A Premier's State

Index

Prologue

The room my wife Terry and I were heading for was fronted by an alcove with a door at either end—a small space, dimly lit and soundproof, a place to catch your breath and to gather your thoughts before you stepped into the bright lights beyond. I could see that the room proper was crammed with journalists, row upon seated row of them, with double cameras for each of the TV stations up the back. I could also see some of my colleagues and staff.

I knew that this was going to be one of those momentous press conferences. People were going to hang on every word I said. I quickly ran through my speech again in my mind. I was confident I’d be able to get the key points out, talk about the highs, the changes we’d made, how I’d come to this decision. But in the limited time I had to speak, would I really be able to explain what the past thirteen years in public office had meant to me? The amazing years as premier. The pride I’d felt when we’d reformed the upper house and allocated the money to build the new Royal Children’s Hospital. How we’d given Victoria a heart again. Why I was doing this, less than a year after my third election victory, with my government going strong. How was I going to explain all that in just a few minutes? I’d just have to do the best I could.

Even though I’d had a knot in my stomach all morning, I now felt a mixture of relief and impatience. I wanted to get on with it. It was the first opportunity I’d had to let people know of my plans. I looked at my lucky cufflinks. They had been handed down from my grandfather Phillip Bracks and had his initials—‘PB’—written in gold. I had worn them every election night and for key policy launches. Then I turned to Terry, who was standing beside me, and said, ‘Let’s go.’

I opened the door wide. As we went through, I could hear cameras clicking away furiously. I took my place at the front of the room while Terry stood off to one side, and I looked straight down the barrels of the cameras.

‘First of all, can I thank you very much for coming at such short notice,’ I said. ‘I have just left a meeting with my Cabinet ministers where I have informed them I intend to resign as premier.’

1

Note to Self

In May 1994, when I was thirty-nine years old and going through preselection for the seat of Williamstown, I sat down at my desk at home and wrote a note. In it, I mapped out what I hoped would happen in the next two decades of my life.

I wanted to get into the Victorian Parliament by the time I was forty. By the time I turned forty-eight, I wanted to be the premier. Then I would retire when I was fifty-six. I felt that committing my goals to paper made it all the more likely that I would achieve them. I put that note in my wallet and carried it around for years, along with an updated version I wrote in 1997.

I’d already decided that if I didn’t get into parliament within a year’s time, I would instead pursue a senior public-sector career, preferably as the secretary of a key government department. Rightly or wrongly, at the time I felt that the preselection for Williamstown was my last shot in the locker—my last chance for public office. There was nothing else I could do to get a seat. I was well regarded, I’d managed a number of campaigns, and most people seemed to be saying I’d get into parliament one day.

Six years earlier, I’d campaigned for six months in Ballarat, in a by-election then a general election, and had briefly considered trying for a seat in the federal parliament. In the end I’d decided to go for state parliament, largely for family reasons. I can remember a conversation I had with Evan Walker, a very competent minister in the Cain government, when I first stood as a candidate in the seat of Ballarat in 1985. ‘It’s much easier keeping a family together when you stand at the state level,’ Evan told me. ‘You wake up in the morning and you’re all there for breakfast. That doesn’t happen federally.’

That comment resonated with me at the time and continued to do so over the years that followed. I wrote a few other notes to myself in 1994, including a life plan, in which my number-one priority was the health and wellbeing of my family. This was still the main motivator for me—I would pursue my political ambitions and aspirations in line with my commitments to my family. Also, gaining a seat in federal parliament seemed virtually impossible as I did not have a strong party base in any federal seat. So I made the choice to continue my efforts to win a seat in the Victorian Parliament.

In those early days before I became an MP, I aspired to become a senior minister, probably a treasurer or education minister. Back in the 1980s, that seemed like a solid plan. But by the mid-1990s I had begun thinking, ‘I can do this—I can lead this party. Not only can I do it, I’m going to come up with a coherent plan for the future of the ALP.’ Labor at that time had just broken the drought that had kept us out of power since the split that led to the formation of the Democratic Labor Party in the 1950s, but we were facing significant difficulties caused by economic factors and internal disputation. I felt that, in this environment, I was the person best able to bring the party together and keep it unified in the process of achieving its goals.

This had been my lifelong ambition: rehabilitating the Labor Party in the eyes of all Victorians and institutionalising Labor as the party of government. I committed my plan to paper in 1994 because my preselection was imminent and it looked like I was going to win a safe seat; I would finally have my parliamentary career.

I didn’t feel like I was destined to become the leader of the Labor Party, or the premier. Rather, I had felt the enormous weight of responsibility that came with each position, and had carefully considered whether I was right for the job, whether I should do it at all. In fact, when I wrote that note, I thought we were going to lose the 1996 election, and the election after that, both with John Brumby as the Opposition leader. I thought my chance would come after that, when the party would be looking for a new leader after two election losses in a row.

