Simon Crean stuck to his guns on the Iraq War, and was proven right

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Few of us get the chance to do something history just might remember, and if we do, we usually blow it. Not so my old boss, Simon Crean.

Back in 2001, the federal Labor Party under Kim Beazley had been electorally destroyed by what became the Tampa election. It wasn’t your normal defeat. The issues weren’t the humdrum ones of today, like tax cuts or ministerial scandals, but refugees and terrorism. To the right, Labor was weak; to the left, it lacked courage. Regardless of the reality of Labor’s position on the Tampa, an argument that’s for another day, Labor had the moral stuffing knocked out of it and the caucus was in a fractious state.

Simon Crean with then-prime minister John Howard in 2003. He become Labor leader at a dreadful time for the party.Credit: Fairfax Media

Much was wrong with the ALP back then, but a sense of history told you that it needed some sort of moral redemption, some reclaiming of its soul, before it could even hope to win again.

After the tears of that election night, my friends and I who had worked for Kim Beazley wondered what we should do. Steve Bracks was in power in Victoria and we could slink back there, quietly. My colleague Chris turned to me and said: “Stay on with Simon Crean – he’s tough, really tough.” I stayed on and accepted the job of speechwriter. Soon after, Simon was calling for children to be released from refugee detention camps. A good start.

Well, Simon was tough all right. You sometimes needed to be tough just to work with him. If his temper sometimes got the better of him, it was understandable, as he was under more pressure than any Labor leader since John Curtin or Doc Evatt. Every day brought a new leak, another knife in the back, more ridicule.

He had – perhaps “courageously” – proposed party reform and the factions were out to kill him, slowly. Coming to work was like being a spectator while some Tudor traitor was being hung, drawn and quartered. From the start, he didn’t have a chance. Part of our jobs involved being “anger sponges”, soaking up his frustration at the caucus’s often disgraceful behaviour. Encouraged by his wife Carole, he always said sorry.

Then-US president George W. Bush with Simon Crean in Canberra in October 2003.Credit: Michael Jones

By the time the build-up to the second Iraq War began in 2003, and John Howard began manoeuvring to commit Australian troops, Simon’s leadership was under what seemed like daily challenge. What to do? The path of least resistance, and the one many in the caucus wanted, was to go along with the war. For them, all the way with America was the only way. They thought, maybe realistically, that once Australian servicepeople were deployed, Labor’s opposition would be portrayed as unpatriotic, or even as a stab in the back.

But something in Simon Crean wouldn’t give in to this line of reasoning. Was it stubbornness? (Yes, he could be stubborn.) Those of us working close to him knew the real reason. Simon Crean may have been from the right of the party, but he was still thoroughly of the party and understood its better nature. He had guts.

What followed was a time of long-drawn-out strategy sessions about what Labor should do. Time after time Simon articulated three crucial points.

First, the war in Iraq was not sanctioned by the United Nations. Labor’s platform backed the power of international law to solve disputes. How much better a state might the world be in right now if more politicians thought similarly?

Second, there was something decidedly dodgy about President George W. Bush’s case for invading Iraq. It was clear that the premise – to destroy the so-called weapons of mass destruction – was an out-and-out lie.

Third, was Simon’s own history. Born in 1949, he was a student during the Vietnam War. In our meetings, he mentioned repeatedly how he knew of young men, including some close friends, who had come back from that war physically and mentally damaged. Agreeing to send people to fight was something he would never, ever do lightly.

This all came to a head the day John Howard announced he was sending Australian troops to Iraq in January 2003. Several of us staff members were meeting with him in a meeting in his semicircular office underground in the commonwealth parliamentary offices in Melbourne’s Treasury Place – which we jokingly called “the half Oval Office” – when the phone rang.

It was a courtesy call from the prime minister, informing Simon the decision had been made and there would be a farewell ceremony for departing sailors on the transport ship HMAS Kanimbla in Sydney soon after. Howard was orchestrating a patriotic moment, something he was ever so good at.

“I do not want to mince my words because I don’t believe you should be going,” Simon Crean said to ADF servicemen and women aboard HMAS Kanimbla in January 2003.Credit: Reuters

I will never forget the look on Simon’s face and the anger in his voice. To hell with John Howard and the critics, he was opposing the war, and he was going to make a stand.

With their troops and families gathered on the deck of the Kanimbla, Simon put away the mealy-mouthed words and told it to them straight: He supported the troops themselves and hoped they came back safely, but he opposed the war and wouldn’t send them to fight and potentially die based on a lie. “I do not want to mince my words because I don’t believe you should be going.”

Simon Crean’s leadership eventually unravelled and he was ousted by his colleagues before the 2004 election. In truth, he was never likely to make it to election day. His party was still in too much of a mess.

But for a brief moment, he had put some moral steel back in Labor’s spine and party members could finally hold their heads up high. Winston Churchill once wrote that a nation that surrenders cravenly never rises again. Labor under Simon Crean opposed that stupid war to the end and was proved right. Labor rose again. Not a bad thing to have as your epitaph. Vale Simon Crean.

Dennis Glover worked as Simon Crean’s speechwriter while he was opposition leader.

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