What does all this mean for a modern treasurer? A treasurer needs a good relationship with their prime minister, but they also need to push the envelope when it comes to reform. A treasurer must argue internally for politically difficult but necessary economic reforms. Prime ministers will naturally be nervous about these reforms, but a good prime minister – treasurer relationship will see a balance reached. Importantly, a prime minister will feel more comfortable giving a treasurer the authority to embark on economic reforms if they are confident in the treasurer’s ability to sell those reforms. As John Howard said to me in 2014: ‘A treasurer must be in the media every day. Every day. Making the case for change, being one of the government’s most effective communicators.’
The job of the treasurer is to be a competent manager of the economic cycle, ensuring growth that is as smooth as possible and avoiding recession. It is also to be an advocate for reform, within the government and in public. It falls to the treasurer to explain the need for economic reform. If a treasurer can effectively explain why difficult decisions are in the long-term interests of the country, a government will be much more likely to be successful.
I write as a partisan participant in the political debate. But I have attempted to write an objective and fair account. While I’m very proud of Labor’s political legacy, it would of course be churlish to pretend that every Labor treasurer has been brilliant and every conservative a disaster. We can learn from the mistakes of our predecessors and build on their achievements. Indeed, the starting point of The Money Men was sympathy with the men profiled in the book. They all worked hard. They all wanted the best for their country. They all dealt with economic challenges to some degree. As Ian McLean writes in his recent, important book Why Australia Prospered, about Australia’s economic track record over the last century or so: ‘Few economies have been as successful over so long a period.’5 Australia’s treasurers can claim to have made a pretty good contribution to the nation’s remarkable economic success.
So who are our best treasurers? For the scale and scope of his reform program and his ability to explain the need for the reforms he was proposing, Paul Keating is top of the list. Australia’s twenty-four years of uninterrupted economic growth has many parents, but Keating is entitled to be regarded as the most important of all.
Honourable mentions go to Earle Page, Ted Theodore, Arthur Fadden, Bill Hayden, Peter Costello and Wayne Swan. Page was an anchor of stability in a long-term government and engineered lasting reforms in Commonwealth–state financial relations. Theodore used initiative and imagination as he dealt with the Depression. If he had been allowed by the parliament, his party and the central bank to implement his policies, the Depression’s impact would have been ameliorated. Fadden was competent and prepared to innovate as he pioneered the road to Keynesian intervention. Bill Hayden should have been treasurer much earlier in the Whitlam government—he was easily its best treasurer, and also the best of the 1970s. He got increasing spending under control and engineered major tax reform in just six months in the country’s top economic job. Costello, our longest-serving treasurer, showed considerable command of detail and an ability to persuade and argue as he implemented the GST reform. Finally, Wayne Swan implemented effective stimulus and urgent financial regulation changes which assisted Australia in being one of very few nations to avoid recession.
Within these pages are the stories of twelve interesting men who did their best to improve the lives of Australians. The work of the money men goes on, hopefully to be matched in the future by the work of the money women. Our continued prosperity as a nation depends on the treasurers of the future, as it does on the legacies of treasurers past.
1
SIR GEORGE TURNER
A Treasurer Pioneering
Born: August 1851, Melbourne
Died: August 1916, Melbourne
Treasurer: 1 January 1901 – 26 April 1904
17 August 1904 – 4 July 1905
EVERY SO OFTEN, an opinion poll shows that comparatively few Australians can name Sir Edmund Barton as Australia’s first prime minister. It is undoubtedly the case that even fewer people could name Sir George Turner as Australia’s first treasurer. It is not so much that history has treated Turner badly; more that it has forgotten him. This is unfair. While Turner might not have had a sparkling personality, he was an influential figure in the formation of the Australian nation. His quiet determination and pragmatic approach to controversial questions were integral to the process of federation. He also played a key role in ensuring that Barton became the country’s first prime minister instead of the less inspiring Sir William Lyne. And as treasurer, he kept a steady, reliable hand on the nation’s finances. Turner made sound financial management a hallmark of his work, and he set important precedents in the Treasury portfolio.
If Turner’s contemporaries commented on him in their writings, they did so mainly to pass judgement on his dour personality and serious nature. Alfred Deakin, a political ally but not a close friend, said of Turner that ‘his colourless policy fitted a colourless personality’.1 Before Turner became premier of Victoria, a journalist described him to his editor as ‘a quiet little man in a brown suit’.2 In a rather extreme judgement call, the historian Ross McMullin says of Turner that ‘no Victorian premier has had less charisma’.3 Fellow historian Manning Clark describes him as
one of the model
