John Cain II
Encyclopedia
John Cain Australia
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 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...

 politician, was the 41st Premier of Victoria, holding office from 1982 to 1990.

Biography

Cain was born in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

, the son of John Cain
John Cain (senior)
John Cain was an Australian politician, who became the 34th premier of Victoria, and was the first Australian Labor Party leader to win a majority in the Victorian Legislative Assembly. He was the only premier of Victoria whose son also served as premier.-Early life:Cain was born, one of 18...

, leader of the Labor Party in Victoria from 1937 to 1957 and three times Premier. He was educated at Bell Primary School, Northcote High School
Northcote High School
Northcote High School is a co-educational, state high school in Northcote, Victoria, Australia. It is situated at the southern end of the City of Darebin, on St Georges Road.Teaching from Year 7 through 12, the school has a population of around 1,450 students...

, Scotch College, Melbourne
Scotch College, Melbourne
Scotch College, Melbourne is an independent, Presbyterian, day and boarding school for boys, located in Hawthorn, an inner-eastern suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia....

 and at the University of Melbourne
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...

, where he graduated in law. He practised law in suburban Melbourne, and was Chairman of the Victorian Law Institute in 1971–72. He was also a member of the Law Council of Australia and a member of the Australian Law Reform Commission.

Cain was 24 at the time of the 1955 split in the Labor Party that brought down his father's last government. He lost a preselection battle with Frank Wilkes
Frank Wilkes
Frank Noel Wilkes AM , Australian politician, was Leader of the Labor Opposition in Victoria from 1977 to 1981. Wilkes was born in Melbourne and educated at Northcote Primary and Secondary Schools and Preston Technical College. During the Second World War he served in the southwest Pacific in the...

 for his late father's seat of Northcote
Electoral district of Northcote
The Electoral district of Northcote is an electoral district of the Victorian Legislative Assembly. It currently covers the suburbs of Alphington, Fairfield, Northcote, Thornbury, and part of Preston. It lies on the northern bank of the Yarra River between the Merri and Darebin creeks.The seat...

 in 1957.

During the 1960s he was a member of the group, known as The Participants, which also included John Button
John Button
John Norman Button was an Australian politician, who served as a senior minister in the Hawke and Keating Labor governments...

, Richard McGarvie
Richard McGarvie
Richard Elgin McGarvie, AC, KStJ, QC was a judge in the Supreme Court of Victoria and Governor of Victoria from 1992 to 1997.-Early life:...

 Frank Costigan and Barry Jones
Barry Jones (Australian politician)
Barry Owen Jones AO, FAA, FASSA, FAHA, FTSE, FACE is a writer, lawyer, social activist, quiz champion and former politician. He campaigned against the death penalty throughout the 1960s, particularly against the execution of Ronald Ryan, and remains against capital punishment...

, who opposed the left-wing group which controlled the Victorian Labor Party from 1955 onwards. In 1971 he supported the moves by supporters of 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...

, led by Bob 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....

 and others, that in 1971 brought about federal intervention in the Victorian branch and ended left-wing control. He became Vice-Chairman of the Victorian Labor Party in 1973. That group of Participants later became known as the Independents faction which predominantly voted with the Socialist Left.

Career

In 1976 Cain was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly
Victorian Legislative Assembly
The Victorian Legislative Assembly is the lower house of the Parliament of Victoria in Australia. Together with the Victorian Legislative Council, the upper house, it sits in Parliament House in the state capital, Melbourne.-History:...

 as MP for Bundoora
Electoral district of Bundoora
Bundoora is an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of Victoria. It is a 28km² electorate located in northern Melbourne, encompassing the suburbs of Watsonia and Yallambie and parts of Bundoora, Greensborough, Macleod and Rosanna. It also includes the central...