So it was that in 1999, I expected Labor to go to the election with John Brumby as leader. I still thought we would lose, and that I would then have a tilt at the top job. After all, the Kennett government was only seven years old, the Victorian economy was going well, and it seemed reasonable to expect that the government would be returned. I felt that challenging Brumby then would do my political career more harm than good; I wasn’t really champing at the bit to do it.

In the end, however, I decided to stand for the leadership because I felt that I could give us a fighting chance in the election and establish a platform for the future. If that meant my political career was going to be chewed up, then so be it.

If I have one significant quality, it’s sticking to something, being dogged. There were lots of active young people who joined the party around the time I did, in 1974, who subsequently dropped away. But I never gave up.

* * *

The thing that attracted me to politics in the first place was public policy and its political expression through the Labor Party. When I joined the party, I wasn’t immediately drawn to the idea of standing for public office. Rather, I was attracted to bringing about change. But once I got involved, I quickly realised, as did the people around me, that I had quite advanced skills: I was highly organised; I could motivate people; I could express concepts and proposals clearly in public forums; I was known as a very good chair of meetings and organisations; I was a leader.

Above all else, I was interested in progressive politics. Great friends and colleagues of mine like David Huggins and Jack Keating used to say that I didn’t have the ego of other politicians. Well, of course I had an ego, but I wasn’t obsessive; I wanted to remain grounded and have broad interests, to be a more rounded person than that. I even had a test to ensure I didn’t become self-centred and boring at dinner parties, able to talk about nothing but politics. I had made a pact with David Huggins and my wife Terry—they were to let me know if I was becoming tedious or obsessive. They never did have to tell me.

The people who decided to back me to take over the party leadership from John Brumby in 1999 didn’t know that I had a note in my wallet, written five years earlier, that said I wanted to be premier, but they wouldn’t have been totally surprised by it either. It’s not unusual for someone who’s coming into parliament, who’s got some ability, to think they might want to be the leader. It doesn’t mean that you would necessarily take that chance; it depends on the circumstances. While I had that ambition, I would have fully accepted and understood if the opportunity to be premier had never arisen. I was personally but not obsessively ambitious. I just thought I had the ability to do well and achieve things on behalf of the team.

I had spent around ten years cutting my teeth, working with policy committees and standing for seats in 1985 and twice in 1988. I didn’t make much of a dent in 1985, but in the 1988 by-election I got a 0.5 per cent swing towards us at a time when there were massive swings against Labor. That by-election was very important for me because I was noticed across the state by ministers, campaign workers and even by the media, from whom there was commentary about this good candidate in the seat of Ballarat North, Steve Bracks. I got feedback and support from people like Evan Walker, police minister Steve Crabb, and even conservation minister Joan Kirner and the premier John Cain. They were prepared to go that extra mile for me. I had lots of ministerial visits and support from the party, and there was a general realisation that I had some ability.

When I stood at the general election a couple of months later, I got even closer to winning a seat. Then I based my career in Melbourne and people started speculating about what seat I might be after in the city. It was at that stage, really, that people began seriously thinking that I was going to win a seat in parliament, and I started thinking it too. That was the setting in 1994, when it finally looked like I was going to get a seat I could win—a launching pad for a political career that would bring about great change and make life better for all Victorians.

* * *

I had a burning ambition to restore Labor to government in Victoria, to restore Labor’s credibility as a party that could govern well for the long term. Part of those aspirations was to ensure Labor continued to have good, talented people coming into its ranks—by using preselections for the regeneration of Cabinet, moving people up who had the talent and the skills, and sometimes moving people on to make room for them.

That applied to the party leadership as well. I couldn’t be there forever if I wanted the Labor Party to be seen as credible and competent in the long term, not just an aberration, as it had been in Victoria really up until 1982, when John Cain became premier. It was my view that Victorian Labor was better served by drawing up a succession plan for a new leader while our stocks were still high.

And so I always had in the back of my mind the thought that, if I was successful in leading the government to several election wins, then at that point I should start thinking seriously about my departure. That point arrived in 2007, when we still had a strong team; not many people had left the parliamentary party, hardly anyone had gone through scandals, and we still had a substantial majority. The note I wrote back in May 1994, before I’d even been preselected for a seat, had me planning to retire after sixteen years in parliament, at the age of fifty-six. Perhaps if people had known about my plan, they wouldn’t have been so surprised when I resigned in July 2007, paving the way for John Brumby.

In a sense I achieved even more than the goals that I had set for myself. By gaining the leadership of the Labor Party earlier than expected, then winning the 1999 Victorian election, I advanced the time frame of my plan considerably. As it turned out, I retired four years ahead of time, at age fifty-two, but achieved a longer period as premier than I had anticipated.

