Alexander John Gosse Downer (born 9 September 1951) is an Australian former politician and diplomat who served as the Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1996 to 2007, and was a member of parliament (MP) for the South Australian division of Mayo from 1984 to 2008.
Downer was born in Adelaide, the son of Sir Alick Downer and the grandson of Sir John Downer. After periods working for the Bank of New South Wales and with the diplomatic service, he was appointed executive director of the Australian Chamber of Commerce in 1983. He also served as an advisor to Liberal leaders Malcolm Fraser and Andrew Peacock. Downer was elected to parliament at the 1984 federal election, winning the Division of Mayo in South Australia. He was added to the opposition frontbench in 1987.
After the Coalition lost the 1993 election, John Hewson's position as leader of the Liberal Party came into question. Downer successfully challenged him for the leadership in 1994, thus becoming Leader of the Opposition. He initially had high approval ratings, but after a series of gaffes, resigned from the leadership in 1995 and was replaced by John Howard. He was the first Liberal leader to fail to lead the party to an election, and remains the shortest-serving leader in party history.
When the Howard government came to power in 1996, Downer was made Minister for Foreign Affairs. He served until the government's defeat in 2007, making him the longest-serving foreign minister in Australian history. Downer left politics in 2008, and was subsequently named Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on Cyprus. He held that post until 2014, when he was appointed High Commissioner to the United Kingdom by the Abbott government.
Early life and education The Downer family has a long history in South Australian politics. Their earliest ancestors were Mary Ann Downer (1792–1868) and her son Henry Downer (1811–1870), his great-grandfather, who travelled from England in 1862 aboard the Eden, settling in Adelaide. Downer's father was Minister for Immigration in the Menzies government and later served as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. His paternal grandfather, Sir John Downer, served twice as Premier of South Australia in the late 19th century, and was later one of the inaugural members of the Australian Senate. Downer's maternal grandfather was the businessman and philanthropist James Hay Gosse, whose father was the explorer William Gosse.
Alexander Downer was born on 9 September 1951 in Adelaide, South Australia, when the family were living in the Adelaide Hills home built by his father, Arbury Park. Album He is the third of four children born to Sir Alexander "Alick" Downer and Mary Downer (née Gosse); he has three sisters.
Downer was educated at Geelong Grammar School in Australia, then in England (while his father was High Commissioner) at Radley College between 1964 and 1970. He subsequently completed a Bachelor of Arts in politics and economics at Newcastle University in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Early career
From 1975 to 1976, he worked as an economist for the Bank of New South Wales, before entering the Australian Diplomatic Service, where he served until 1982. Some of Downer's time in the Diplomatic Service was spent at a posting in Brussels, where he undertook a French language training course. He then worked as an adviser to the then Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser and subsequent Leader of the Federal Opposition Andrew Peacock.
Prior to the 1981 by-election Downer unsuccessfully sought Liberal Party preselection for the seat of Boothby, and in 1982 for the state seat of Bragg. From 1983 to 1984, he also served as the Executive Director of the Australian Chamber of Commerce. In 1984, he was finally preselected and was elected to the federal Parliament as Liberal member for Mayo, in the Adelaide Hills in South Australia. He held this seat until his resignation from Parliament in 2008.
Opposition leader
Downer held a number of positions on the opposition front bench from 1987 onwards. When the Liberals unexpectedly lost the 1993 election to Prime Minister Paul Keating, after the election Downer became Shadow Treasurer replacing Peter Reith who had resigned from the portfolio. During this time, Downer began to be talked of as a possible leader as John Hewson was seen as weak following the 1993 election defeat. In May 1994 Downer succeeded Hewson as Liberal party leader after defeating him in a leadership spill which Hewson initiated. Downer was the first South Australian to lead the party, as well as the first South Australian to lead the non-Labor side since Federation.
As Liberal leader, Downer initially attracted record levels of public support, even when incumbent Prime Minister Paul Keating launched a series of attacks on Downer's privileged background. Then aged 43, he was perceived as a fresh-faced alternative to a government in its twelfth year of power.
Several weeks after becoming leader Downer's support base was quickly eroded, however, by a series of embarrassing public blunders. One was the emergence of a 1987 speech to the far-right Australian League of Rights."An Open Letter to Alexander Downer". . Australian League of Rights Another was the sacking of John Hewson from the shadow ministry in August 1994. A damaging incident emerged from a formal dinner attended by Downer. While promoting the Liberal slogan "The Things That Matter", in a reference to abusing husbands, Downer quipped that the party's domestic violence policy would accordingly be named "The Things That Batter". Downer also found it difficult to handle the gulf between monarchists and republicans in his own party but resolved the dispute by promising to establish a constitutional convention to consider the issue. By the end of 1994, his approval ratings had dwindled to 34 percent after being as high as 53 percent.
