Jim Bacon

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James Alexander Bacon AC (May 15, 1950 - June 20, 2004) was Premier of Tasmania from 1998 to 2004. Bacon was born in Melbourne and educated at Scotch College, later at Monash University, but he did not graduate. At Monash he was a Maoist student leader. He became an official of the Builders Labourers Federation, which sent him to Tasmania as an organiser. He later became leader of the trade union movement as Secretary of the Tasmanian Trades & Labor Council.

Having abandoned Communism and joined the Australian Labor Party, Bacon was elected as a Member of the House of Assembly in 1996. He became leader of the Labor Party in 1997 and won the state election in 1998, defeating the Liberal Party government under Tony Rundle. His government was re-elected in 2002 in a landslide victory for his party.

His time in office was said to have been hugely successful, for the state economy as a whole, for his popularity with the people of the state, and also for tourism with the introduction of two more Bass Strait ferries. He controversially appointed Richard Butler to the office Governor of Tasmania in 2003.

On February 23, 2004 Bacon announced he was standing aside as Premier, after revealing that he had been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer ten days earlier, and that he wanted to spend with his family and friends whatever time was left to him. Paul Lennon, who had been Deputy Premier, succeeded Bacon as Premier.

Bacon died as a result of the cancer, on June 20, 2004, at Calvary Hospital in Hobart. A state funeral was held on June 25; many state and federal politicians (from both major parties) attended, including Liberal Prime Minister John Howard, all the state Premiers, Opposition Leader Mark Latham, former Opposition Leader Simon Crean, and former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.

Bacon was posthumously awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa from the University of Tasmania in August 2004, and his appointment as a Companion of the Order of Australia in June 2005. (The Order of Australia is not awarded posthumously, but Bacon had been nominated before his death.)

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