STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION

OH 715/4

Full transcript of an interview with

ROBERT DAVID BAKEWELL

on 24 February 2005

By Robb Linn

Recording available on CD

Access for research: Unrestricted

Right to photocopy: Copies may be made for research and study

Right to quote or publish: Publication only with written permission from the State Library OH 715/4 ROBERT DAVID BAKEWELL

NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT

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J.D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION, STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA: INTERVIEW NO. OH 715/4

Authorised, edited transcription of an interview with Robert David Bakewell recorded by Rob Linn on 24th February 2005 at Adelaide, South Australia, for the Don Dunstan Foundation. (Interviewee’s voice is at lower volume and associated with some echo.)

DISK 1

Tape identification, tape identification. This is an interview with Mr Bob Bakewell for the Don Dunstan Foundation and the Libraries Board of South Australia on 24th February 2005. This is tape one, tape one, interviewer Rob Linn.

Bob, you were born in September in 1927 in England. Can you tell me a bit, please, about your parents and your background in the UK.

Yes. I was born at a place called Wickham Skeith, which is in Suffolk. My mother was Dorothy Eavestaff, the noted concert pianist, and my father was involved with the Wool Secretariat. It was more an accidental birth, I suppose, than a prearranged one. And we lived in England, and then came back to Australia and then went back to England again in the late ’30s, just prior to the Second World War.

Now, you were schooled in the minor public school tradition in England, is that right, Bob?

Yes, that’s right.

And then, during the War, from my memory of our earlier conversation, you were actually evacuated to Canada?

Yes. It was (sound of mobile telephone interference) ‘the last male Bakewell’ sort of theory, I gather: we were shoved on the old Aquitania1, which was a very old ship even then, and had a safe voyage to Halifax. We boys enjoyed it; I don’t think the crew did as far as we and other children were concerned, or nor did the teachers who got seasick, but for some reason us young fellows didn’t get seasick.

And did you return after the War, to the UK?

1 The Aquitania, we were told, was to take back troops and Empire air crew to the United Kingdom. – RB

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I came back to do my National Service – I could either do it in Canada or do it in England. If I did it in England you did a shorter period, and as I’d been to school in England and born in England I was liable to be called up.

Now, what about with further education?

Then, after that, I had to take another exam because they didn’t recognise what’s called the Higher School Canadian Certificate, which I scraped through, and then started a course in Economics at the London University. I didn’t complete that there, I completed it after we returned to Australia, on what you call a correspondence basis, which was quite common in those days.

Was that at the LSE2, was it?

Yes, the LSE, yes. And then I then did further studies by going back to Canada, to the University of British Columbia, which is in Vancouver, to do Administration – it wasn’t called ‘Public Administration’ in Canada, I think it was called ‘Civil Administration’, I’m not sure, but you get a postgraduate diploma, which I finished, and did some time with the Department of Municipal Affairs on a part-time basis to pay my fees. This was because you couldn’t transfer sterling or Australian dollars into Canadian dollars easily because of bank restrictions, I think, so I had to get a job, we’ll say as a soda jerk, but I got a job and some money.

Bob, you obviously had family connections in Australia, and I know in Adelaide that there were Bakewells living here, but what brought you to come to Australia?

I could not settle down after Canada and wanted to return. My father died, unfortunately, and the relatives in Australia were fairly distant, in the sense that we’re in a book but you go up and down, as it were, and the nearest connection was a Bakewell in Melbourne – Guy Bakewell, who was a cousin – second cousin, sorry – of some of the Bakewells in the UK. So, on my returning, I must admit they helped me to meet people and join such things as the Overseas League, Victoria League, et cetera, to ‘get the bastard married’, I think was more or less (laughs) the angle, ‘before he went off the rails’! And then, at that point, really I didn’t see a great deal of the Bakewell family. I did meet the Bakewells in Adelaide but I felt

2 LSE – London School of Economics.

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that, as they had lost their only son, Kenneth, in North Africa, it would be sensible to be very discreet because old Ken Bakewell and his wife – beautiful people – were still very upset.3

So, Bob, on your return you eventually join up with a stock and station agency in Naracoorte, have I got that right?

Elder Smith’s in Adelaide, first of all, mainly with the help of Helen Bagot’s family – she was a Bakewell. They got me an introduction to Mr Sweetman, the company secretary, and after basic training I was eventually moved down to Naracoorte, which I’d never been to before, and had a good time there, later marrying a girl from the South-East.

Yes, you married Joan in 1954, I remember that.

Yes, December.

December. And what led you then to go into COR4, the petroleum side of things?

Money. The stock firms were very, very good in training, but they didn’t really pay very much – I know it sounds a bit silly, but as a young man proposing to get married – – –. I think it was £1 2s 6d a week. While I did have some private funds I felt that I should try and get some more money, and COR at that stage had had some connection with the government and I thought, ‘Well, give anything a try.’ And it was very useful, because it gave me a reasonably good grounding in country areas of South Australia, what was happening in the sales, et cetera. But I didn’t persevere in the company and decided that I would head for Canberra.

Well, given your educational background that was probably a good time and a wise decision, Bob.

It was a good time. I got in as a research officer and then was promoted up in a department called, in those days, Trade and Customs – later it became Customs and, Excise. Later I was promoted to External Territories, before my wife, being South Australian, felt we should go back to South Australia. I saw an opportunity and applied to the then SA Public Service Commissioner, Max Dennis, in Adelaide and

3 I gathered this from Guy Bakewell’s wife. – RB 4 COR – Commonwealth Oil Refineries.

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was given an interview but didn’t get the job. He said he had another job coming up soon that he would like me to look at, which I did. This was Chief Recruiting and Training Officer for the state public service. Mr Dennis indicated that he wanted to try and modernise the public service if possible. At that stage of the game Mr Playford was – I’m not sure if he’d retired or was retiring – but Frank Walsh became Premier, and I’m not sure of the period because I wasn’t really interested in the political side. And so I was there when the new Public Service Act was created.

So that was probably 1965-66.

