How Rove Live interview derailed Simon Crean’s Labor leadership

A TV interview the late Simon Crean did with comedian Rove McManus shows why he was the only Labor leader in over 100 years never to lead an election campaign.

Crean, a government minister in the governments of Hawke, Keating, Rudd and Gillard, died on Sunday at the age of 74 while on a walking tour of Europe. He suddenly had a heart attack.

Crean is fondly remembered by politicians on all sides and for his principled stance against the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

However, a TV moment sums up his failed stint as opposition leader, where he was thrown out by his party without meeting voters.

In 2003, he showed up for a friendly chat on the then TV show Rove Live on Channel 10, hoping to connect with younger voters. But a simple clip – “says Simon” – simply showed that he was a bad TV performer.

Part of the interview — Crean said, “Simon says hands up if you want universal health care” — was widely reported as his rival John Howard’s government had no plans to get rid of Medicare.

The late Mr. Crean made matters worse for himself when he accepted Rove’s invitation to pose as his much more popular political rival, ten years his senior, who had a lifelong hearing impairment.

“Hello, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, nodding his head, trying Mr. Howard’s tense voice.

Political commentator Annabel Crabb called the interview at the top of her “private top ten embarrassing things they’ve seen politicians do.”

Voters were unhappy with an October 2003 news poll in which only 18 percent of voters voted Crean the preferred prime minister, compared to 58 percent who favored Howard.

Less than six weeks after that poll, Crean was replaced as Labor leader by 42-year-old shadow treasurer Mark Latham – the party’s youngest new federal leader since 1901.

Crean supported Latham in preventing his arch-rival Kim Beazley from returning to the Labor leadership after losing two elections in 1998 and 2001.

His merry rival, like him, was also the son of a minister in Gough Whitlam’s government.

Since Federation in 1901, no other federal Labor opposition leader – acting leaders excepted – had been denied the chance to lead the party to elections.

This put Crean in the same league as former Liberal leaders Alexander Downer and Brendan Nelson.

Like former Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke, Crean had been chairman of the Australian Council of Trade Unions before winning a parliamentary seat in 1990 and immediately becoming a minister.

But unlike Hawke, he lacked the TV charisma of the man who won four elections to become Labour’s longest-serving prime minister.

Crean was more like another Labor leader who was wooden on TV and lacked the political skills to connect with voters.

Arthur Calwell – who lost three elections in 1961, 1963 and 1966 – opposed Australian troops being sent to the Vietnam War and lost his last game in a landslide against the new, telegenic Liberal Prime Minister Harold Holt.

In another historical parallel, Crean opposed the Iraq War in early 2003 and told US President George W. Bush when he addressed the Australian Parliament later that year.

In either case, these Labor leaders, who were unnatural on television, would be proved right by history, if not by politics.

Rove would later become an unwitting Labor power broker.

Beazley, in his second incarnation as opposition leader in November 2006, confused the TV host — who was mourning the death of his actress wife Belinda Emmett from cancer — with George W. Bush senior adviser Karl Rove.

“The first thing I want to say is this: today our thoughts and the thoughts of many, many Australians will be with Karl Rove as he goes through the very sad process of burying his beloved wife,” he said.

A month later, in December 2006, the Labor Party replaced Mr Beazley with Kevin Rudd.

Rudd went on to win the November 2007 election – ending Labour’s nearly 12 years in the political wilderness – after Rove asked him the wacky question days before the election: ‘Who would you turn gay for?’

“My wife Therese.”

At least the answer was simple for an energetic Labor leader who had built up a following by appearing on the Seven’s Sunrise breakfast show.

Crean would go on to serve as a minister in both Rudd governments, and his ministerial career ended in March 2013 when he called on embattled Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard to allow a leadership leak before a rival candidate had announced a bid.

Timing wasn’t really his strong suit.

However, the late former leader left a legacy, with Labor Party conferences now featuring a 50:50 split between unions and rank-and-file party members.

He had fought to reduce the union balance from 60 percent, but it was an issue few voters or TV viewers cared about when Crean set fire to his political capital two decades ago.