Alexander John Gosse Downer AC (born 9 September 1951) is an Australian former politician and diplomat who was leader of the Liberal Party from 1994 to 1995, Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1996 to 2007, and High Commissioner to the United Kingdom from 2014 to 2018.

After periods working for the Bank of New South Wales and with the diplomatic service, he was appointed executive director of the Australian Chamber of Commerce in 1983.

His paternal grandfather, Sir John Downer, served twice as Premier of South Australia in the late 19th century, and was later one of the inaugural members of the Australian Senate.

[citation needed] Downer was educated at Geelong Grammar School in Australia, then in England (while his father was High Commissioner) at Radley College between 1964 and 1970.

He then worked as an adviser to the then Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser and subsequent Leader of the Federal Opposition Andrew Peacock.

Downer also found it difficult to handle the gulf between monarchists and republicans in his own party but resolved the dispute by promising to establish a constitutional convention to consider the issue.

[citation needed] Another event in 1994 that would spell the end of Downer's leadership was his decision for the Coalition to support the Keating government's sexual privacy legislation.

[14] On 9 January 1995, internal Liberal Party polling showed that with Downer as leader, the Coalition had a slim chance of holding its marginal seats in the next election, let alone of winning government.

One of Downer's earliest initiatives as Foreign Minister was to work with New Zealand to broker a peace agreement in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, which ended a long running civil conflict.

In 1996, Downer took the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to the United Nations General Assembly where it was embraced by most members of the world body.

By refusing to ratify this treaty, the United States Senate has done a lot to undermine the arms control agenda that the international community, including Australia, has been working on.

[22] The agreement was criticised as unfair to East Timor and attracted a bipartisan letter of reproach from 50 members of the United States Congress.

Downer also played a role in the subsequent negotiation of the "Pacific Solution" in which Australia held asylum seekers off-shore in foreign jurisdictions.

[28][29][30] In August 2004, he made the claim based on official assessment reports that North Korea's Taepo Dong ballistic missile had a range sufficient to reach Sydney, a view disputed by some.

[31] In 2005, Australian members of the spiritual group Falun Gong launched action against Downer in the ACT Supreme Court alleging that his department had unfairly limited their freedom of expression.

Downer was accused of pursuing an unduly strong pro-China policy and failing to address human rights violations adequately.

Downer was quoted as saying "Australia had no plans to change a policy which rules out uranium sales to countries like India which have not signed the UN's nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)."

[citation needed] In April 2006, he appeared before the Cole Inquiry regarding the oil for food scandal and testified that he was ignorant of the huge kickbacks paid to the Iraq government, despite claims by the opposition Labor Party that many warnings had been received by his department from various sources.

[36][37][38] As Foreign Minister, Downer initially supported the United States Government's incarceration of two Australian citizens, David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

Downer negotiated the 2006 Lombok Treaty to put security relations between the two countries on a stable footing, built bilateral co-operation to fight terrorism, people smuggling and illegal fishing.

[41] In September 2007, on the sidelines of the 2007 APEC Conference in Sydney, Downer indicated that Australia planned to launch bilateral ministerial-level security talks with the People's Republic of China.

[49] He resigned in February 2014 to take up the post of Australia's High Commissioner in London where he replaced former South Australian Labor premier, Mike Rann.

[50] On 10 May 2016, according to The New York Times, Downer and Erika Thompson met with George Papadopoulos in London and information from this meeting caused the FBI to open a counterintelligence investigation into Russia's attempts to disrupt the 2016 US Presidential election, and whether there was any involvement by Donald Trump's associates.

[51] Downer told The Australian in a 28 April 2018 interview that "nothing [Papadopoulos] said in their meeting indicated Trump himself had been conspiring with the Russians to collect information on Hillary Clinton".

[59] A longtime supporter of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, Downer has played a leading role opposing moves to replace the Monarch with a president.

[75] Alexander Downer was portrayed by Richard Binsley in the 2020 miniseries The Comey Rule[76] and Francis Greenslade in the 2014 film Schapelle.