 . He became shadow Attorney-General under the leadership of Frank Wilkes
Frank Wilkes
Frank Noel Wilkes AM , Australian politician, was Leader of the Labor Opposition in Victoria from 1977 to 1981. Wilkes was born in Melbourne and educated at Northcote Primary and Secondary Schools and Preston Technical College. During the Second World War he served in the southwest Pacific in the...

, but when Wilkes lost the 1979 election to the 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...

 premier, Dick Hamer
Rupert Hamer
Sir Rupert James Hamer, AC, KCMG, ED , generally known until he was knighted in 1982 as Dick Hamer, Australian Liberal Party politician, was the 39th Premier of Victoria, serving from 1972 to 1981.-Early years:...

, Cain challenged him for the leadership, becoming leader in September 1981. In March 1982 Cain defeated the Liberals and formed the first Labor government in Victoria for 27 years since the one led by his father.

Premiership

During the first term of his Premiership, Cain's government carried out many reforms to Victorian government, particularly in the areas of education, environment, law reform and public administration. The Government brought in nude beaches, legalized brothels, extended Saturday shop trading hours, extended nightclub hours, extended hotel hours and allowed Sunday VFL football and more gambling opportunities.

Cain was a Keynesian, opposed to the doctrines of economic rationalism
Economic rationalism
Economic rationalism is an Australian term in discussion of microeconomic policy, applicable to the economic policy of many governments around the world, in particular during the 1980s and 1990s....

, and he increased government spending in the hope of stimulating growth and investment. Following the lead of NSW
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

 premier Neville Wran
Neville Wran
Neville Kenneth Wran, AC, CNZM, QC was the Premier of New South Wales from 1976 until 1986. He was National President of the Australian Labor Party from 1980 to 1986 and Chairman of both the Lionel Murphy Foundation and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation from 1986...

, Cain demanded Government owned enterprises pay dividends to the treasury, these dividends were increased every year forcing these enterprises to borrow to pay the dividend.
Other schemes such as the Victorian Economic Development Corporation, and the Victorian Equity Trust promised good returns. These schemes worked so long as the national economy remained buoyant.

The Government of Victoria refused to approve the plans for the upgrade VFL Park
Waverley Park
Waverley Park was an Australian rules football stadium in Mulgrave, Victoria, Australia. For most of its history, its purpose was as a neutral venue and used by all Victorian based Victorian Football League/Australian Football League clubs. However, during the 1990s it became the home ground of...

 in 1982/1983, because the upgrade would have threatened the Melbourne Cricket Ground's right to host the VFL Grand Final. Cain said that such a major event must be played in the centre of Melbourne.

Cain was also responsible for the appointment as Governor of Davis McCaughey
Davis McCaughey
John Davis McCaughey, AC was a bible scholar, church and university administrator, and was Governor of Victoria from 1986–1992.-Working life:...

, then aged 71, who served from 1986 to 1992. A highly respected theologian
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

, McCaughey was a popular choice after the controversy surrounding after the resignation of Rear Admiral Sir Brian Murray
Brian Murray (governor)
Rear Admiral Sir Brian Stewart Murray KCMG, AO was Governor of Victoria from March 1982 until 1985.Murray was a retired Royal Australian Navy admiral married to a former nun. He was nominated by the Liberal Victorian Premier Lindsay Thompson...

, following disputed accusations that he had improperly accepted free air travel.

Second Term

Cain remained very popular with the Victorian electorate, and was easily elected to a second term in 1985. Due to a tied vote in the upper house province of Nunawading, and having the winning vote drawn from a hat, a Labor government for the first time in its history had control of the Legislative Council. Cain was able to push his Workcare Act. A fresh election ordered by the Court of Disputed Returns after it was found that the Chief Electoral Officer drew a name from the hat rather than caste the deciding vote. The Liberals won re-election and Labor lost its slim majority. Within a week the Chairman of the Victorian Nuclear Disarmament Party
Nuclear Disarmament Party
The Nuclear Disarmament Party was a political party in Australia. The party was formed in 1984 and enjoyed considerable initial success.-Foundation, the 1984 election, and the split:...