Yes. Before decimal currency, which came shortly after my taking up the post. And just at the end of the – the Walsh Government became the Dunstan Government in its last months. I had never met Frank Walsh nor Dunstan at that stage of the game. Anyway, they created a Public Service Board and wanted three Commissioners including one, the Chairman, who was to be Max Dennis. I don’t think I was the selection of the public service for the job; I gather there was some lobbying going on and I gather that the idea of introducing graduates into the service and trying to modernise it appealed, and I was, without being asked – – –. That’s not true: what I mean is I didn’t get a [tele]phone call from Mr Dunstan or anybody; I was told by the Premier’s Department they were wanting to nominate me, or appoint me, and [asked] would I agree. I was a bit dubious but I did, and I felt pretty dreadful afterwards because there were, clearly, more experienced people in the state public service.

So did you receive a call from Terry Crease, did you?

Yes, it was one of the Premier’s aides – Gerry, he was, Gerry Crease. And so my name went forward. I found out later that the then Public Service Association had proposed my name. I had met them because in my job as Chief Recruiting and Training Officer I was meeting them regularly. Anyway, I was appointed by Executive Council and had a pretty rocky road for a little while before being accepted. But I had not met Dunstan at that stage. And then there was a change of government.

So you’d met Max Dennis, though, you had to work with him.

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I was working with him, first as Chief Recruiting and Training Officer, and then Public Service Commissioner.

And Ken Taeuber?

Ken Taeuber I didn’t really know at that time – he was Commissioner of SA Taxation, Land Tax I think it was; anyway, one of those areas. But I met him, of course, after I was appointed. And then, of course, the Steele Hall Government came in and I met Steele Hall, but I still hadn’t met Dunstan.

Did you feel at that point that your appointment was a bit resented, Bob?

I think in the public service, to some of the old hands, undoubtedly it was. They were a bit suspicious: ‘Who’s this fellow, been here eighteen months from Canberra, suddenly elevated to be one of the Commissioners?’ One or two of them – I won’t mention names – were quite rude, but in general younger people of my own age and even younger seemed to welcome it as being a good thing.

Now, what’s fascinated me, Bob, is that you didn’t meet Don at all until – was it just prior to the 1970 election?

Yes. I hadn’t met him, had no occasion to meet him, as Commissioner. If they wanted staff they would talk to Max Dennis, who was the Chairman, which was quite proper. But some months, I suppose, before Steele Hall unexpectedly changed the policy on the Dartmouth Dam, I had a phone call from the Leader of the Opposition’s office, asking would I come and see him. I said, ‘Yes, but I am going to tell the Chairman, first of all, if you don’t object, because I think it would be improper for me to go without his knowing.’ So I spoke to Max Dennis and he said, ‘Yes, go ahead. You know, he probably wants to see who he’s appointed because you’ve never met him,’ and so I went to see him in a little corner office upstairs in Parliament House.

What were your first impressions of Don, Bob?

It was very hazy because he wasn’t friendly and he wasn’t unfriendly. He wanted to try and find what one was thinking. We were on our own at this particular meeting – Mr Doug Clawson, his secretary, didn’t sit in – and Dunstan asked me all sorts of things: what did I think of Aboriginals and what did I think of social welfare, what was my view on this and that – I can’t remember all the things. It was quite

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extensive, just general discussions. I answered the best I could. In the Aboriginal area I did know something: having been in External Territories in Canberra and having visited most of the reserves in the Northern Territory I was in a position to talk a bit about that. I knew very little about the social welfare area, and particularly the adoptions policy of the Department, but I did give him my views as to the Department structure and its head. I don’t know if he liked it or not, but I gave him my views. And then we talked more generally and he said, ‘What do you think about the public service? One of the reasons you were brought here was to try and modernise, and,’ he said, ‘I take my hat off to Max Dennis in bringing in an outsider’ – I remember him using those words. And I said, ‘Well, quite frankly, it’s totally unco-ordinated. People are all going off on their own directions. It seems you’re either a “professional”, in the sense of an engineer or an architect or a doctor, or you’re very much a generalist and in that case you’re probably an accountant. And,’ I said, ‘with great respect, I don’t believe accountants are broad enough in their thinking.’ And so we talked about this and I said, ‘Well, in any government co- ordination is needed. One of the great positives in the Menzies Government (Jack McEwen and his other ministers) was the fact that they had set their political policies which were down in black and white, and therefore they could be co-ordinated and brought to fruition. Somehow, somewhere, some co-ordination is needed in SA.’ I went on, ‘I’d know very little about Mr Playford’s era, but from what I have heard it seems that he was pretty much a one-man band.’ I’d been supported in this talking to David Brookman through family connections – which aggravated Dunstan slightly, I think – and I explained that lack of co-ordination was very difficult and it needed some means to get to what was happening. I said, ‘Playford as Premier was in fact Chief Secretary – using the Chief Secretary’s office with a staff of very few people, and from there he ruled. And in the Walsh and your government, with great respect, they seemed to be deviating in all different directions [when you were in power], needing a little bit of co-ordination.’ And he said something like, ‘Well, you’ll be opposed bitterly in Cabinet when I get back into power, because they don’t like public servants trying to run things.’ And I said, ‘Well, fair enough. But the role of public service, without political patronage, or nepotism, is to try and give the minister’ – his minister – ‘the true picture and then if he makes a decision one way, well, then we go and carry it out.’ And I said, ‘But at the moment, public service-

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wise, you have no-one co-ordinating. This also applies to Steele Hall’s Government. In your government you had no-one who comes in and says, “Look, that’s quite contrary to what your party proposed. What they’re doing in such-and-such a department is negating this or that,” and it’s all very vague.’ And we left it like that. Oh, no, I’m sorry: he did say, ‘Well, could you draw up, when you have time, how you would see a Premier’s Department – which is made up at the moment, really, of one officer and about eight other people – how you would see this to give the co-ordination and the direction needed and so on.’ I went back to Max Dennis and he said, ‘How did you get on?’ So I told him what the visit was about, and I must admit he was a little bit horrified, but I can understand that, and Colin Tillet was even more horrified – he was the Assistant Commissioner – but Ken Taeuber wasn’t. Ken Taeuber said, ‘Well, that’s fair enough,’ and, ‘if they get into government, not unreasonable.’

