Mick Young
Encyclopedia
Michael Jerome Young was an Australia
n politician. He rose through the Australian Labor Party
(ALP) to become its National Secretary, before serving as a Labor member of the House of Representatives
from the 1974 election
to 1988. He was a senior minister in the Hawke
government, and was a prominent political figure during the 1970s and 1980s.
Born in Sydney
to Irish Catholic
parents, Young attended school at Marist Brothers
College in the Sydney suburb of Mosman
. He never went to university. After his high school days he worked as a shearer and roustabout before becoming an organiser with the Australian Workers Union in South Australia
.
He was appointed as the party's South Australian state organiser in 1964, and his role in the first Labor electoral win for 30 years at the 1965 state election
(the election resulted in Frank Walsh
becoming Labor Premier) led first to his election as Secretary of the state branch in 1968 and later secretary of the federal party in 1969. Gough Whitlam
, then Opposition Leader, hired Young as an adviser during this period.
Young again showed his substantial campaign management skills in the 1972 federal election
, playing a significant role in the first ALP federal election win since 1946. He devised Labor’s "It's Time" slogan, still considered one of the most effective vote-winning phrases in Australian history.
Touted as a potential successor to Whitlam as Labor leader, Young gained preselection for the safe Labor seat of Port Adelaide
and was comfortably elected to parliament at the 1974 election
. Labor under Whitlam suffered its worst-ever electoral defeat in late 1975
; Young was promoted to the shadow ministry in 1976, and was given the Immigration and Ethnic Affairs portfolios.
Young has been credited with keeping Labor’s spirits up during its time in opposition from 1975 to 1983. A future party leader, Kim Beazley Junior
, considered Young on a par with Paul Keating
as the most effective baiter of Liberal
politicians, although Young "was much funnier, but gentler as well".
One of Young's most effective and renowned attacks on the Liberals had as its immediate target Alexander Downer
, who was seen as a wealthy snob by the ALP. It was of Downer that Young famously said: "His gatehouse
is bigger than The Lodge" (the official home of the Australian Prime Minister).
Following the landslide ALP victory at the 1983 federal election
, Young was initially appointed Special Minister of State
(and Vice-President of the Executive Council
until July 1983), but was forced to stand down in 1984 when he breached Cabinet security, as part of the Combe-Ivanov affair. This did not do him lasting political damage, though, and five months later he became Special Minister of State again.
In February 1987 he was appointed as Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs
. He was also made Leader of the House of Representatives. He became Minister for Immigration, Local Government and Ethnic Affairs in July 1987, when he also took on the position of Vice-President of the Executive Council again. While immigration minister, he introduced the custom of conducting formal briefings for the press gallery, based on the idea that it was preferable to freely provide information to the media with your own spin than for them to gain the information from other sources and put their own spin on it.
As a member of parliament, Young remained actively involved in social justice issues. In 1984, during a contentious national ALP conference where nuclear issues were under debate, he openly spoke out against uranium mining, and invited anti-uranium mining activists to use his office as a base. He also made available copies of the secret Fox Report on Ranger Uranium to anti-nuclear protesters and supported their campaign to have the City of Port Adelaide declared a Nuclear Free Zone. In addition he was active in supporting refugees and multiculturalism, and launched an inquiry on immigration policy aimed at reforming the system during his term as minister.
In 1987, Young faced controversy over his alleged handling of campaign donations during the 1987 election. He subsequently resigned from parliament on 12 February 1988, sparking the 1988 Port Adelaide by-election
, though he was later cleared of any wrongdoing.
Following his resignation from parliament, Young worked as a lobbyist, chaired the Federal Government Multicultural Advisory Council and completed a review for the ALP following the 1995 Queensland state election. He also continued to serve as guide to promising Labor politicians, including Beazley, who considered Young his best friend.
Young’s premature death in Sydney, of leukaemia, on 8 April 1996, was felt greatly by the Labor Party and his state funeral was well attended. An annual scholarship was set up in his name to assist disadvantaged children and adults in furthering their education.
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n politician. He rose through the Australian Labor Party
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...
