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The Honourable  Alexander Downer  BA (Hons) MP
38th Foreign Minister of Australia
In office 11 March 1996 – 3 December 2007
Preceded by	Gareth Evans
Succeeded by	Stephen Smith
Constituency	Mayo
Born	9 September 1951 (1951-09-09) (age 56) Adelaide, South Australia
Political party	Liberal Party of Australia
Spouse	Nicola (née Robinson)

Alexander John Gosse Downer, MP (born 9 September 1951) was Foreign Minister of Australia from March 1996 to December 2007, the longest serving in Australian history. He was also the federal parliamentary leader of the Liberal Party from 1994-1995.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Opposition Leader 3 Minister for Foreign Affairs 4 References 5 External links

Downer was born in Adelaide, South Australia, into one of the state's prominent established political families. His father, Sir Alexander "Alick" Downer, also reached cabinet rank in federal politics, then was High Commissioner in London from 1964 to 1972. His grandfather, Sir John Downer, was twice Premier of South Australia and a Senator in the first federal Parliament in 1901. His mother, Lady Downer (née Mary Gosse), is descended from early immigrants to South Australia. Downer is married to Nicola (née Robinson) and has four children, Georgina, Olivia, Edward, and Henrietta. Downer is related via the Gosse family to Edmund Gosse a famed English literary critic.^[1] Downer is fluent in French.

Downer was educated at Geelong Grammar School in Australia, then in England (while his father was High Commissioner) at Radley College between 1964 and 1970,^[2] and the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. From 1975 to 1976, he worked as an economist for the Bank of New South Wales,^[3] before entering the Australian Diplomatic Service, where he served until 1982.^[3] During Downer's time in the foreign service, some of it was spent at a diplomatic posting in Brussels, where he undertook a French language training course. He then worked as an advisor to the then Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser and subsequent Leader of the Federal Opposition Andrew Peacock.^[3] From 1983 to 1984, he also served as the Executive Director of the Australian Chamber of Commerce.^[3] In 1984, he was elected to the federal Parliament as Liberal member for Mayo, in the Adelaide Hills in South Australia. He has held this seat ever since.

The Liberals were in opposition from 1983 to 1996, and Downer held a number of positions on the Opposition front bench from 1987 onwards. Downer's privileged family background and accent were the subject of political attacks, exploiting anti-elitist sentiment.^[4]

In 1993, he became Shadow Treasurer (Opposition finance spokesperson.) When the Liberals unexpectedly lost the 1993 elections to Paul Keating, Downer began to be talked of as a possible leader, and in May 1994 he succeeded Dr John Hewson as leader of the Liberal party after defeating him in a leadership ballot.

As Liberal leader, Downer initially attracted record levels of public support. Then aged 43, he was perceived as a fresh-faced alternative to a government in its twelfth year of power. His support base was quickly eroded, however, by a series of embarrassing public blunders, the most famous of which occurred at a formal dinner. Promoting the Liberal party slogan "The Things That Matter", Downer then joked that the party's domestic violence policy would accordingly be named the "things that batter", referring to abusive husbands. In January 1995 he resigned as Leader, and John Howard was elected to replace him. With a tenure of just over eight months, Downer is to date the shortest-serving leader of the federal Liberal Party. He is also the only federal Liberal leader never to lead the party into an election.

Downer was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs when the Howard government was elected in March 1996, a position he held until December 3, 2007. He became the longest serving Foreign Minister of Australia on 20 December 2004.

One of Downer's earliest initiatives as foreign minister was to work with New Zealand to broker a peace agreement in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, which ended a long running civil conflict.

In 1996 Downer took the Comrehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to the United Nations General Assembly where it was embraced by most members of the world body.

In 1999, Downer played a key role in assisting the United Nations to hold a referendum in East Timor and in negotiating the entry of the INTERFET peace keeping force into East Timor. ^[5] This intervention has been attributed by Osama Bin Laden as provoking a fatwā on Australia and Australian interests. ^{[6] [7] [8] [9]}

In 2003, Downer has signed an agreement over the gas and oil reserves in the Timor Gap. [1] An agreement which has been criticised by opposition parties and other critics, including a bipartisan letter of reproach from 50 members of the United States Congress, as being unfair to East Timor ^{[10] [11] [12] [13]} as the gas reserves are closer to East Timor than Australia but are claimed by Australia on the basis of a treaty with General Suharto, in 1989. [2]

As Minister for Foreign Affairs, Downer played a role in the diplomatic dispute known as the Tampa affair in 2001 in which Australia denied permission for the MV Tampa to dock at Christmas Island having picked up a number of refugees from a distressed vessel. Downer also played a role in the subsequent negotiation of the "Pacific Solution" in which Australia held refugees off-shore in foreign jurisdictions in an attempt to deny them entry into Australia.

