Mike Rann

As Minister of Aboriginal Affairs he campaigned for a clean-up of Maralinga lands affected by nuclear tests in the 1950s and legislated in 1991 to return the sacred Ooldea lands to the Maralinga Tjarutja people.

Michael David Rann,, (born 5 January 1953) is an Australian former politician who was the 44th premier of South Australia from 2002 to 2011.

In 1962, when he was nine, his family emigrated from Blackfen to Mangakino, a small town north of Taupō on the Waikato River in New Zealand.

His family then moved to Matamata, then to Birkenhead, New Zealand on Auckland's North Shore where he attended Northcote College.

He completed a Bachelor and a Master of Arts in political science at the University of Auckland.

He was Vice President of the New Zealand Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and editor of the student newspaper Craccum.

As a member of Princes Street Labour, he also spent considerable time working on New Zealand Labour Party campaigns including that of Mike Moore.

After university, Rann was a political journalist for the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation.

Haydon Manning has stated that "it was reported that" Rann "struggled with being an objective reporter".

Rann visited his brother Chris in Adelaide during 1977.

Shortly afterwards he moved to that city, to carry out a position with then Premier Don Dunstan's Industrial Democracy Unit.

He subsequently worked as Dunstan's press secretary, speech writer and adviser, and went on to serve Labor premiers Des Corcoran and John Bannon after Dunstan's retirement from politics.

Manning has stated that one commentator reported that Rann was "frankly inspired by Dunstan's idealism" as opposed to "Bannon's cool electoral pragmatism".

Rann sometimes talked during this period of his ambitions to one day become Premier himself.

Meanwhile, Rann wrote speeches on, and assisted in policy development for, civil liberties, Aboriginal land rights, gay and women's rights, and opposition to uranium mining.

Revealing a vein of idealism, his early predilection was left of centre.

Rann was elected to Parliament as the Member for the safe Labor seat of Briggs in north Adelaide at the 1985 election.

After the 1989 election, he entered the ministry, becoming Minister for Employment and Further Education, Minister of Youth Affairs, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Minister assisting in Ethnic Affairs.

He introduced the legislation in 1991 to establish the new University of South Australia, now the biggest university in the state.

As Minister for Employment and Further Education he established the Kickstart employment scheme, the South Australian Youth Conservation Corps, presided over a large expansion of TAFE, and signed an agreement in 1992 between Le Cordon Bleu, the Swiss Hotel Association and the Regency College of TAFE to establish an international hospitality and cooking school.

As a member of the Australian Education Council he played a key role in 1992 in the creation of ANTA, the Australian National Training Authority, with shared funding of TAFE by Federal as well as state governments.

As Minister of Tourism he legislated in 1993 to establish the South Australian Tourism Commission and had ministerial responsibility for the Australian Formula One Grand Prix.

Labor lost government at the 1993 election in a landslide due to the State Bank collapse, falling to only 10 seats.

After the election, Rann was first elected as Deputy Leader of the Opposition under Lynn Arnold.

Rann became leader of the South Australian Branch of the Australian Labor Party and South Australian Leader of the Opposition in 1994 and led the party to minority government at the 2002 election.

Rann is the third-longest serving Premier of South Australia behind Thomas Playford IV and John Bannon and served a record 17 years as South Australian Labor parliamentary leader from 1994 to 2011.

However, when Arnold resigned a few months later, Rann succeeded him as Parliamentary Leader of the Opposition in September 1994.

As Opposition Leader Rann launched a "Labor Listens" strategy designed to re-connect with voters and vigorously opposed the privatisation of water services and electricity assets.

Assisted by Liberal government leaks he exploited their internal divisions.

Following the ousting of Premier Dean Brown by John Olsen, Rann released a series of damaging Cabinet documents and was involved in a prolonged and bitter legal battle with Premier Olsen.

Rann went into the 1997 election as a decided underdog.

He resigned as Premier in October 2011 and was succeeded by Jay Weatherill.

He was a South Australian MP in the House of Assembly from the 1985 election and Father of the House from the 2010 election until his parliamentary resignation on 13 January 2012.

Rann was born in Sidcup, Kent.

His father was an electrician who had served at El Alamein in World War II.

His mother was employed in an armaments factory.

Most of Rann's childhood was spent in the care of his father in South London.

He was later Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom from 2013 to 2014, and Australian ambassador to Italy, Albania, Libya and San Marino from 2014 to 2016.

Rann grew up in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, completing a Bachelor and Master of Arts in political science at the University of Auckland.

Before entering Parliament, Rann worked as an advisor to South Australian Labor Parliamentarians.