Simon Crean
Australian politician (1949–2023)
Simon Findlay Crean (26 February 1949 – 25 June 2023) was an Australian politician and trade unionist. He was the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and leader of the opposition from 2001 to 2003. He represented the seat of Hotham in the House of Representatives from 1990 to 2013 and was a cabinet minister in the Hawke, Keating, Rudd and Gillard governments.
Crean was born in Melbourne, the son of Frank Crean who was deputy prime minister under Gough Whitlam. He studied law and economics at Monash University and was involved in the trade union movement from a young age, becoming general secretary of the Storemen and Packers' Union in 1979. He was elected vice-president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) in 1981 and president in 1985. Crean stood down from this role upon his election to parliament at the 1990 federal election, and was immediately appointed Minister for Science and Technology in the Hawke government. He held several other ministerial posts until Labor's defeat at the 1996 election.
Following Labor's 1998 election defeat, Crean was elected deputy leader of the ALP under Kim Beazley, replacing Gareth Evans. He was elected unopposed to succeed Beazley as party leader following further defeat at the 2001 election, becoming leader of the opposition.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Simon Crean” as australian politician (1949–2023). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as australian politician (1949–2023). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1400580. VIAF identifies the subject as 193992541. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1949, 2023, 2001 and 2003.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
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Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Simon Crean”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Simon Crean primary sources, Simon Crean archive and Simon research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Simon Crean” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.