John Hill Contents

ON BEING A MINISTER Behind the Mask JOHN HILL CONTENTS Preamble ix Preface xiv 1. The ministerial office 1 2. Paper 17 3. Bureaucracy 32 4. Policy 52 5. Speeches 84 6. Media 92 7. Challenges 123 8. Party 146 9. Parliament 159 10. Personal 184 Afterword 199 Thanks 202 Index 203 THE MINISTERIAL1 OFFICE Surround yourself with the best people you can find. Ronald Reagan (1911–2004), 40th US President hen I worked for Greg Crafter, the Minister for Education in W the second Bannon Government (1985–1989), I envisaged his ministerial office as something like a universal joint distributing the creative energy of the minister through to the axles and wheels of the department. It needed to be both flexible enough to follow the minister’s ideas and wishes, and stable enough to make sure decisions were made and implemented. Each ministerial office is a unique organisation, comprising the minister, political staffers usually chosen by word of mouth, personal knowledge, and political contacts (not the public service way), and public servants (all chosen by process – usually not on the basis of political knowledge or allegiance). On 6 March 2002 I was appointed to the Rann Cabinet in a ceremony at Government House and given my portfolio responsibilities: ‘Environment & Conservation’, ‘River Murray’, ‘Southern Suburbs’, ‘Gambling’ and ‘Assisting the Premier in the Arts’ – roughly in line with my jobs in Opposition. It was time to build an office. I had tentatively picked a chief of staff, Kym Winter-Dewhirst, whom I had met only once. 1 ON BEING A MINISTER Kym was a journalist by trade, musician by interest and a political junkie and raconteur by instinct. He had worked for a long time for the Australian Democrats at both a federal and state level, and was a passionate environmentalist who knew that territory well. He was super confident but low-key, idealistic and very amusing. I thought this combination of skills, experiences and attributes would work well for me on a professional level and more importantly I felt that we clicked and we could – as we did – build a relationship of trust. After a few years Kym was poached by Western Mining and eventually rose to a very senior position with BHP-Billiton after their takeover. At the start of 2015, Jay Weatherill appointed Kym as head of the Department of Premier and Cabinet – the state’s top public servant. I had chosen well. Before Kym could start with me, he and all other appointments had to go through a selection process run by the premier’s office. Mike Rann had seen some pretty disastrous staffing appointments in earlier Labor ministries and was determined to exercise quality control. I did have a driver appointed – Paul Adey, whom I had not met. The premier’s long-term driver, Barry, decided that Paul and I would get on well and he was right. Paul was my driver for almost eleven years – I spent more time in his company than anyone else’s in that time. His greatest skill wasn’t his driving, his conversation or his sense of humour (all of which were outstanding) but his discretion. Paul, prior to the election, had been driver to the former Minister for the Environment, Iain Evans, who after the election became the shadow minister and my direct political opponent. In the almost eleven years we sat together, across the 400,000-plus kilometres we travelled, not once did Paul say anything about Iain – either negative or personal. In the early days I would raise his name and invite 2 The miNisterial OFFice comment – but got nothing back. Perfect. A driver who gossips is a disaster. I knew if Paul didn’t gossip about Evans he wouldn’t talk about me either. On various occasions when Paul was on leave I would receive services from other drivers, whose bosses were on leave or who were ‘spare’ drivers, allocated to all and sundry when the need arose. Some of these drivers were professional and courteous, others were self-opinionated and grumpy – all of which I could tolerate. But some were gossips and would unload easily and without invitation about their regular charges. It is fair to say that some of the people they had to drive would turn just about anyone into a telltale. You have to be able to trust the environment of the ministerial car – often this is where important phone calls from the premier, other ministers and staff are taken. And on long trips especially, conversations with staff about the political and other issues of the day take place. In addition, of course, a ministerial driver inevitably learns about your family life. As part of my responsibilities, over all those years, my dear and long-suffering wife Andrea would often have to get dressed up, be collected by Paul to meet me in town for a dinner, ball or arts event. She and Paul would spend hours together as well – after 11 years Andrea, Paul and I had few secrets left; but they are all safe. On that first day of ministerial life, Paul picked me up from Parliament House with Andrea, her mother Mavis Wilson, and Deb Pow my electoral officer, and we visited the ministerial office for the first time. It looked like a department store after a 24-hour sale – there wasn’t much stock, certainly nothing of value, and what was there was topsy-turvy. In the middle of this was Carolyn Lee creating order. I could tell my surprise visit was unexpected and somewhat unsettling. I tried out my chair, desk 3 ON BEING A MINISTER and executive bathroom, had a quick look around and arranged to return the next day to meet with the chief executive of the Department of Environment and Heritage, Allan Holmes. Allan told me he had asked Carolyn to set up the office, as she had experience working for former Liberal minister David Wotton. To his mind there was no one better at the job of office manager than Carolyn – but ‘of course, Minister, you can choose whoever you wish’. I had no one better in mind and Carolyn agreed to do the job for a few months until matters settled. She was still there eleven years later. An extraordinarily gifted and hard-working manager, Carolyn worked prodigious hours, taking home a large bag of files every night ensuring the paper flow was managed perfectly. Carolyn’s greatest strength, I always thought, was her ability to pick good staff, give them the right job, train them, reward them, and let them flourish. In my entire term as minister my office worked like clockwork – it was often described as the best managed office in government. Carolyn was tough – if you didn’t reach the lofty heights of expected excellence and commitment you would be moved on. She would work with someone and if they didn’t click they’d be gone and a better equipped worker would appear. I came to trust Carolyn’s judgement of people so completely that I would get her to help select political advisors and electoral staff. So I had my first three staff – two former Liberal staffers and one former Democrat – none of whom I’d met more than once. It was time for a Labor activist, someone who understood the Party and who could act as my eyes and ears, important to a minister preoccupied with the ‘big’ job. You can easily lose contact with those who put you there. I wasn’t sure who to employ, until talking to Cathie King, 4 The miNisterial OFFice chief of staff to Pat Conlon and daughter of the legendary Len King, former chief judge of the Supreme Court and importantly Labor attorney-general under Don Dunstan. She suggested Brer Adams, a young political activist and student at Goodwood Primary School when my sons were there. I remembered Brer’s campaign for student council: ‘Brer for Chair’. So Brer came on board. An outstanding and gifted apparatchik, who after working for me for about six years (and having been overlooked by the factional power brokers for a federal seat) moved to Sydney where he stepped into a high-powered job in the carbon-trading section of Macquarie Bank. Brer always knew what was happening in the Party: who was up for a job, who was on the nose with the factions or the premier, which seat might be available, who was sleeping with whom. Useful information for a minister to know. We also needed a media advisor and Kym recommended Nick Talbot, who had previously managed the newsroom for the ABC in Newcastle. He had just arrived in Adelaide with his new wife Laurel Irving, the political reporter for Channel 10. Nick was a vegan and a committed twitcher and looked about half his 40 years. With his dark-framed glasses, neat hair and square handsome face he resembled Superman’s alter ego. He was incredibly energetic and in his own words ‘undiscriminating’ – which meant that every media enquiry was given the same treatment, including access to me, whether it was prime-time TV news, a throw-away country weekly with a circulation of 2000, or a student radio program with no audience whatsoever. It suited our purposes in those early days to be in the media a lot. I was a new minister in a new government and there was a lot of goodwill – and no one really knew me. It was a good time to be active. The highlight of this media flurry for Kym was the morning 5 ON BEING A MINISTER I featured in the first three ABC radio news stories.

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