So was Don really looking for, if you like, ideas for how policy would be better implemented, Bob, is that the core of his thinking at the time?

He seemed very aggravated that it was very hard to get anything done. That as Attorney General – and I think he had the responsibility of Community Welfare at the same time – he would get, ‘Yes, yes; we’ll do this, that and the other,’ but then nothing would happen, or very little. He couldn’t get his policies through. He wanted some means of achieving this. He had great ideas – from what he said – about the way we live, the way culture and art should be developed, and he wasn’t getting very far. So I think he wanted to do precisely what you said, but get it co- ordinated and planned. I think he was frightened – withdraw that: I think he was wary that he had to be careful of any ministry that might be formed, because they would not want power, too much power, in one person’s hands in the government, you know, ‘divide and conquer’, to a degree.

So, Bob, was there a need for a structure – I think that’s probably the word – where, if submissions came into Cabinet from ministers – this is maybe what Don was thinking – there’d be a way of having a flow-through? And with your experience in the Commonwealth, perhaps you had knowledge of the structure?

Yes, that came later. What you’re saying there came later. After he did get into power, the second time, he formed the unit – or asked me to form a unit called the Policy Secretariat, and he asked me to have oversight over it, even though I was a

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Commissioner of the Board. That was not co-ordinating Cabinet matters, nor giving Cabinet advice at that stage. That was to try and implement a lot of the policies that were coming through, and to comment. It was only later that – when we were thinking about it and after discussions with him personally – I said, ‘Well, Premier’ – I never called him ‘Don’ – ‘really, Premier, people are still walking into the Cabinet room with dockets under their arms and things are getting decided in Cabinet on the spot without considering where they fitted with other policies. In Canberra they have a public servant in Cabinet, senior public servant.’ He said, ‘That will never, ever be sold or accepted by my colleagues,’ he said, ‘but we could have one of our junior ministers as a secretary to Cabinet, or something like that.’ I said, ‘All right.’ And I said, ‘The second thing is in Canberra there’s a standardisation of Cabinet submissions, and I think this is very important, where you have a Cabinet submission, not just written by the minister or public servant and signed by the minister, where he had to give, right at the top, what the proposition is, then the detail about it, where the funds come from and then how it’s to be implemented, et cetera. Therefore the submissions come in a particular form. Every Cabinet submission is numbered.’ And I think this was later, when they started coming through: I said, ‘Now, what would be useful to you, Premier, would be some notes on every Cabinet submission, so that means we’ve got to have, as it were, a Cabinet Secretariat.’ He said, ‘Are you still trying to get into that Cabinet room?’ And I said, ‘No, I’ve got the message, thank you. But,’ I said, ‘if you had notes, you could trump, as it were, a minister by saying, “Well, that’s contrary to what you said in your submission six months ago, or five months ago,” or, “That’s not fitting in with the policy of the government. We said we would do this, that and the other.”’ It would give the Premier ammunition to keep policy rolling. The proposal was implemented. A proper Department of Premier was formed with the Policy Secretariat becoming the Policy Division, the Economic Intelligence Unit a separate division, and a little Cabinet Secretariat to comment. The Premier felt it was important to have a section for a Women’s Adviser. Other sections were added progressively. The Arts was originally part of the Policy Division. So, from a department of about eight people, before one knew it it became a department getting to a hundred or more, it grew dramatically. And this brought a lot of criticism: one from the public; two from the other sections of the public service,

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who saw power slipping and ‘empire building’ and all the rest of it. But it did give the Premier the ability to know what was going on. Regular meetings were held at which I would present a paper of agenda to him with all the current matters, and I’d have a separate piece of paper of all the things that he said originally he wanted done and where they were at that particular time. And I held regular, weekly meetings with all the heads of the various sections of the Premier’s Department to discuss how we were going in their projects, to keep momentum going, and every Saturday, for my whole life as Head of Premier’s, I would come in and go through every Cabinet paper that was going to Cabinet and see what comments had been made by the Policy Division so if there was something that was really difficult, as it were, I would be able to brief the Premier early in the morning, in between his media spots, and so he could enter Cabinet properly briefed. The Premier was a very quick reader, fortunately. You didn’t have to explain things to him twice. He would treat you pretty harshly if you got it wrong. In Cabinet he’d be able to read and listen to what the Ministers said and he apparently would say to Des Corcoran and Hugh Hudson comments such as, ‘Three months ago you said that this wasn’t the case; now you’re apparently changing your mind,’ sort of business. It gave him strength. This made it very difficult for the boys – and top boys, like Milton Smith and Bill Voysey and the others in Premier’s with various departments – because of the tight control Dunstan could have.

Sorry, what was Bill’s surname? I missed that.

Bill Voysey.

Voysey.

He was head of the Policy Division and in reality deputy head of the Premier’s Department. He did a lot of work on cabinet papers.

VS: That’s right. Now, how do you spell his surname, Bob, I’m sorry. Is it V- O-Y-S-E-Y? I’m just trying to remember.

V-O-Y-S-E-Y.

Yes, that’s right.

Bill. I don’t know if he’s still alive, to be honest.

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Before we get more into the Premier’s Department as such, Bob, could we just backtrack for a minute? When you mentioned the structure of the Commonwealth, how there was a senior public servant in Cabinet to handle that, why would have Don Dunstan’s colleagues been opposed to having that person in Cabinet?