(ALP) to become its National Secretary, before serving as a Labor member of the House of Representatives
Australian House of Representatives
The House of Representatives is one of the two houses of the Parliament of Australia; it is the lower house; the upper house is the Senate. Members of Parliament serve for terms of approximately three years....
from the 1974 election
Australian federal election, 1974
Federal elections were held in Australia on 18 May 1974. All 127 seats in the House of Representatives, and all 60 seats in the Senate were up for election, due to a double dissolution...
to 1988. He was a senior minister in the Hawke
Bob Hawke
Robert James Lee "Bob" Hawke AC GCL was the 23rd Prime Minister of Australia from March 1983 to December 1991 and therefore longest serving Australian Labor Party Prime Minister....
government, and was a prominent political figure during the 1970s and 1980s.
Born in Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
to Irish Catholic
Irish Catholic
Irish Catholic is a term used to describe people who are both Roman Catholic and Irish .Note: the term is not used to describe a variant of Catholicism. More particularly, it is not a separate creed or sect in the sense that "Anglo-Catholic", "Old Catholic", "Eastern Orthodox Catholic" might be...
parents, Young attended school at Marist Brothers
Marist Brothers
The Marist Brothers, or Little Brothers of Mary, are a Catholic religious order of brothers and affiliated lay people. The order was founded in France, at La Valla-en-Gier near Lyon in 1817 by Saint Marcellin Champagnat, a young French priest of the Society of Mary...
College in the Sydney suburb of Mosman
Mosman, New South Wales
Mosman is a suburb on the Lower North Shore of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Mosman is located 8 kilometres north-east of the Sydney central business district and is the administrative centre for the local government area of the Municipality of Mosman.-Localities:In February...
. He never went to university. After his high school days he worked as a shearer and roustabout before becoming an organiser with the Australian Workers Union in South Australia
South Australia
South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...
.
He was appointed as the party's South Australian state organiser in 1964, and his role in the first Labor electoral win for 30 years at the 1965 state election
South Australian state election, 1965
State elections were held in Australia on 6 March 1965. All 39 seats in the South Australian House of Assembly were up for election. The incumbent Liberal and Country League led by Premier of South Australia Thomas Playford IV, in power since 1938, was defeated by the Australian Labor Party led by...
(the election resulted in Frank Walsh
Frank Walsh
Francis Henry "Frank" Walsh was the 34th Premier of South Australia, serving from 10 March 1965 to 1 June 1967.-Early life:One of eight children, Walsh was born into an Irish Catholic family in O'Halloran Hill, South Australia...
becoming Labor Premier) led first to his election as Secretary of the state branch in 1968 and later secretary of the federal party in 1969. Gough Whitlam
Gough Whitlam
Edward Gough Whitlam, AC, QC , known as Gough Whitlam , served as the 21st Prime Minister of Australia. Whitlam led the Australian Labor Party to power at the 1972 election and retained government at the 1974 election, before being dismissed by Governor-General Sir John Kerr at the climax of the...
, then Opposition Leader, hired Young as an adviser during this period.
Young again showed his substantial campaign management skills in the 1972 federal election
Australian federal election, 1972
Federal elections were held in Australia on 2 December 1972. All 125 seats in the House of Representatives were up for election. The Liberal Party of Australia had been in power since 1949, under Prime Minister of Australia William McMahon since March 1971 with coalition partner the Country Party...
, playing a significant role in the first ALP federal election win since 1946. He devised Labor’s "It's Time" slogan, still considered one of the most effective vote-winning phrases in Australian history.
Touted as a potential successor to Whitlam as Labor leader, Young gained preselection for the safe Labor seat of Port Adelaide
Division of Port Adelaide
The Division of Port Adelaide is an Australian Electoral Division in the state of South Australia. It is located in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, covering the area around the Barker Inlet, part of the Gulf St Vincent. It stretches from St Kilda in the north down to Grange Road, and is roughly...
and was comfortably elected to parliament at the 1974 election
Australian federal election, 1974
Federal elections were held in Australia on 18 May 1974. All 127 seats in the House of Representatives, and all 60 seats in the Senate were up for election, due to a double dissolution...
. Labor under Whitlam suffered its worst-ever electoral defeat in late 1975
Australian federal election, 1975
Federal elections were held in Australia on 13 December 1975. All 127 seats in the House of Representatives, and all 64 seats in the Senate were up for election following a double dissolution of both Houses....
; Young was promoted to the shadow ministry in 1976, and was given the Immigration and Ethnic Affairs portfolios.
