Lindsay Tanner - Parliamentary Career

Parliamentary Career

In March 1993 Tanner was elected to the Australian House of Representatives representing the Division of Melbourne, and served one term as a government backbencher during Paul Keating's final term as Prime Minister.

The Liberal Party under John Howard won the March 1996 election, and Keating subsequently retired from politics. A major reshuffle by new leader Kim Beazley resulted in Tanner's promotion to the Shadow Ministry and appointment as Shadow Minister for Transport. He remained a member of the Shadow Ministry, despite numerous changes of leadership, continuously until the election of the Rudd Labor government in November 2007.

In 1998, Tanner was moved to the portfolios of Finance and Consumer Affairs. In 1999, he wrote a book entitled Open Australia, which explored how information technology could be used to enhance social justice and economic equality; and he also wrote a number of articles on targeted, "micro" ways of addressing globalisation and the decline of large-scale manufacturing, in which he suggested there was little substance to the notion put forward by neoclassical economists of a "simulated free market" in East Asian economies that explains their "emergence" (see 1997 Asian Financial Crisis). Following the 2001 election, he became Shadow Minister for Communications.

Tanner has been a prominent member of Labor's left faction and it was thought that he might contest the Labor leadership in 2002, when former leader Kim Beazley first challenged Simon Crean. In the second leadership spill in December 2003, Tanner supported Beazley, who lost the party-room ballot to Mark Latham. The following month, Latham appointed Tanner to the new portfolio of Community Relationships, in addition to his existing responsibilities.

After the October 2004 federal election, Tanner was thought to be a candidate for the position of Shadow Treasurer, which had been vacated by Simon Crean. However, once it became clear that Latham did not intend to offer him this position, Tanner announced that he would not stand for a position in the new shadow ministry. He subsequently released a brief statement, stating that he had "no complaint about how Mark Latham has dealt with personally", but adding that he had "serious reservations about the emerging Labor response to our latest election defeat." In June 2005, Tanner was re-elected to the Opposition frontbench and was appointed Shadow Minister for Finance.

The 2007 election saw Tanner's seat of Melbourne face the Greens on the two-party-preferred vote, the first seat to do so at a federal election. Labor retained the seat on 54.7 percent of the two-party-preferred vote. After the successful election of the federal Labor Party, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd retained Tanner as Minister for Finance and Deregulation. The role had previously only been known as Minister for Finance and Administration.

On 24 June 2010, during Julia Gillard's first question time as Prime Minister, Tanner announced his intention to not re-contest his seat at the next election, citing that he wanted to spend more time at home with his family and stressing he had already planned to do so before the change in leadership.

His tenure as Member for Melbourne ceased on 19 July 2010 when the Parliament was dissolved prior to the 2010 federal election. He remained as Minister for Finance throughout the election campaign.