Michael Beahan – influential and dynamic Australian politician was proud of his Irish roots

Eleven years ago, the Australian people recognised the contribution of Michael Beahan (January 21st, 1937 – January 30th, 2022) by admitting him as a Member of the Order of Australia.

At his funeral in Melbourne on February 7th, Michael was described as a genuinely good and kind man.

His career was varied. He was an electrician, a teacher, union leader and a secretary of the Labor Party in the state of Western Australia (WA). In 1987, he became a Senator for WA in the upper house of the Australian Parliament, which culminated in his role as 19th president of the Australian Senate until he left politics in 1996.

Michael was a true Labor man and a great Irish West Australian. Through all this, he remained a good, gentle and kind man.

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Michael was born in London where his early years were not easy. The impact of the Great Depression was still being felt, then the war came with the constant bombings, including of Michael’s family home. The family decided to move to Ireland. Michael often spoke of his teenage years in Dalkey as a time of joy. He immersed himself in Irish culture and became a true lover of his father’s native country, especially of Yeats’s poetry and Joyce’s prose. He visited Ireland often.

When the Beahan family decided to migrate from Ireland to Australia, Michael was 17. In 1954 after disembarking a migrant ship at Fremantle, he found work at the Australian Electric Company in Perth, manufacturing electrical equipment. Following his apprenticeship as an electrician and his introduction to trade unionism, he became increasingly interested and concerned about workers’ rights and workplace safety and was determined to do something about it.

In his 20s, he decided to return to formal education. He attained arts and education degrees from the University of Western Australia and became a secondary school teacher in Bunbury, a regional town in the south west of Australia.

It was this combination of factory floor background, trade qualification, union membership and teaching that led to Michael becoming the West Australian Trades and Labour Council’s first education officer. This initiative underpinned the establishment in 1975 of the Australian Trade Union Training Authority (TUTA), funded by the federal Whitlam government to provide education and training programmes for union officials. Michael was instrumental in its establishment as a statutory authority in every state and became its first director in WA.

Michael’s move to the political sphere occurred in 1981 when he became general secretary of the WA Labor Party. He led Labor’s successful election campaign to win government at the state level in February 1983. A few weeks later the Labor Party won the March 1983 federal election, installing Bob Hawke as prime minister.

Michael’s enduring political legacy during his time as party secretary was the modernisation of WA Labor’s political campaigning infrastructure, practice and culture. Michael brought a greater professionalism to campaigns, seeing the value of modernising local and regional organisational structures, and training campaign workers. He created a culture of campaign innovation, which deployed political imagery and themes, communicated with new tactics and methods. In the 1980s these ideas were novel. We all became used to Michael’s organisational motto of “crisp, concise and contemporary”.

He further introduced wage equality for political workers and Labor party staff, becoming the first to champion pension payments and equality of reward and opportunity for female staff.

The party adopted his approach to campaigning and organisation nationally and by 1993 Michael was the chairman of the Labor Party’s national campaign committee. Labor won an election thought to be impossible.

Beahan, having been a leader in the Parliamentary Labor Party, was elected as president of the Australian Senate in 1994.

In this role he became a global ambassador for Australia. He became Labor’s International Secretary too, and this allowed him to train campaign workers for social democratic parties all over the world, including in Malta, South Africa, Vietnam, and Fiji.

During his parliamentary career, Beahan was also, among other things, chairman of the defence, trade and human rights committees.

As the Senate’s presiding officer, his reforms endure today. Michael was acknowledged by Gareth Evans, a fellow Labor Senator and Australia’s significant foreign minister, for his personal warmth, charm and as an outstanding character who contributed to the opportunity, wealth, and humanity of Australia.

Following his political career, Michael settled in Melbourne and devoted much of his time to the community, fighting for housing projects, for people, for democracy and an Australian republic.

Michael Beahan lived a real labour life, committed to community and committed to causes. From London to Dalkey, and eventually to Australia’s National Capital, he remained a good, gentle, kind, and decent man. He will be greatly missed.

Michael is survived by his wife Margaret; brothers Terry, Peter and Frank; by his first wife Jenny; and children Daniel and Kate.

I thank the Beahan family, the West Australian Labor party, John Cowdell and Marcelle Anderson for their memories of Michael.

Gary Gray is the Australian Ambassador to Ireland