Well, he wasn’t personally opposed to it, as far as I could see, but I don’t know why Geoff Virgo and Des Corcoran, particularly, and Jack Wright, were so opposed. People like Don Banfield and Glen Broomhill, they didn’t seem to mind. I think it was what goes on in Cabinet, if you have a public servant there, could you say what you wanted to say? It was suggested to me it may restrict views being expressed. And I went in, many times, into Cabinet to brief or talk on a particular subject, and they’d swear at each other. It was not decorous but Executive Council could be worse when a public servant was present. I sort of knew from talking with John Bunting the way things used to work in Canberra. So I think they didn’t want a public servant in Cabinet; they felt that if there was – this is my belief, I don’t know for sure, please – I think that they felt this would undermine their ability to say what they felt to each other. Des was very supportive of Dunstan, but I think he was wary of him because Don was far – how can I put it without demeaning Des? – he (Dunstan) was very clever, well-educated and could think ahead, rather than just think what the result is for today. He was a lateral thinker in more ways than one, and he could immediately see what was going to happen if such-and-such occurred. His political ‘nous’ was good, and I think that the other ministers felt that they could be undermined if a public servant sat there and heard all this. One asked, ‘Can you trust the public service?’ They certainly didn’t trust, unfortunately, John White5 or somebody like that, which is unfortunate. While I was clerk to Executive Council I rarely attended – John Holland, a deputy, went – but if I did go, the way they would treat dockets showed little respect for the Governor. It’s interesting that Executive Council did not behave badly when Napier attended, as Deputy Governor.

5 John White, the previous Secretary of Premier’s Department.

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So, Bob, there was an obvious need for more organisation in the South Australian public service, in terms of getting government policy to be implemented in a structured way. I think –

Yes.

– that’s what I’m hearing you say.

Yes.

Obviously, like you said, in Tom Playford’s time he was it, he was the central figure –

Things were less structured, in a formal sense.

– well, it was structured round him!

Yes. (laughs)

If I’m right.

Correct.

And everything came in and out from him – as a Chief Secretary he did it all – and I think you’ve probably got to give him credit for the fact that he could take an awful lot in. So when Frank Walsh’s government comes in there’s no structure at all.

No, there’s no formal structure. And you’ve got to remember Playford – I met him many times – a thorough gentleman, but he wasn’t in my view thinking ahead as to results of actions. So if Actil came and said they wanted to build a factory but they needed to have water and all the rest to do it, it didn’t go down very far (e.g. to E&WS6) for people to discuss it. As adviser they had a person called Hal Deane, who was a very good engineer, but again things were decided on virtually a policy to suit an industry, which would create growth, and that meant that they didn’t have the advice coming up: ‘Okay, it’s what you want to do, but do you realise by doing that they’re going to put all this dirty water, as it were, in the drains? They’re going to use so many thousands of gallons of water to achieve their result: have you thought this through? This means perhaps an extra pipeline or something else.’ Leigh

6 E&WS – Engineering and Water Supply Department.

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Creek7 was a classic example, and all these things are – I don’t say the spur of the moment matters, that’s not true – but a businessman would arrive and say, ‘Look, I’m thinking about setting up a factory,’ and – from what I can gather, because I wasn’t there – the deal could be done, as it were, and the hand shaken pretty well on the spot. There were no lunches, none of the Dunstan era of good old lunches and all the rest; Playford – and I got this from being in Trade and Customs in Canberra – would pretty well agree on the spot on projects. And sitting in Black Jack McEwen’s office, where I was working for a while, I saw some of the things coming through, which was clear that it was done on the spot. It did get results – but at what cost? Sorry, is that – – –?

That’s fine, that’s exactly what I was thinking of, Bob. And what Don Dunstan was looking at through your services was to bring a much more rigorous application of policy, that his ministers would know, ‘Well, this is the procedure, this is how you bring your presentations to Cabinet, this is how the submissions will be put through.’ In effect, for the first time, there was an administrative path to walk.

Correct. There were emergencies, in which case one needed to alert the Cabinet – for example, the petrol problem: bring in rationing or not? That was an emergency, and the minister responsible briefed the Premier and the Premier would summon me (or a deputy) and I would sit in. And then was formed a group (in the case of petroleum) with Lyndsay Bowes and myself in which was introduced a rationing system. That’s when my background in petroleum came to the fore because I knew that there were stocks, and where the stocks were and how they could be used. So we briefed Cabinet and we sat in with them when they were discussing it. Likewise the Darwin cyclone. So there were emergencies where exceptions were made in Cabinet. Another matter that concerned me was that people were travelling overseas – public servants – left, right and centre, so I suggested to the Premier we should have an overseas travel committee – I wasn’t suggesting I should be on it, the Public Service Board could run it – and that, instead of public servants just getting approval of their minister and heading off to conferences, it could be done in a structured

7 Leigh Creek was a major coal mining project, providing fuel to ETSA (Electricity Trust of SA) powerhouses, which also involved building a new small town.

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way. This got through Cabinet – a little reluctantly, but to ministers who didn’t like to give up their power it was explained, very tactfully, they still had the power because they could say no, they didn’t have to forward an application to go overseas if they didn’t want to. They had to sign it. ‘Is your journey really necessary?’ I suppose is the result.

So, Bob, did you remain a public service commissioner, or were you taken over?

No, I originally, when the Policy Secretariat was formed, I was asked to oversee it from my position at the Board, for two reasons: one, to give confidence to the public service that there was somebody there overseeing; secondly, confidence to the Public Service Board, who wondered what the hell was going on. Then it became too much work to oversee and perform my role, so [that was when] the Department of the Premier was formed. I was sounded by Peter Ward for the top job, which I thought was a bit peculiar, but anyway – – –. So then I became head – it was a fait accompli, I suppose. It was a very difficult department because John White was still there, who had been for a long time secretary of a small department for a minister – in this case the Premier.

That’s what I wanted to ask.

You’ve got to remember: in Canberra at that time there were about twenty-one departments of state; in South Australian there were fifty-four departments of state. Some of the departments had four or five people in them servicing ministers. The service was totally uncoordinated, a floating quagmire, and no wonder government policy wasn’t getting achieved because if you were a senior public servant you’ve only got to shove the docket this way and that way and you’d never see it again for six months.

Most effective!

Yes!

So did you get on well with John White, personally?

Yes and no. John obviously didn’t like the fact that his wings were clipped, but he took it very well. He was a member of the Adelaide Club, and that was quite useful to me because I got communication backwards and forwards. I think he resented the fact that I was there, but he gave me all the assistance he could. He didn’t have all

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the access to the Premier he previously had, although his office was bang next door to the Premier. He was extremely good on protocol and relations with distinguished visitors, and he looked impressive. I’ll give you an aside (laughs) if you – – –.

Yes, please.