Young has been credited with keeping Labor’s spirits up during its time in opposition from 1975 to 1983. A future party leader, Kim Beazley Junior
Kim Beazley
In the October 1998 election, Labor polled a majority of the two-party vote and received the largest swing to a first-term opposition since 1934. However, due to the uneven nature of the swing, Labor came up eight seats short of making Beazley Prime Minister....
, considered Young on a par with Paul Keating
Paul Keating
Paul John Keating was the 24th Prime Minister of Australia, serving from 1991 to 1996. Keating was elected as the federal Labor member for Blaxland in 1969 and came to prominence as the reformist treasurer of the Hawke Labor government, which came to power at the 1983 election...
as the most effective baiter of Liberal
Liberal Party of Australia
The Liberal Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Founded a year after the 1943 federal election to replace the United Australia Party, the centre-right Liberal Party typically competes with the centre-left Australian Labor Party for political office...
politicians, although Young "was much funnier, but gentler as well".
One of Young's most effective and renowned attacks on the Liberals had as its immediate target Alexander Downer
Alexander Downer
Alexander John Gosse Downer is a former Australian Liberal Party politician who was Foreign Minister of Australia from March 1996 to December 2007, the longest-serving in Australian history...
, who was seen as a wealthy snob by the ALP. It was of Downer that Young famously said: "His gatehouse
Gatehouse
A gatehouse, in architectural terminology, is a building enclosing or accompanying a gateway for a castle, manor house, fort, town or similar buildings of importance.-History:...
is bigger than The Lodge" (the official home of the Australian Prime Minister).
Following the landslide ALP victory at the 1983 federal election
Australian federal election, 1983
Federal elections were held in Australia on 5 March 1983. All 125 seats in the House of Representatives, and all 64 seats in the Senate, were up for election, following a double dissolution...
, Young was initially appointed Special Minister of State
Special Minister of State
The Special Minister of State , currently the Special Minister of State for the Public Service and Integrity is a ministerial portfolio in the Australian Government Department of Finance and Deregulation responsible for various parliamentary, electoral, financial and oversight affairs.Other areas...
(and Vice-President of the Executive Council
Vice-President of the Executive Council
The Vice-President of the Federal Executive Council is a position in Australian federal governments, whose holder acts as presiding officer of the Federal Executive Council in the absence of the Governor-General....
until July 1983), but was forced to stand down in 1984 when he breached Cabinet security, as part of the Combe-Ivanov affair. This did not do him lasting political damage, though, and five months later he became Special Minister of State again.
In February 1987 he was appointed as Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs
Minister for Immigration and Citizenship (Australia)
In the Government of Australia, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship is responsible for overseeing the Department of Immigration and Citizenship....
. He was also made Leader of the House of Representatives. He became Minister for Immigration, Local Government and Ethnic Affairs in July 1987, when he also took on the position of Vice-President of the Executive Council again. While immigration minister, he introduced the custom of conducting formal briefings for the press gallery, based on the idea that it was preferable to freely provide information to the media with your own spin than for them to gain the information from other sources and put their own spin on it.
As a member of parliament, Young remained actively involved in social justice issues. In 1984, during a contentious national ALP conference where nuclear issues were under debate, he openly spoke out against uranium mining, and invited anti-uranium mining activists to use his office as a base. He also made available copies of the secret Fox Report on Ranger Uranium to anti-nuclear protesters and supported their campaign to have the City of Port Adelaide declared a Nuclear Free Zone. In addition he was active in supporting refugees and multiculturalism, and launched an inquiry on immigration policy aimed at reforming the system during his term as minister.
In 1987, Young faced controversy over his alleged handling of campaign donations during the 1987 election. He subsequently resigned from parliament on 12 February 1988, sparking the 1988 Port Adelaide by-election
Port Adelaide by-election, 1988
A by-election was held for the Australian House of Representatives seat of Port Adelaide on 26 March 1988. This was triggered by the resignation of Labor Party MP Mick Young over alleged mishandling of campaign donations....
, though he was later cleared of any wrongdoing.
Following his resignation from parliament, Young worked as a lobbyist, chaired the Federal Government Multicultural Advisory Council and completed a review for the ALP following the 1995 Queensland state election. He also continued to serve as guide to promising Labor politicians, including Beazley, who considered Young his best friend.
Young’s premature death in Sydney, of leukaemia, on 8 April 1996, was felt greatly by the Labor Party and his state funeral was well attended. An annual scholarship was set up in his name to assist disadvantaged children and adults in furthering their education.