Summary heading

Hon Gareth Evans AO QC

Career within Commonwealth

Gareth John Evans was born in Melbourne, Victoria on 5 September 1944. He holds first class honours degrees in Law from the Melbourne University, BA, LLB (Hons) and in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University, MA.

He was president of the Melbourne University Student Representative Council from 1964 to 1966. In 1966 he received the Supreme Court Prize in Law and was admitted to the Bar in 1968. He lectured in law at Melbourne University from 1971 to 1976, practised law from 1977 to 1978 and was appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1983.

Evans joined the Victorian Branch of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in 1968. He has been a Delegate to the ALP Victorian State Conferences from 1972 and to the ALP Federal Conferences from 1977.  He was a member of the ALP State Administrative Committee from 1973 to 1982 and also of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Delegations to the Australian Constitutional Conventions in Perth (1978) and Adelaide (1983). 

Elected to the Senate for Victoria in 1977, Evans has served on numerous parliamentary committees and was Shadow Attorney-General in the Opposition Shadow Ministry from November 1980 to March 1983.

On the election of the Hawke Government in March 1983, he was appointed Attorney-General. Following the Government's re-election in October 1984, he became the Minister for Resources and Energy. Evans retained this position until July 1987. He was also Minister assisting the Prime Minister and Minister assisting the Minister for Foreign Affairs from December 1984 to July 1987. After the election of July 1987, Gareth Evans was appointed Minister for Transport and Communications and was the Deputy Leader of the Government and Manager of Government Business in the Senate. In the Ministerial reshuffle of 2 September 1988, he became Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade. In another reshuffle on 24 March 1993 he was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs. He held this position until the defeat of the Keating Government in March 1996.

Evans resigned from the Senate on 6 February 1996 to move to the House of Representatives after gaining endorsement for the seat of Holt which he won in the 1996 election. On 11 March 1996 he was appointed Deputy Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Treasurer. In 1998 he resigned from the Opposition Front Bench and on 30 September 1999 resigned from Parliament.

In 2000-2001 Gareth Evans was co-chair, with Mohamed Sahnoun, of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), appointed by the Government of Canada, which published its report, The responsibility to protect, in December 2001. He was a member of the of the UN Secretary General's High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, whose report A more secure world: our shared responsibility was published in December 2004; a member of the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction sponsored by Sweden and chaired by Hans Blix which reported in June 2006; a member of the International Task Force on Global Public Goods, sponsored by Sweden and France, which reported in September 2006, and a member of the Commission of Eminent Persons on The Role of the IAEA to 2020 and Beyond, whose report Reinforcing the global nuclear order for peace and prosperity: was launched in June 2008. He had previously served as a member of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict (1994-97), and has been a member of the UN Secretary-General's Advisory Committee on Genocide Prevention since its establishment on 3 May 2006. He has been a co-chair, with Mohamed Sahnoun, of the International Advisory Board of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect since the Centre’s creation in February 2008.

He was the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (Crisis Group) from January 2000 to June 2009, and its President Emeritus after June 2009. In June 2008 he was made an Inaugural Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs in recognition of his contribution to Australian international relations.

In June 2008 Gareth Evans was appointed by the Australian Government to co-chair with former Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. The Commission was a joint initiative of the Australian and Japanese Governments. Its report, Eliminating Nuclear threats: a practical agenda for global policy makers, was launched in Tokyo on 15 December 2009. For his contribution to the Commission and in recognition of his work on responding to atrocities and genocide in he was awarded the Roosevelt Institute’s 2010 Freedom from Fear award.

Gareth Evans was Australian Humanist of the Year in 1990, won the ANZAC Peace Prize in 1994 for his work on Cambodia, received the Chilean Order of Merit (Grand Cross), given in 1999 primarily for his work in initiating APEC. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2001, and was awarded Honorary Doctorates of Laws by Melbourne University in 2002, Carleton University in 2005 and Sydney University in 2008.

From July 2009 he became an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Gareth Evans took up his appointment as Chancellor of the Australian National University from 1 January 2010 following the departure of the previous ANU Chancellor, Kim Beazley, to the United States of America as the new Australian Ambassador in Washington.

Publications

Gareth Evans has written or edited nine books - including Cooperating for peace: the global agenda for the 1990s (Allen & Unwin,1993), Australia's Foreign Relations (Melbourne University Press 1991, 2nd ed 1995), and most recently The responsibility to protect: ending mass atrocity crimes once and for all (Brookings Institution Press, September 2008, awarded an Honorable Mention in the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award 2009 as one of the best three books on international relations published in the last year). He has published over 100 chapters in books and journal articles (and many more newspaper and magazine articles) on foreign relations, politics, human rights and legal reform.

Sources

Australian National University website

http://www.anu.edu.au/cabs/chancellor/, accessed 16 February 2010

Gareth Evans website

http://www.gevans.org/, accessed 7 August 2009

International Crisis Group website

http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=3761&l=1

Parliament of Australia website

http://www.aph.gov.au/library/handbook/historical/senate/cotton.kingsmill.htm, accessed 7 May 2007

Parliament of Australia website

http://parlinfoweb.aph.gov.au/piweb/view_document.aspx?ID=9821&TABLE=BIOGS accessed 7 May 2007

Commonwealth Government directory, 1988-89, p 50

Commonwealth Government directory, 1983, pp 28,45,65,73,74

Commonwealth Government directory, 1981, pp 10,13,28,29

Parliamentary handbook, 1991, pp 98-99

Parliamentary handbook, 1988, pp 95-96

Who's who in Australia, 1988, p 299

Who's who in Australia, 1983, p 289