page_title: Wayne Swan
section_title: Treasurer
hierarchical_section_title: Wayne Swan / Political career / Treasurer
caption_attribution_description: English: en:Wayne Swan, Treasurer of Australia Source en:commons:category:Politics of Australia
context_page_description: Wayne Maxwell Swan is an Australian politician who currently serves as the National President of the Labor Party. He was previously the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia and Deputy Leader of the Labor Party from 2010 to 2013, and the Treasurer of Australia from 2007 to 2013.
  Swan was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1993 for Lilley in Queensland, although he lost this seat in 1996. He regained the seat in 1998 and has represented it until 2019. Following the Labor victory in 2007, Swan was appointed Treasurer of Australia by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
  On 24 June 2010, after Julia Gillard became Prime Minister, Swan was elected unopposed as her deputy and was subsequently sworn in as the Deputy Prime Minister. In 2011, Swan was named Finance Minister of the Year by Euromoney magazine, joining Paul Keating as the only Australian Treasurer to have been awarded that title.
  After Rudd successfully challenged Gillard for the leadership in June 2013, Swan resigned both of his positions, but remained in the Parliament. In June 2018, Swan was elected National President of the Labor Party.
context_section_description: Following Labor's landslide win in the 2007 federal election, Swan was appointed Treasurer of Australia by Kevin Rudd on 3 December 2007.
  Swan's first budget concentrated on inflationary pressures in the economy, with substantially reduced spending that exceeded the A$11 billion outlaid for tax cuts. The policy debate shifted around August 2008 after mortgage lending banks in the United States began to collapse and economic activity faltered as American investments were written off. In response to the resulting global downturn, Swan coordinated an "economic security strategy" worth $10 billion in October 2008. Designed as a stimulus package and directed towards retail sales, it was largely supported by the International Monetary Fund. When the December quarterly growth report showed the economy contracting, he moved ahead with the Nation Building and Jobs Plan to provide government-sponsored work worth A$42 billion. This action was widely credited with preventing Australia from following much of the world into recession, as the March 2009 quarterly growth report showed that the economy had returned to growth.
  On 20 September 2011, Swan was named Finance Minister of the Year by Euromoney magazine, joining Paul Keating as the only Australian Treasurer to have been conferred that title.
  In an essay published in The Monthly magazine in March 2012, Swan criticised the rising influence of vested interests, in particular paying attention to mining entrepreneurs Clive Palmer, Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest, and how Swan believed they are threatening Australia's egalitarian social contract. and a subsequent address to the National Press Club, In The Monthly essay he opined:
  The latest example of this is the foray by Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, into Fairfax Media, reportedly in an attempt to wield greater influence on public opinion and further her commercial interests at a time when the overwhelming economic consensus is that it's critical to use the economic weight of the resources boom to strengthen the entire economy.
  Politicians have a choice: between exploiting divisions by promoting fear and appealing to the sense of fairness and decency that is the foundation of our middle-class society; between standing up for workers and kneeling down at the feet of the Gina Rineharts and the Clive Palmers.
  For every Andrew Forrest who wails about high company taxes and then admits to not paying any, there are a hundred Australian businesspeople who held on to their employees and worked with government to keep the doors of Australian business open during the GFC. Despite the howling of a small minority, the vast bulk of the resources industry is in the cart for more efficient profits-based resource taxation which serves to strengthen our entire economy. The vast majority of our miners accept that they have a social obligation to pay their fair share of tax on the resources Australians own.
caption: Swan in 2008
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