In 2003 Downer was accused of not passing on intelligence reports he received before the 2002 Bali bombings. He countered that the warnings were not specific enough to warrant their further release to the Australian public.^[14]

He has been a firm supporter of the legality of the Iraq war passionately believing Iraq, the Middle East and the world wouldbe better off without the regime of Saddam Hussein and he defended the claim that weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq. ^{[15] [16] [17]}

In August 2004 he made a provocative claim that North Korea could launch Taepo Dong ballistic missile with a range long enough to hit Sydney. This was supported at the time by expert opinion including by Australia's Office of National Assessment. [3]

In August 2006, it was claimed by a former weapons inspector Dr John Gee, that Downer had in 2004 suppressed information that the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was fundamentally flawed. ^{[18] [19] [20]}

In March 2006 said the Australian Government opposed selling uranium to India. Downer is quoted as saying "Australia had no plans to change a policy which rules out uranium sales to countries like India which have not signed the UN's nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)." Following the conclusion of the US-India nuclear agreement the Australian Government said it would export uranium to civil nuclear facilities in India subject to several conditions one of which was the conclusion of a bilateral safeguards agreement.

In April 2006 he appeared before the Cole Inquiry regarding the Iraq oil for food scandal and testified that he was ignorant of the kickbacks paid to the Iraq government, despite claims by the Opposition Labor Party that several warnings that had been received by his department from various sources. Attacks on Downer by his opponents were discredited by the conclusions of the Commission which cleared Downer's name. In July 2006 it was claimed that six months before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Downer had argued that participating in the invasion would be commercially beneficial for Australia. What he in fact had said was that he did not want the invasion to lead to America taking all of Australia.s wheat market. ^[21]

As Foreign Affairs Minister Downer supported the United States Government's incarceration of two Australian citizens, David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, in the Guantanamo Bay detention center. ^[22] Habib was eventually released without charge, while Hicks was sentenced in 2007, by the Guantanamo military commissions, for providing material support for terrorism. Hicks is the first of the 517 foreign terror suspects held at Guantanamo to be convicted. ^[23]

A major challenge was handling relations with Australia's most important neighbour, Indonesia. Downer negotiated the 2006 Lombok Treaty to put security relations beyween the two countries on a stable footing, built bilateral co-operation to fight terrorism, people smuggling and illegal fishing. One of the recent difficulties which erupted between Australia and Indonesia was when Australia accepted a boatload of asylum seekers from Indonesia's Papua province in March 2006. ^[24]

In September 2007, on the sidelines of the 2007 APEC in Sydney, Downer indicated that Australia plans to launch bilateral ministerial-level security talks with the People's Republic of China. Downer also stated, "China is a good partner of Australia. Whatever the differences there are between us in terms of our political systems, human rights issues, China is a very important part of the strategic architecture, the security architecture of the Asia-Pacific region and it's important we have good forums to discuss any issues of that kind with them." ^[25]

In 2005 Australian members of the spiritual group Falun Gong launched action against Downer in the ACT Supreme Court alleging that his department has unfairly limited their freedom of expression. [4] ^[26]

• Government webpage
• Electorate website

Party political offices
Preceded by Dr John Hewson	Leader of the Liberal Party of Australia 1994–1995	Succeeded by John Howard
Political offices
Preceded by Gareth Evans	Foreign Minister of Australia 1996–2007	Succeeded by Stephen Smith
Parliament of Australia
Preceded by Electorate created	Member for Mayo 1984 – present	Incumbent

v • d • e Leaders of the Liberal Party of Australia
Menzies · Holt · Gorton · McMahon · Snedden · Fraser · Peacock · Howard · Peacock · Hewson · Downer · Howard · Nelson

v • d • e Current Members of the Australian House of Representatives from South Australia
Labor	Mark Butler  · Nick Champion  · Kate Ellis  · Steve Georganas  · Amanda Rishworth  · Tony Zappia
Liberal	Alexander Downer  · Christopher Pyne  · Rowan Ramsey  · Patrick Secker  · Andrew Southcott