Steve Bracks - Before Politics

Before Politics

From 1976 to 1981 Bracks was a school commerce teacher. During the 1980s he worked in local government in Ballarat and then as Executive Director of the Ballarat Education Centre. While in these positions he twice (1985 and 1988) contested the seat of Ballarat North in the Victorian Legislative Assembly for the Australian Labor Party.

In 1989 Bracks was appointed statewide manager of Victorian state government employment programs, under the Labor government of John Cain. He then became an adviser to both Cain and Cain's successor as Premier, Joan Kirner. Here he was able to witness from the inside the collapse of the Labor government following the economic and budgetary crisis which began in 1988. This experience gave Bracks a very conservative and cautious view of economic management in government.

Following the defeat of the Kirner government by the Liberal leader Jeff Kennett in late 1992, Bracks became Executive Director of the Victorian Printing Industry Training Board. He quit this post in 1994 when Kirner resigned from Parliament and Bracks was elected for Kirner's seat of Williamstown in the western suburbs of Melbourne, where he now lives with his wife Terry and their three children.

Read more about this topic:  Steve Bracks

Famous quotes containing the word politics:

    The politics of the exile are fever,
    revenge, daydream,
    theater of the aging convalescent.
    You wait in the wings and rehearse.
    You wait and wait.
    Marge Piercy (b. 1936)

    Of course, in the reality of history, the Machiavellian view which glorifies the principle of violence has been able to dominate. Not the compromising conciliatory politics of humaneness, not the Erasmian, but rather the politics of vested power which firmly exploits every opportunity, politics in the sense of the “Principe,” has determined the development of European history ever since.
    Stefan Zweig (18811942)