Steve Bracks

Premier of Victoria, Australia, 1999-present.

A former teacher from Ballarat, a small city in central Victoria, he became Victorian leader of the Australian Labor Party, and thus Victorian Opposition Leader, in early 1999 after defeating the apparently hapless John Brumby in a leadership challenge.. Despite being widely regarded as having no chance of defeating the seemingly hugely popular Liberal incumbent Jeff Kennett, Bracks and his senior cabinet members (many also from provincial backgrounds), campigned heavily in regional areas of Victoria on themes that the Kennett government governed only for Melbourne and was ignoring the problems in "the bush". Voters in regional areas, despite almost unbroken majority support for the coalition in the past, deserted the Kennett government in droves, and left the parliament delicately balanced, with three regional independents holding the balance of power. Through a combination of ideological leanings, personal bitterness over perceived mistreatment from Kennett, and deals negotiated on hot-button issues, the independents agreed to support Labour in a minority government.

Despite Bracks' tortuous path to the job, his likeable public persona and consensus-based approach to the leadership have made him extremely personally popular with the electorate, and the partnership of Labor and the indpendents has thus far provided stable, reasonably fiscally prudent (though aided by general economic conditions) governance. Brumby, appointed Treasurer, is regarded as a major part of the government's success and indeed, like Kennett's Treasurer Alan Stockdale before him, is regarded as perhaps the real power behind the throne. The major criticism of Bracks and his government has tended to be that their penchant for consultation and review has gotten in the way of proactive government, thus losing the excitement and constant change that were characteristic of the Kennett years. The talents of some of the more junior ministers in the government is also sometimes questioned, although as ministers are chosen by the parliamentary members of the party in Labor governments (though the leader can allocate portfolios as they choose) it is somewhat out of Bracks' control.

Bracks and his party won a crushing victory, gaining a majority of seats in both houses of the state parliament, in elections in November 2002. Bracks's personal popularity, combined with a savvy campaign that neatly countered the do-nothing claims of the Liberal opposition, and an inept opposition (whose campaign was in tatters after shadow Treasurer Robert Dean was disqualified from his candidacy because of an incorrect declaration of his place of residence on the electoral roll), saw Labor sweep through the Liberal heartland of eastern Melbourne to claim a huge majority in the Lower House and a slim but outright majority in the upper house - only the second time in Victoria's history that that has been achieved by Labor and the first for a full term.