I don’t at all regret handing over to John Brumby. Once I’d decided that I couldn’t give the job my all any more, it was time to go. Brumby was the right person to lead the government, and he was right for the role of premier; he did a good job. Although I had thought we would win in 2010, we lost by only the narrowest of margins, leaving our credibility intact. Labor has subsequently regrouped and, in the guise of the Opposition, started a process of political renewal. Our prospects of a return to government in Victoria are getting stronger by the day.

Of course we would have liked to have won in 2010, but it appeared that after a reasonably long-term Labor government, Victorians were looking for a change, sooner than we’d expected. We were seeking a fourth term and we didn’t get it. Maybe there was a bit of a pattern there and I missed it: the Cain government also only won three terms. I obviously misread the mood for change; I think pretty well everyone misread it. We will never know if the outcome of that election would have been different had I stayed on, and there’s no point speculating about it.

2

Family Ties

When I was sworn in as the forty-fourth premier of Victoria in October 1999, I became the first person with a non-English-speaking background to achieve this office, and the first premier since 1932 to have a Catholic upbringing.

My family’s life in Australia began when they migrated here over 100 years ago. Joe and Kareeme, the parents of my mother, Marion Davis, who was born in Ballarat, travelled there from Lebanon in 1895 when they were around two or three years old. Phillip and Amy, the parents of my Sydney-born father, Stanley Bracks, also left Lebanon when they were just a few years old, moving to New South Wales in the 1890s. It has been claimed in the media that my family name was anglicised, but it wasn’t. Bracks was just Bracks—I have been to Lebanon and the Bracks are still there. However, the family name on my mother’s side was originally Dabes, which was changed to Davis.

My parents met when Dad was living in the Sydney suburb of Mosman. At the time he was a private in the Australian Army but later joined the Royal Australian Air Force and became a warrant officer, serving as a navigator on Lancaster bombers during World War II. He was one of the lucky ones—only 25 per cent of the people who flew Lancasters during the war survived.

In 1940 my father boarded a train for Adelaide, where he was heading for his army training. An early Lebanese migrant, Joe Davis knew most of the other Lebanese families in Australia, as there weren’t that many of them. Somehow he found out that Dad was coming through Ballarat on the train, and he was on the platform when it stopped for a short break. He grabbed my father and asked him to come back to his house. Mum, one of four sisters, was doing the vacuuming when Dad arrived. He was immediately knocked out by her; she was a very good-looking woman.

Dad went on to do his training in Adelaide, but before he transferred from the army to the air force he had a leave break and met up with Mum again in Ballarat. He proposed to Mum during the war and they married in 1947, upon which Dad moved to Ballarat and opened up a grocery shop. You’ve got to remember that, during World War II, people thought the world was about to end. A lot of people were proposing and getting married as if there was no tomorrow.

I didn’t get to know my grandfather Joe as he died when I was two, but apparently he was a real character, very up-front and able, and he usually got his way. We assume his intention when he grabbed Stan off the train was to introduce him to one of his four daughters. Joe would have been happy with the marriage between my mum and dad.

I was born on 15 October 1954 in the St John of God Hospital Ballarat. I had three older sisters, Robyn, Judith and Janet; a fourth sister, Michelle, was born ten years after me. St John’s was a Catholic hospital run by the Sisters of Mercy. Dad was Catholic; Mum was actually from an Anglican background, but she converted to Catholicism when she married Dad, which was common in those days, and she became even more devout than he was. I went to church every week of my life until I started tertiary studies in 1972, when I was seventeen. My primary and secondary education took place at Ballarat Catholic schools—St Francis Xavier then St Patrick’s College, an all-boys school run by the Christian Brothers.

People would have described me as a well-behaved, polite child who was a little bit shy, and who loved sport and other outdoor activities. I was a big boy, very physically able, and was always just a little bit above average in any sport I took up. I was a reasonably good swimmer and used to get up every morning at four-thirty to train, before going to school. I swam for the YMCA and I played tennis right through all the different grades in the district. I also took part in table tennis competitions, and played some footy for one of the district teams, Golden Point.

I grew up in Mount Clear, about 5 kilometres out of Ballarat, and all my friends went to East High School. I wanted to go there as well, but I went to St Patrick’s because my parents wanted me to. It was a tough all-boys school, strong on discipline and sporting activities; it was their way or the highway. To really be accepted at St Patrick’s, you had to play either football or cricket, or be a rower. I got annoyed that the school didn’t offer tennis, swimming or any of the other sports that I was good at. You had to fit into their mould.