, lodged an official complaint about a deceptive NDP how to vote card handed out at the booths. It was claimed that members of the Australian Labor Party were recognised handing out this card and that the allocation of preferences to the ALP on the card damaged the NDP.
The government entered a cover-up to protect its state secretary Peter Batchelor
Peter Batchelor
Peter Batchelor was an Australian politician before retiring at the Victorian State Election on 27 November 2010. He was an Australian Labor Party member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly since 1990, representing the electorate of Thomastown. He served most recently as Minister for Energy and...

 and the Labor party.

During its second term Cain's government began to run into difficulties with the state budget. The stock market crash of 1987 created a crisis which forced the government to cut spending, alienating some trade union supporters. The State Bank of Victoria
State Bank of Victoria
The State Bank of Victoria was a bank that existed from 1842 until 1990 when it was taken over by the Commonwealth Bank. It was owned by the State of Victoria....

, in particular its merchant banking arm Tricontinental, ran up a huge portfolion of bad loans, without adequate fiduciary supervision.

Progress had created a vast amount of vacant inner-city land, with the introduction of containerisation in the shipping
Shipping
Shipping has multiple meanings. It can be a physical process of transporting commodities and merchandise goods and cargo, by land, air, and sea. It also can describe the movement of objects by ship.Land or "ground" shipping can be by train or by truck...

 industry, the docks
Dock (maritime)
A dock is a human-made structure or group of structures involved in the handling of boats or ships, usually on or close to a shore.However, the exact meaning varies among different variants of the English language...

 became inadequate for the new container ship
Container ship
Container ships are cargo ships that carry all of their load in truck-size intermodal containers, in a technique called containerization. They form a common means of commercial intermodal freight transport.-History:...

s. This made the docks within Victoria Harbour
Victoria Harbour
Victoria Harbour is a natural landform harbour situated between Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula in Hong Kong. The harbour's deep, sheltered waters and strategic location on the South China Sea were instrumental in Hong Kong's establishment as a British colony and its subsequent...

 obsolete as the principal docking area shifted closer to the mouth of the Yarra
Yarra River
The Yarra River, originally Birrarung, is a river in east-central Victoria, Australia. The lower stretches of the river is where the city of Melbourne was established in 1835 and today Greater Melbourne dominates and influences the landscape of its lower reaches...

, this was seen as a large urban blight by the Cain state government. The size of the Melbourne Docklands area meant that political influences were inescapable.

The Docklands was high on the government's agenda, however, the government at the time could not afford to initiate the investment for the project so the Docklands project stayed on the drawing board. There was a bid for the 1992 Olympic Games
Olympic Games
The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...

 and another proposal was to turn the Docklands into a technology city known as the Multifunction Polis
Multifunction Polis
The Multifunction Polis was a controversial proposal for a planned community in Australia first proposed in 1987 which was abandoned in 1998....

 (MFP).

Third Term

The Cain government was narrowly re-elected to a third term in 1988, but immediately after the election a huge shortfall in the government's workers' compensation scheme, WorkCare, was revealed.

The collapse of the Victorian Economic Development Corporation, a venture-capital fund that tried to pick winners but racked up huge losses. The VEDC and its sister, the Victorian Investment Corporation, were created to back new industries to replace outdated smokestack manufacturers. The VEDC collapsed under poor management and an absence of political accountability after it had provided $450 million of loan and equity assistance to business.

This was followed by a budgetary crisis that the government was unable to deal with, partly because of the large spending programmes the government had previously instituted, partly because he was unable to obtain support from within his government for necessary spending reductions and also because the federal Government declined to "bail out" the Victorian government as they believed Cain's overspending was significantly to blame. The deputy premier Robert Fordham took some of the blame and resigned. This led to the elevation of Joan Kirner
Joan Kirner
Joan Elizabeth Kirner AM , Australian politician, was the 42nd Premier of Victoria, the first woman to hold the position, which she held for two years prior to a landslide election defeat.-Biography:...

 to deputy premier.