In London, for example, we went to the – not the Town Hall, the Guildhall, and you go there with the flag flying in the front of the vehicle and you pull up, and I was sitting in the front for some reason; and Don and John got out and I got out, and officials went to meet John and shook him by the hand and said, ‘Mr Premier, you’re very welcome,’ because he looked the part. Don got out, not as well turned out as John, who then had to say, ‘Excuse me, this is the Premier.’ I mean, Dunstan did not always dress for the occasion. If you had a sense of humour it was extremely funny, because it’s very formal at the Guildhall with the Lord Mayor and London notables, et cetera. Unbelievable! However, the Premier carried the day and made a very good speech. I am also unsure if he was briefed as to what to wear.

What about other senior public servants? Was there opposition to the formation of the Premier’s Department?

A lot of it – for example, Community Welfare was very opposed. I think Lyndsay Bowes (Labour and Industry) accepted it in the end, but he was initially very against, possibly because of my ascendancy – this nobody suddenly arriving from Canberra. People like Harold Beaney in charge of EWS were supportive – the big engineering department – I don’t think they were worried at all. Keith Johenke, the head of Highways, didn’t seem really worried. In fact, Highways, of any department, was more Commonwealth-oriented as far as operations and getting things done than any. The middle-level public servants I didn’t think had any worries – most of their funds came from Canberra.

What about Treasury, in particular?

Treasury were very supportive originally. They did not like the Economic Intelligence Unit initially. (The purpose of the Economic Intelligence Unit was simply to give the Premier and the Treasurer – if the jobs were combined – the ability to have an alternative point of view from very highly-qualified people under Milton Smith.) Treasury, through Gilbert Seaman, I think quite accepted and

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welcomed the structure, as long as it didn’t interfere with their running, as it were, of the state’s finances. But the Economic Intelligence Unit was there for alternative purposes; secondly, if the Premier was giving an economic speech in his capacity as Treasurer, he could also have input from that unit (you’d probably get a draft from the Treasury of what could be said), and then the Premier could have an input from the Economic Intelligence Unit – except in budget matters, because he accepted the advice that the budget would be prepared between him and the Treasury and it should be strictly confidential until released to Parliament and the press. Comments on the budget would come from Economic Intelligence after its release and at the same time as they were reading it in Parliament. I felt that was a safety valve, to enable comment to be made. The Premier readily accepted that, he could see the sense in Treasury being the one preparing a budget – which really is an accounting structure, situation – and how much was needed. Both Treasury and EIU commented on the federal budget as well. I did sit in with little opposition from the Treasury when they were looking at the budgets being put up by departments and being considered by the Premier as to what the various departments needed. Ron Barnes, the Under-Treasurer, told me, ‘Well, actually, you were quite useful because you were able to point out to the Premier other things that we, Treasury, wouldn’t be aware of.’ And also the Premier’s own department: how can you cut other departments’ budgets if you’re not prepared to look at your own? (And the railway money was running out, it didn’t last very long. They sold the railways and they got big money, and money was spent very quickly.) I felt Treasury did resent my role to a small degree, but they seemed to live with it.

What I’m seeing, Bob, is if you like it’s a quantum shift from one way of doing things, where the departments have got control of everything, to a more centralised structure, where in fact the Premier himself, through his department, has oversight. Would that be true?

Well, Playford was centralised. (laughs) If you’re talking about centralisation, you couldn’t get any more than Playford. However, he was a one-man band; Dunstan had a structure to analyse and make suggestions which he may or may not accept – Playford did not have that.

Just one person.

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Yes, with a small secretarial staff. And the departments’ ministers did as they were asked or were more ‘docile’, as it were (according to David Brookman in his discussions with me). But departments under Labor could get away with murder because, one, they had an inexperienced ministry who hadn’t been in government very long, plus they didn’t have the background of Playford ministers and top public servants had been Playford era appointees and maybe weren’t necessarily telling some of the background. With the Premier’s Department they could centralise things to the extent that intimation had to be given by the minister or the department, but not controlling. The Premier wasn’t telling Highways or EWS what to do. He did have his ‘pet’ areas, like Aborigines and Community Welfare and the Arts, where he took a personal interest – although the Arts initially was part of the Premier’s Department. He didn’t control the activities of the departments, but he did centralise the way they did things and he did make sure that he had an input through the minister and that he knew what was going on. And this was one of the problems, although through the Policy Secretariat (later Division), gradually we were able to get information coming in. Perhaps not originally, because originally there was some opposition, but by bringing in persons like Bill Voysey et cetera – well- respected, middle public servant; I think Bill was an accountant but that didn’t matter because he was seen as one of them – there was trust. Hedley Bachman is another example. I don’t think there was ever any great trust with me – an outsider – they saw me as a (laughs) Rasputin or something, I suspect. And also Don, be very honest, he used to say, ‘Look, hold your horses, you’re getting virtually too big for your boots,’ you know. ‘You’re not running things.’ I would say, ‘Well, we’re running things on your behalf, but no, we are not running things.’ So there was that, that thing there that existed, where, if I were to ring up a department head, there’d be some sort of – not chaos; immediately things could get very tight. And if I walked to a department, which I took the habit of doing occasionally, walked around to the department to see the permanent head and just tell the girl I’d arrived, they used to get a little bit edgy. But when they realised I wasn’t doing anything dramatic, I just wanted to find out what had happened – rather than picking up the phone and saying, ‘Harold, the Murray River Commissioners’ meeting, we don’t seem to have any information here. Is it possible you could put something through your

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minister?’, I’d walk around and say to them, ‘Is there any problems in getting some information so we can fit it in? For two reasons: one long-term, what sort of money is going to be needed, so the Premier as Treasurer can be advised; and two, to see how it fits into the general policy of the government as far as water?’ – to my mind, once they sort of saw you were not trying to pick them up and throw them out the window and you were trying to get information which would help them, in due time I felt it became a lot easier.

Bob, with your expertise on policy development, just going to one side for a minute, who were Don’s advisers at the time, if you like, on that more personal, direct level?

