Hon Dr John Bannon AO

John Charles Bannon AO

07 May 1943

Australian Labor Party

Former Member

Ross Smith

House of Assembly

17 September 1977

Born in Bendigo, Victoria in 1943, John Bannon was educated in Adelaide. During the 1960's he took degrees in Arts and Law at the University of Adelaide, becoming president of the Australian Union of Students in 1968. During the early to mid-1970's he held a number of advisory positions including one in the Whitlam government's ministry of Labor and Immigration. In 1977 he was elected to the House of Assembly and within a year had been elevated to the Dunstan Cabinet. Labor's election loss in 1979 saw Bannon elected Opposition Leader. Guiding the Labor Party to victory in the 1982 election, Bannon became Premier and Treasurer, positions he would retain for almost a decade. The Bannon Premiership was characterised by an emphasis on careful budgetary management, offset by attempts to expand the state's economic foundations via the attraction of ambitious, large scale projects. The most notable of these included a multimillion dollar submarine contract, the Formula One Grand Prix and the controversial Multi-Function Polis initiative. Despite winning a third term in government at the 1989 election, Bannon's Premiership became increasingly tenuous as he was forced to announce in February 1991 a billion dollar bail-out of the troubled State Bank of South Australia. Further revelations of the magnitude of the State Bank disaster and Bannon's role in this led to his resignation in September 1992. He did not contest his seat of Ross Smith in the 1993 election. From 1994 to 1999 he was a director of the Australian Broadcasting Commission. Dr Bannon was appointed as Master of St Mark’s College, University of Adelaide from 2000 until 2008. He attained his PhD in history at Flinders University in 2006. He was a board member of Cricket Australia and the South Australian Cricket Association, Chair of the National Archives Advisory Council, and an active member of numerous other community organisations. Dr Bannon died in Adelaide on December 13 2015.

13 December 2015