page_title: Mike Rann
section_title: Popularity in earlier years
hierarchical_section_title: Mike Rann / Premier / Popularity in earlier years
caption_attribution_description: English: Glenelg Tram in Victoria Square, Adelaide at the opening of the tramline extension by the Premier of South Australia, Mike Rann, and the Minister of Transport, Pat Conlon.
context_page_description: Michael David Rann, AC, CNZM is an Australian former politician who was the 44th Premier of South Australia from 2002 to 2011. He accepted a professorship at Flinders University and a visiting fellowship at University of Auckland in 2012, was Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom from 2013 to 2014, and was Australia's Ambassador to Italy, Albania, Libya and San Marino and as Australia's Permanent Representative to the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Programme from 2014 to 2016. Among several other honours, Rann was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in the 2016 Australia Day Honours.
  Rann succeeded Lynn Arnold as leader of the South Australian Branch of the Australian Labor Party and South Australian Leader of the Opposition in 1994. Rann led Labor to minority government at the 2002 election, before attaining a landslide win at the 2006 election. The Rann Government was elected to a third four-year term at the 2010 election, retaining majority government despite a swing − giving Labor a record 12 years in government.
context_section_description: Rann's earlier achievements included raising job numbers and lowering unemployment, increasing new project funding, increasing expenditure on schools, university, health and mental illness, halving rough-sleeping in the streets, making the state home to the largest amount of wind power in Australia, developing hot rock power, and utilising solar power for the public service. South Australia's debt achieved a AAA rating under the Rann Labor government, prompting Business SA chief executive Peter Vaughan to praise Labor's economic management.
  Rann subsidised theatres, added Guggenheim galleries, introduced the Festival of Ideas and Adelaide's Thinker in Residence program, and encouraged the idea that film festivals fund movies, leading to the creation of the Adelaide Film Festival and establishing the Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund as backing. He provided the funding to make three major festivals annual rather than biennial: WOMADelaide (from 2003), the Adelaide Fringe (from 2007) and the Adelaide Festival of Arts (from 2012) .
  Rann was comfortably re-elected in 2006, taking 28 seats to the Liberals' 15—to date, Labor's largest majority since the abolition of the Playmander. Labor also garnered a two-party vote of 56.8 percent, a significant comeback from its low of 39 percent in 1993 under Arnold.
  Rann personally likened his government to Dunstan's, stating "I'm a totally different person to Don Dunstan, but in the 70s for different reasons South Australia stood head and shoulders above the crowd. We stood out, we were leaders. The federal government is setting up a social inclusion unit based on ours. Again it's about us not only making a difference locally, but being a kind of model for others, which is what Dunstan used to say he wanted us to be ... a laboratory and a leader for the future." Rann says he expected other reforms to be based upon those enacted under his government, citing the state's strategic plan, a 10-year framework for the development of government and business. "It's a plan for the state, not just promises at each election. A lot of colleagues interstate thought I'd gone mad when we named targets. Well we didn't want to set targets we could easily pass and then pat ourselves on the back for, what's the point of that?" A total of 79 economic and social targets were set, and in 2010 Rann commented "with most of its targets achieved, on track or within reach". However, the state's Integrated Design Commissioner, Tim Horton, said in 2011: "Its targets are really great, but I don't think any of us have signed on to why those targets exist or what we can do to further them. It's a top-down approach. I worry the document exists in the minds of agencies but not in the minds of people."
  During Rann's first and second terms, Rann was often the most popular Premier in the country, with his approach to government generally moderate and crisis-free.Newspoll early in 2007 saw Rann peak at a historic 64 per cent as Preferred Premier, and 61 per cent on the two-party-preferred vote. University of Adelaide Professor of Politics Clem Macintyre said that after the State Bank collapse, Rann had to re-establish Labor's credentials as an economic manager as a matter of urgency, and "in that sense Rann had a whole lot of priorities to concentrate on that Dunstan didn't even think about", with a legacy built on economic achievements, achieving the triple-A credit rating, as well as its capacity to deliver infrastructure projects.
  Fourth quarter 2007 polling saw a reduction in the strong support for Rann's Labor government since the previous election, on 54 percent of the two-party-preferred vote, a fall from the previous poll of five percent. Rann's Preferred Premier rating was at 50 percent compared to 25 percent for then Liberal leader Martin Hamilton-Smith. Third quarter 2008 polling saw a more pronounced drop in the primary vote, down three to 38 percent, with the Liberal vote up five to 40 percent, breaking to a two-party vote of 50–50 after preferences – the Preferred Premier figure recorded a six-point drop t
caption: Rann (right) with Minister for Transport Pat Conlon (left) opening the extension of the Glenelg Tram line in 2007.
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