The public service did change to where ministerial staff were brought in with various different levels of expertise. Originally it started, as it were, with speech writers and media watchers, to help prepare information, particularly political as well as speeches. Then the Premier felt it would be wise to bring in people who can research and give him his information of a political nature, because it might be politically sensitive and he felt that it would be a good thing to keep it away from the general public service. This was something that was a bit of a problem because some people saw it as political patronage and nepotism creeping in, particularly if these people decided to change from being a ministerial employee to a public servant and get the benefits of – in those days – of permanency, et cetera. But yes, it was useful. I felt that the idea of getting alternative advice – which was not new, because if you go to Canberra, Queensland or Victoria, New South Wales I guess, they would go to universities and ask them for advice separate to the advice coming from the public service – and I felt that was very useful; but they decided – and fair enough – that they would like to build internally, so they brought in various people to do just this.

When you say ‘they’, do you mean Don and his people, or – – –?

It started with the Premier, and then it gradually expanded to the various other ministries where, for example, Des Corcoran had his little department headed by public servant Peter Brooks originally, but he (Corcoran) brought in people from outside to advise. These people weren’t public servants. Again, this brought some friction because the public servants saw these people going to lunch, coming back

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perhaps late and having no rules and regulations as to their actions. But gradually a ministerial salary structure was set up, with the help of the Public Service Board, and things got a little bit more organised. But I didn’t see anything really wrong. In fact, Don would bring into his office, when I was seeing him with my list of matters, sometimes Peter Ward, sometimes Rob Dempsey or another person who would sit in, and – all right – they’d make suggestions and it was up to me, if I’m putting my case to be able to justify it, and I didn’t see anything wrong with that. It did give Don an extra alternative, and I felt that was quite useful. Is this getting off the topic?

No, this is exactly right, Bob. I wanted to ask you: with somebody like Peter Ward, though – and this is for your opinion, too – he’s a journalist, in effect, so how can he have the ability to discern some of the issues that were coming from departments?

Very true, he might not in particular, but he did have his own ‘pet’ areas, particularly environment matters, as well as contributions on effects of actions on Labor policy, et cetera. But Ward (as an example) did know what had been agreed in caucus or was Labor policy. He was aware, by going with the Premier to various conferences or meetings, what was actually said, so he was quite useful because he could say, ‘Yeah, Bob, I don’t disagree with you, but when we were up in Whyalla the Premier did give an indication that such-and-such would be done about shipbuilding,’ that perhaps I wasn’t aware of, and it was quite useful. But he did not do any in-depth research or public administration. He could write speeches and he could speak very well. Rob Dempsey was highly-qualified, but he had other traits. I didn’t object to it, what I’m trying to say is. I could understand it, but I did realise the difficulties it was bringing in throughout the public service and particularly the political patronage and nepotism dangers.

And, Bob, as the person who was brought in to head the Premier’s Department – I just want to keep coming back to this – you must have faced some real aggression from older caucus members and ministers who had seen their department as being the place where things functioned, and suddenly here’s a new organisation on the block, dictating how overall policy is going to proceed.

That is correct, but it was confined to Geoff Virgo, Des Corcoran, Jack Wright – what I used to call ‘The Gang’, a very strong group. One could perhaps add Len King and Hugh Hudson, but they weren’t so forthright and were in-depth thinkers.

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The ‘Gang of Three’, was it?

I got on with them very well, but they were always extremely touchy and you had to give them assurance, and you did this by the way you actually talked to them. And they certainly didn’t like the fact that they couldn’t bring matters up for Cabinet discussion without it going through the system, they didn’t like that at all. But they got used to it. Of course one had to be flexible and Dunstan would accept urgent matters. However, these were noted and could be commented on if found desirable later.

I guess what I’m point towards, because of wanting to know more about how Don Dunstan functioned, would those people too have had just some questions about Don himself, do you think? Because he didn’t really come from the background where traditional Labor had come from. No, he didn’t. Corcoran et cetera were good, solid Labor people, but not academics. There was a certain amount of suspicion of Dunstan himself, and that’s why I think they saw they had to guide him on some matters. Hugh Hudson was different, he wasn’t quite like them; he was not a trade unionist, he was very academically-minded. But the old stayers, they were, in my view, swayed by Dunstan. People like Don Banfield, Bert Shard et cetera were good, solid Labor, but held no problems for Dunstan. Bert Shard said to me in a lift one day, ‘Bob,’ he said, ‘who would think, that I’m now the Queen’s Minister in charge of this, that and the other,’ you know, and he was a decent, lovely old fellow. Don Banfield was a wonderful person, too. But they would roll over on the floor and acquiesce if Dunstan proposed something, even if their public servants advised otherwise. But the group of three8, they were a different kettle of fish and were strong: Don had to be very careful, in my view, how he handled matters and when he went overseas, if I was left behind, it was a very trying period because you had an Acting Premier and you still had to make decisions. For example, the Premier may have said that this or that matter should be handled in a certain way, you had to do it in such a way that that particular Acting Premier or minister concerned would go ahead with it, or perhaps delay a matter going to Cabinet until Dunstan was back. You know, it was a touchy situation. If you did the latter and you were caught, would you get kicked

8 ie Geoff Virgo, Des Corcoran, Jack Wright.

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from here to Timbuktu? You couldn’t really ring up the Premier wherever he was and say, ‘Look, I think X should be withdrawn from Cabinet till you get back.’ You couldn’t do that, you’re undermining the situation. And people talk. Public servants would know this is going forward: why didn’t it go to Cabinet? Can you leave it off the list when it’s listed 1-25 or 40, whatever it might be? No, it was difficult. If Don was there, he could control it. He never had a riot, as far as I’m aware, in Cabinet. He had a lot of arguments perhaps, and sometimes came out of Cabinet in somewhat of a rage –

Oh, sure.

– but usually he could swing over Des, who was basically a strong supporter and helper.

Well, Des, from what you’ve said another time, was very, very loyal.