I regularly got the strap, usually for simple things like talking in class. Even up to Year 11, I was still getting it. The strap was a solid piece of leather, about 25–30 centimetres long. It had a fair bit of depth to it, and it would hurt. You couldn’t put your hands down on your desk afterwards because they would be burning. It hurt like mad but you never showed your emotions, never showed the pain. It was accepted as part of the whole culture of the place. It wouldn’t have been questioned at home either—that was just the era. Even the state system had some corporal punishment at the time.

St Patrick’s threatened to expel me on the last day of Year 12, when my rebelliousness came through a bit. It was what they now call ‘muck up’ day, and along with a few other kids I threw flour bombs at some younger students walking down some steps. One of the teachers bailed me up and I was hauled off to the principal. They threatened to expel me and have me sit my exams publicly at the civic hall. We’re a pretty close family, and my mother and my eldest sister Robyn phoned the principal and expressed their outrage at this threat. St Patrick’s backed down and allowed me to sit my exams at the school.

I was in the very happy position of being raised with four sisters, with whom I had warm and supportive relationships. It was a bit of a charmed life, really. What that environment did was make me really comfortable around women. These days that’s just seen as ordinary, but it wasn’t so ordinary then. I could have women as friends, not just as a girlfriend or a lover. I liked mixed company. I wasn’t the sort of guy who would just go out in the company of other men; that was boring as all hell from my point of view.

My father ran a grocery shop called Bracks Brothers with my uncle Roy. It opened in Bridge Street then was relocated to the suburb of Wendouree, becoming the first self-service store in Ballarat. I can remember getting remainders from the shop in Bridge Street, such as the broken bits at the bottom of a biscuit tin.

Dad then became a travelling salesman for the biscuit manufacturer Peek Freans, which made Saladas, Vita Wheats and Thin Captains. He used to load the biscuits in the car and travel around Victoria with them. I would go with him on school holidays and we would stay in dingy, mosquito-infested hotels in St Arnaud or Mildura or Portland or Castlemaine. This was when I was about fourteen or fifteen years old. It was good fun staying in those hotels, and Dad enjoyed having his lad with him when he travelled.

Dad left that job to become the sales manager at T. J. Coutts, an electrical contractor in Ballarat. Lee Coutts was the principal owner of the business and he employed about forty people in fixing local refrigeration and air-conditioning systems, such as in hotels. Lee was Catholic, and the firm only employed Catholics. He had served in World War II with Dad and they were good friends; he also lived near us at Mount Clear. Dad worked for Lee Coutts until he retired at sixty years of age.

Mum dedicated herself to raising the kids. She was a great pianist and had played for the American troops stationed at Ballarat Airport during the latter stages of the war. She worked as a music teacher before she met Dad and continued tutoring a couple of students after they were married. She had several pianos, one of which was passed on to me, and on which my son Will now plays. Will must get his musical talent from Mum; he plays keyboards in one band and bass guitar in another.

After Dad retired, he bought a small beach house at Port Arlington. He loved fishing, so he got a boat and that became his life. He was very happy. But then he contracted cancer in a kidney, when he was about sixty-two. He had the kidney out and was in remission for a year or more, but the cancer came back. He was sixty-four years old when he died; I was thirty-two. Dad’s death had a big impact on me. He was a warm, generous, considerate man who wouldn’t hurt a fly, and he always stood up for his friends and family; he was a role model for the rest of us. He was a much loved person not just in our family but in the community too. He had a big funeral at St Alipius, at which I spoke quite emotionally about Dad’s integrity, his humility and his commitment to our family.

While Dad leant towards conservatism and was therefore practically indistinguishable from other key business leaders in Ballarat, he wasn’t typical in the sense that he was very handy around the house and was quite a good cook because of his Lebanese background. He would iron and do other household chores, things which at that time other men would never do, though he would never talk about it. He was always there for us. People who knew my father say that I have a similar disposition and temperament; they see my dad in me. I am very proud to have some of his qualities.

Dad was treasurer of the St Alipius Parish in Ballarat East. He was also in the Knights of the Southern Cross, which was effectively the Catholic version of the Freemasons, and occasionally he took me along to prayer meetings when I was a young boy. He was in the Catholic Men’s Dinner Club in Ballarat, too, and I went along to one of its meetings in 1985 at which then Victorian Opposition leader Jeff Kennett was the guest speaker.

Jeff Kennett at that time was perceived as a perennial Opposition leader who was unelectable due to his brash style and regular gaffes. I asked him a question at that dinner but I can’t remember now what it was.

* * *

I began to drift away from Catholicism as soon as I got my driver’s licence, two days after I turned eighteen. I had a fair bit of independence then, and so I decided not to go to church any more. My parents were clearly disappointed with my move away from Catholicism, but they were not terribly surprised by it. They could see I was developing a broader perspective and challenging their more established views. Dad in particular would not have agreed with me on this, but he never chastised me for it.

I moved