Christopher Vaughan Evans is a former Australian politician. He was a member of the Australian Senate for the state of Western Australia from 1993 to 2013, representing the Australian Labor Party.
Evans was elected to the Senate at the 1993 federal election and was re-elected in the 1998, 2004 and 2010 elections. Evans was a member of the Opposition Shadow Ministry from October 1998 until December 2007 when Labor won the election. During the period from 1998 until 2007, he held various Shadow Ministries including Shadow Minister for Family Services and the Aged ; Defence ; Reconciliation, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs ; Defence Procurement, Science and Personnel ; Social Security ; Indigenous Affairs ; Family and Community Services and National Development, Resources and Energy. Evans was appointed Leader of the Opposition in the Senate in October 2004 and Leader of the Government in the Senate after the 2007 election. Evans was appointed Minister for Immigration and Citizenship in the First Rudd Ministry and retained this portfolio in the First Gillard Ministry. On 14 September 2010, following the 2010 election, Evans was sworn in as Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations in the Second Gillard Ministry. He was elected as the Leader of the Government in the Senate in December 2007. Evans was the Acting Prime Minister for around 30 hours in June 2008, the first Labor senator to have been acting PM for nearly 100 years. Following the January 2013 announcement that the 2013 federal election will be contested in September 2013, Evans, together with Nicola Roxon, resigned from the Ministry, from Cabinet, and as Leader of the Government in the Senate, effective on 2 February 2013. Evans stated his intention to stay on in the Senate until such time as a replacement was found. He resigned from the Senate on 12 April 2013. In 2014 former Foreign Minister Bob Carr revealed in his book Diary of a Foreign Minister that he had whilst Foreign Minister vetoed a decision by Prime Minister Gillard to appoint a former Cabinet colleague as Australian Ambassador to Turkey. Carr did not name the former Cabinet colleague but ALP sources eventually confirmed it to be Evans. When contacted by the Sydney Sunday Telegraph, Evans confirmed that he had conversations with Gillard about the Turkey diplomatic post but "nothing that went anywhere". When asked about being posted to Turkey, Evans jokingly said, "I am more of a chicken man".