Very loyal to Dunstan and Labor. His father was as well. He came from the same area and he was apparently very much the same sort of person. But Des was a killer, everybody had to agree with what he said and drink like mad if he was there after 5:00pm. The point was he was a cold-blooded bit of a bully, but if you just stood up to him and said, ‘I’m sorry,’ you know, ‘I’m not going to have a drink, I’ve got to drive home, I’ll get picked up, I’ve got a family, et cetera,’ or ‘I’ve got work to do,’ – – –. And if you were shrewd enough you didn’t go near him, you know, half past four onwards, you kept out of his way. But sometimes you couldn’t avoid it – I mean, he’d ring you up, ‘Come down.’ And you did, you’d go down. But he was a bit of a bully, and I had a couple of rows with him over the way he was treating his staff. But yes, I really got on well with him and never hesitated to tell him any problems I might have, so long as they did not undermine Dunstan.

Just thinking about Hugh Hudson for a minute, who sticks out in Cabinet as some – and probably Don Hopgood as a junior minister, too – of a new breed, if you like, a new type coming in: was Hugh Hudson an ambitious person as well? Because I find that very hard to know, as an outsider looking in.

I got on well with Hugh. We could talk together. Without degrading him, he was a lazy minister. You can tell if a person’s done their homework or not, if they’ve really been through the papers or not, you can tell. He was a person who could be diverted very quickly from the main purpose of the subject – but, nevertheless, he

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had an extremely good brain if he wanted to use it and he would give Don a lot of backup and support. Question whether he was ambitious: I think the very fact he went into Parliament and then the ministry must indicate he was ambitious. I think that, if Don had had his choice, he would have seen Hugh as possibly his successor – that’s my own thinking, and I might well be wrong, but he had the charisma and he was very well-accepted. He was not always accepted by the Gang of Three, perhaps because he was an academic, if I may put it that way. Hudson could dissect, he could think laterally and he could project dangers, and he did a very good job in Education – in my view. I’m sorry, I don’t want to give the wrong impression about him. He gave me a lot of support and help.

VS: No, no, that’s exactly what I was looking for, Bob. So, in terms of how the Cabinet functioned and the Premier’s Department functioned, was Don’s role almost like a chairman of the board, if you like, or was it more than that, more proactive?

Proactive. He was no chairman of any board: if a chairman of the board does his job properly he gets the opinions of the people surrounding him. Don could be – and I wasn’t in Cabinet very often –

No, I understand that.

– was pretty forceful. After Cabinet I would walk to his office to either have a drink or cup of coffee or something, and virtually say – and I must admit probably joined by one of his ministerial employees – ‘How did things go in Cabinet today?’, because I wanted to know what was agreed and not agreed, then the dockets and/or papers all had to flow out back to the departments. Ministers couldn’t take the docket after the Cabinet discussion, as they used to; they were held and then gone through and the decision noted. I might find some dockets and say, ‘Look, I’ve got these and you’ve just put a “D” on it. Excuse me, Premier, what did Cabinet agree to?’ And, you know, to get clarification. And then they would go out and be monitored, et cetera, so that they could be – the decisions noted and filed and dockets returned to the department – and the Policy Division would monitor to see if the department carried out the policy agreed to. So the Premier would go over, in general terms, any problems that occurred. The Premier was very clear as to decision. He wouldn’t say, ‘This was opposed by So-and-so and So-and-so.’ He

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would keep that confidential, which I think was quite right – he probably told his personal staff – but he’d say to me, ‘Well, this had some opposition so I decided to defer it for a week, and what I want you to do is X, Y, Z,’ which I would then arrange to get done and take it back to him for a future Cabinet. But you knew where you were, from that point of view, because otherwise you couldn’t do the coordinating in a structured way if you didn’t know the results. And there was a big fight at the start, when the controls came, as the ministers couldn’t pick up their own dockets and (laughs) march back to their departments and tell their permanent heads, who were waiting with bated breath, in my book, to be told whether this and that was agreed to.

Bob, did you find that, once Don Dunstan knew and understood a matter, that he would act very quickly?

Once he understood a matter, yes, he would be pretty decisive, except in certain circumstances. For example, on the adoption area and community welfare, he had a great deal of hesitation – I think it was because of his experience with the departments and his earlier days when he’d been Attorney General under Frank Walsh. But yes, he was generally very decisive. He could be very firm, very easygoing, or he could – he was a decisive person once he had made up his mind. He would march into your office and, ‘What the blazes do you think you’re doing here?’, on a policy matter, and you could wonder what the hell he’s talking about – and do this in front of other people, which is fair enough. But once you spoke to him he would then decisively agree the direction in which the matter should proceed. He wouldn’t ever say, ‘Thanks very much, you did a good job there,’ I don’t think you ever heard him praise anybody. But he wasn’t a Black Jack McEwen. Black Jack McEwen was a person who’d get up, walk around his desk, bang it and you’d see public servants crying in the corner, sort of business, because I used to be on the staff for a while. Dunstan could be cool and steady and very, very cold, and make clear his displeasure. And if he was displeased, God help you, sort of business. However, he was always prepared to discuss your views before making a decision. He would also, if one requested, give a reason.9

9 Not sure if it was always a true one, but so what! – RB

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END OF DISK 1: DISK 2

Tape ID, this is tape two of an interview with Bob Bakewell for the Dunstan Foundation and the Libraries Board of South Australia on the 24th February 2005, interviewer Rob Linn.

Bob, we’ve dealt with some of the establishment of the Premier’s Department and the way that policy development functioned within that, and you’ve spoken on a number of occasions about Don Dunstan’s character and his approach and about that of some of his ministers. How did other ministers and the public service react to the Premier’s Department growing so quickly?

I think there was a certain amount of horror, coupled to a certain amount of jealousy, which is understandable: ‘How do they get the funds, how do they get the approvals, when we might be looking for extensions or elsewhere?’ I think that was true. And I think some of the senior public servants were probably resentful, particularly of the idea of bringing young graduates gradually through the system – generalist graduates, I should say, rather than specialist graduates. I think the growth was the thing that astounded people, because it did become the premier department. It was top dog, it was the one that came up with suggestions, who wrote to departments and said – because it was Cabinet policy – ‘You will call a woman “Ms” instead of “Miss” or “Mrs”,’ and things like this. It was the department that was pushing very strongly things like worker participation. It seemed to control far more than the departments wanted. But that’s not true, because departments still had to build roads, still had to build dams, still had to run buses, hospitals, et cetera, and carry out their daily functions. But now they could be questioned, now they could be queried, and they weren’t quite as happy; here was somebody looking over their shoulder from within. Yes, I think so. One example was daylight saving. A Cabinet submission was prepared on daylight saving. Departments weren’t consulted in general. I’m sorry, I have to withdraw: Agriculture and Education were consulted, but other departments weren’t really consulted.

