theAustralian National University for the duration of 2009, having succeededAllan Hawke.^[28] He was also appointed as a member of the Council of Advisors of theUnited States Studies Centre at theUniversity of Sydney.^{[citation needed]}

In September 2009, Prime MinisterKevin Rudd announced that he would appoint Beazley asAustralian ambassador to the United States.^[5][29] His appointment began on 17 February 2010.^[30] In his role as Ambassador, he promoted global free trade through theTrans-Pacific Partnership and has opposed protectionism.^[5] He was succeeded by former treasurerJoe Hockey in January 2016.^[31]

In February 2016, shortly after returning to Australia, Beazley was made president of theAustralian Institute of International Affairs.^[32] Beazley was also named a distinguished fellow of theAustralian Strategic Policy Institute.^[33][34]

In September 2017, it was reported that Beazley was the favoured choice of thepremier of Western Australia,Mark McGowan, to replaceKerry Sanderson asgovernor of Western Australia when Sanderson's term expired in 2018.^[35] On 3 April 2018, McGowan confirmed that on his advice,Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia had approved Beazley to replace Sanderson. Beazley was sworn in as governor on 1 May 2018.^[36][23] In an interview withJohn Anderson in 2018, Beazley explained why he continued in public life:

I've always had a concern with Australian survival, when you look at the various commitments I've had in political life, an awful lot of it revolves around our national defence. And the sense that I have is that survival is a close-run thing for Australia. Survival on many fronts. The quality of our community is part of that. Our education system is part of that. Our family life is part of that. But also the physical defence of our approaches is part of that. You think about your kids. You think about your grandkids. You think about everybody else's kids. You think about your friends. And you think, what we've got here is a society worth preserving and worth improving. And if you find yourself lucky enough to engage with it ... then you must continue.^[37]

Viceregal styles of Kim Beazley (2018–2022)
Reference style	His Excellency the Honourable
Spoken style	Your Excellency

Beazley was appointed chairman of theAustralian War Memorial Council on 2 December 2022.^[38][39] In this role he has continued to speak on matters of Australia's defence. He has strongly supported progress on theAUKUS security partnership, arguing that nuclear-powered submarines will be "worth the wait" and advocating for faster approvals for the export of nuclear materials.^[40] Beazley has expressed concern that successive Australian governments had “dropped the ball” on defence spending since the end of the Cold War.^[41] He has argued that a further $5 to $8 billion in military expenditure was needed annually to ensure Australia could adequately defend itself.^[41]

• 2007: Professorial Fellow of theUniversity of Western Australia^[27]
• 2009:Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) "For service to the Parliament of Australia."^[42]
• 2018: Honorary Commodore in theRoyal Australian Navy.
• 2018: Colonel of theRoyal Western Australia Regiment.
• 2018:Deputy Prior of the Order of St John.^[43]
• 2019:Knight of Grace of the Order of St John^[44]

Beazley has three daughters. His marriage to Mary Ciccarelli, from 1974 to 1988, brought them Jessica and Hannah.^[45] He married Susie Annus in 1990 and they raised their daughter Rachel.^[45] DaughterHannah Beazley followed her father into politics in 2019. She unsuccessfully contested Beazley's formerseat of Swan at the2019 federal election.^[46] Subsequently, she won the seat ofVictoria Park in theWestern Australian Legislative Assembly in 2021.^[47]

This list isincomplete; you can help byadding missing items.(November 2020)

• Beazley, Kim C. & Ian Clark (1979).The politics of intrusion: the super powers and the Indian Ocean. Sydney: Alternative Publishing Cooperative.
• Beazley, Kim (1989).Australia and Asia: our strategic neighbourhood. Sydney: Research Institute for Asia and the Pacific, University of Sydney.
• — (1997).'New images': an Australian perspective. London: Sir Robert Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, Institute of Commonwealth Studies.

• Beazley, Kim E. (2009).Father of the house: the memoirs of Kim E. Beazley. Annotations by Kim C. Beazley and John Bond. North Fremantle, W.A.: Fremantle Press.
• Dean, Peter J., ed. (2013).Australia 1942: in the shadow of war. Foreword by Kim Beazley. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.ISBN 9781107032279.
• Beazley, Kim (March 2018). "Without America". Correspondence.Quarterly Essay.69:125–129.

• FitzSimons, Peter (1998).Beazley: a biography. Pymble, NSW:HarperCollins.ISBN 0-7322-5876-6.OCLC 39444847.

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