His refusal to back down over banning tobacco advertising
Tobacco advertising
Tobacco advertising is the advertising of tobacco products or use by the tobacco industry through a variety of media including sponsorship, particularly of sporting events. It is now one of the most highly regulated forms of marketing...

 forced the Australian motorcycle Grand Prix
Australian motorcycle Grand Prix
The Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix is a motorcycling event that is part of the Grand Prix motorcycle racing season. It is held each year at the scenic Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit.-Winners of the Australian motorcycle Grand Prix:...

 to relocate from Phillip Island to Eastern Creek in Sydney.

For 33 days from 1 January 1990, 250 trams were parked in Melbourne's CBD streets by tram drivers. The Cain government wanted to save $24 million a year, by the introduction of a new Met Ticket system - or scratchies as they were colloquially known. Scratch tickets were supposed to save money by cutting 550 ticket conductor jobs and 550 train station staff. The trams did not move because the government shut down the power grid.

In February 1990 it was rumoured that Pyramid
Pyramid Building Society
The Pyramid Building Society, the Geelong Building Society and the Countrywide Building Society together made up the Farrow Group of building societies, based in Geelong, Australia. They collapsed in 1990 with debts in excess of $2 billion...

, a privately owned (but government regulated) building society, was in difficulties. Ministers in Cain's government accepted assurances from Pyramid directors that the society's position was sound, and passed these assurances on to the public. In fact the society was insolvent. When it failed, causing thousands of investors and depositors to lose their money, the government was blamed by investors and the media. This was followed shortly after by the collapse of Tricontinental Bank, which threatened to bankrupt the Victorian Government owned State Bank, Victoria's largest financial institution. The bank eventually had to be sold to the Commonwealth Bank, which was shortly thereafter privatised by the federal government. These disasters permanently ruined Cain's reputation for financial management.

By this time Cain was becoming frustrated at the reluctance of his government's caucus members to approve his plans for tax rises and spending cuts to reduce the growing budget deficit. He issued an ultimatum at the Labor Party Conference to "back me or sack me." When the undermining of his position continued, he resigned on 7 August 1990. During an interview after his resignation, he remarked, "We appointed a few dills but we weren't crook." Joan Kirner
Joan Kirner
Joan Elizabeth Kirner AM , Australian politician, was the 42nd Premier of Victoria, the first woman to hold the position, which she held for two years prior to a landslide election defeat.-Biography:...

 was elected Labor leader in Cain's place and became the first female premier of Victoria. Cain retired from Parliament at the 1992 Victorian state election, which Labor lost.

Life after Parliament

Cain became a Professorial Fellow in politics at the University of Melbourne
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...

 in 1991, and has since completed three books. In 2004 he surfaced in the media with a damning critique of the University of Melbourne's experimentation with what he says are risky financial ventures and what he argues is its departure from its public mission. Off Course: From Public Place to Marketplace at Melbourne University attracted a range of critical commentary. He is a regular political commentator on local radio. He has remained active in the affairs of the Victorian Labor Party, and has recently been critical of what he sees as the dominance of factions in the party, particularly the Labor Right
Labor Right
The Labor Right, or Labor Unity in some State branches, or Centre Unity in NSW, is the organised faction of the Australian Labor Party that tends to be more economically liberal and socially conservative than Labor Left....

. He is one of the ALP's Dispute Tribunal members, a panel of three people from which one is selected randomly to adjudicate internal party disputes. Some members have expressed concern that his public statements on factions means that he has prejudged disputes that could appear before him.

John Cain sits on the board of the MCG Trust. He is also a member of the Patrons Council of the Epilepsy Foundation of Victoria
Epilepsy Foundation of Victoria
The Epilepsy Foundation of Victoria is an Australian charity that was formed by a group of concerned parents in May 1964 to provide support and information to all Victorians affected by epilepsy...

.

Books

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