Another event in 1994 that would spell the end of Downer's leadership was his decision for the Coalition to support the Keating government's sexual privacy legislation. The issue divided the Coalition with several MPs and Senators either voting against the legislation or abstaining from it.
On 9 January 1995, internal Liberal Party polling showed that with Downer as leader, the Coalition had a slim chance of holding its marginal seats in the next election, let alone of winning government. On 11 January, Downer launched a major policy statement with ten policy commitments and criticised Liberals he saw as undermining his leadership. Downer negotiated in mid-January with now back-bencher Hewson, but this resulted in Hewson publicly declaring he wanted the shadow Treasury portfolio which meant Downer would have to sack deputy Liberal leader Peter Costello from the position to give the job to Hewson. On 30 January 1995, he resigned as Liberal Leader and John Howard was elected unopposed to replace him. Downer pledged his support to Howard and said he would "kneecap" anyone who undermined Howard's second attempt at winning the prime ministership.
With a tenure of just over eight months, Downer is to date the shortest-serving leader of the federal Liberal Party. He is also, along with Brendan Nelson and Sussan Ley, one of three federal Liberal leaders never to lead the party into an election. On opposition leadership, he said in 2008, "The moment when I wanted to [leave] was just about the first day I started in the job. There was many a time from the first day onwards when I thought to myself, How the hell can I get out of this?
Minister for Foreign Affairs
Given choice of cabinet position in the incoming Howard government elected in March 1996, Downer became Minister for Foreign Affairs, a position he held until 3 December 2007. He became the longest-serving Foreign Minister of Australia on 20 December 2004.
One of Downer's earliest initiatives as Foreign Minister was to work with New Zealand to broker a peace agreement in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, which ended a long running civil conflict.
In 1996, Downer took the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to the United Nations General Assembly where it was embraced by most members of the world body. Pakistan, India and North Korea were among those who failed to ratify the treaty and went ahead in developing nuclear weapons capability. In 1999, the U.S. Senate rejected ratification of the treaty. Downer stated
However, subsequent policies of the Howard government, including export of uranium to India, and general support for the unilateralist approach of the Bush Administration were seen as undermining the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
In 1999, Downer assisted the United Nations to hold a referendum in East Timor and in negotiating the entry of the INTERFET peace keeping force into East Timor.
In 2003, ASIS installed listening devices in the Palace of Government in Dili, East Timor, and later Downer signed a controversial agreement with the government of East Timor for mining of gas and oil reserves in the Timor Gap. The agreement was criticised as unfair to East Timor and attracted a bipartisan letter of reproach from 50 members of the United States Congress. The reserves were closer to East Timor than Australia but claimed by Australia on the basis of a treaty made with General Suharto in 1989.
As Minister for Foreign Affairs, Downer played a role in the diplomatic dispute known as the Tampa affair in 2001 in which Australia denied permission for the to dock at Christmas Island, having picked up a number of asylum seekers trying to get to Australia by boat. Downer also played a role in the subsequent negotiation of the "Pacific Solution" in which Australia held asylum seekers off-shore in foreign jurisdictions.
In 2003, Downer was accused of not passing on intelligence reports he received before the 2002 Bali bombings. He countered that the warnings were not specific enough to warrant their further release to the Australian public.
Downer supported Australia's participation in the Iraq War. He argued that Iraq, the Middle East and the world would be better off without the regime of Saddam Hussein and he defended the claim that weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq.
In August 2004, he made the claim based on official assessment reports that North Korea's Taepo Dong ballistic missile had a range sufficient to reach Sydney, a view disputed by some.
In 2005, Australian members of the spiritual group Falun Gong launched action against Downer in the ACT Supreme Court alleging that his department had unfairly limited their freedom of expression.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade under Downer was accused by Chinese diplomat and defector Chen Yonglin of closely collaborating with the Chinese Embassy in Canberra, even to the extent of "giving suggestions to the Chinese Government on how to handle difficult political cases". Downer was accused of pursuing an unduly strong pro-China policy and failing to address human rights violations adequately.
In March 2006, Downer said the Australian Government opposed selling uranium to India. Downer was quoted as saying "Australia had no plans to change a policy which rules out uranium sales to countries like India which have not signed the UN's nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)." Following the conclusion of the US-India nuclear agreement, the Australian Government said it would export uranium to civil nuclear facilities in India subject to several conditions, one of which was the conclusion of a bilateral safeguards agreement.
In April 2006, he appeared before the Cole Inquiry regarding the oil for food scandal and testified that he was ignorant of the huge kickbacks paid to the Iraq government, despite claims by the opposition Labor Party that many warnings had been received by his department from various sources. The Cole inquiry made it clear Downer had been unaware of the kickbacks.