Was that Glen Broomhill, minister at that stage?

No, I don’t think he was a minister – he became Minister Assisting the Premier later. The Premier’s Department prepared the submission, which circulated and then was

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discussed in Cabinet. Objections were raised with the submission being returned to Premier’s before being resubmitted.

Oh, I’m with you, okay.

The Premier’s Department then, through the Premier, he took it back to Cabinet. First of all – which I felt was very good tactics on Don’s part – he said, ‘We are getting handicapped interstate because of what’s going on in other states from business and environment matters. We should have daylight saving and follow on.’ So anyway, the submission was then sitting ready, after he got this approval in general terms – bang! – about a fortnight later the submission was sent to departments. And the departments then reacted. They said, ‘What about the children on the West Coast? What about people at Ceduna? What about the Ports Authority, Marine and Harbours and all the rest of it?’ That was a classic example where we realised – I realised – that I had been wrong and that all departments, not only Education and Agriculture, in those circumstances had to be consulted. I’d done what the Premier had asked, but I should have realised about children getting on school buses, the difference between the South-East and the West Coast. After that submission Dunstan agreed that more consultation was desirable. That’s when I, with Dunstan’s agreement, brought in a senior public servant to, as it were – in Bill Voysey and other people – to do this consulting. I didn’t want to get tied up ringing up departments all the time; they did. They would go and find out, and I think this helped to settle the senior public servants down. This also applied to statutory authorities.

So it looks more of a co-operative effort, if you like.

Yes. It means, as I say, you got things done and departments felt they were part of it. But it did serve a purpose because it gave them a hell of a shock, but then when they got consulted they thought they’d won a bit, which is good. It greatly helped me in my role.

Bob, I’d like to, at perhaps another time, go into more detail about some of the really what might have appeared to be contentious issues of the time that you would have known about, such as Monarto and the ‘Salisbury Affair’ and other things. But I wondered, in the short term, whether we could actually deal with the fact – we’ve spoken about Don’s qualities and strengths, but you said when we

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spoke previously that overseas ventures, for instance, with Don and his staff were nightmares for you.

Yes.

Could we talk about them, and why that was so?

Well, the nightmare would be travelling with him and his ministerial staff. Some ventures of the government were very good, I mean you’ve got to agree – well, I would agree – that Chatterton’s dry land farming efforts in North Africa were highly successful. How much that was through Don or how much that was through Lyn I’m not sure, but it was extremely successful. So first if you take travelling, before coming back to specifics, if that’s – or you can do the reverse if you wish –

Yes.

– travelling with Don was very unusual. The details of the travelling were arranged by the ministerial staff, I assume after consulting Dunstan. They would come up with an itinerary, where they were going to go, et cetera, then they’d go down to the old Tourist Bureau and work out itineraries and all the rest of it and do all the planning, including whom the Premier wanted to see. Then would come the question of who’s going to go with the Premier. For the first few years, I decided that I would go from the Department, and went on all his overseas visits in the first few years, which meant that I then wanted the details to see where we were going – why, whom to see, et cetera. And it was horrific. You realised that there wouldn’t be time, you wouldn’t have long enough to see these people, so very simply I went back to the Premier and said, ‘Look, terrific. Can I get clear what is the aim, because, Premier, you might get criticised in Parliament: is it just a joyride? What are you going to look at?’ And he would then expand, as Don could in a brilliant manner – you know, waving his arms around and saying, ‘This and this has got to be done, we must see Such-and-such.’ This then gave me the opportunity, with the ministerial adviser, to adjust the agenda and then talk to my own staff, such as John Holland, and say, ‘No, if we’re going there we’ve got to tell Foreign Affairs, we’ve got to arrange that we meet the Governor of the state or whoever it might be, the protocol has to be gone through and therefore we’re going to need more time.’ Then I’d go back to Don and say, ‘Well, do you realise if we do all this you’re going to be away for eight weeks? Is that what you want?’ ‘Oh, I can’t afford eight weeks

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because of Parliamentary sittings, et cetera.’ So, ‘Okay. So what’s the most important part of the visit?’ Also, ‘You mustn’t get criticised.’ Usually the matter would be resolved in discussion in the end. We’d have a great number of people, we might have eight – myself and the Premier and perhaps six others – all heading off in a group to various destinations. Fortunately, with John Holland’s efforts, my own and Foreign Affairs, we got a firm itinerary. It would be arranged for the, whether it was the High Commissioner or our Ambassador to meet us in the country concerned, and we’d carry out the protocol and know what functions would be involved and what appointments were to be kept. Time was vital. You might have to meet in the lobby of a hotel at eight o’clock in the morning. The Premier was never, ever late for an international meeting – he saw it as a means of honouring the people being visited, I think.

Is that right?

He might be late in Adelaide for what I deem general matters, but when you said to him the night before, ‘Premier, the cars are going to be waiting outside’ – this is in, take München, for example – ‘the cars will be waiting for us at eight o’clock.’ ‘Right,’ he would say, ‘we’ll all be there.’ This is at a dinner the night before and I said, ‘Well, everybody understood, the cars will be there, we’re going to the Messerschmitt factory, we’re going to meet So-and-so, the purpose of your trip is to do this, this and this.’ Don would be there at 8:00am ready in the lobby, I’d be there, as the only public servant: where’s everybody else? And you’d find that someone would come down eventually. So we’d head off without the rest. I would advise, ‘Premier, you’re being met by So-and-so,’ or ‘You’re going to visit the Burgermeister, we can’t be late. You’ve got to be there on time, it’s the protocol.’ He would understand. He didn’t like it, I suspect, but he would understand. You could say to him, ‘Don, no safari suit, it won’t be any good tomorrow. It’s a suit and a tie.’ ‘Oh! I’ve got to wear a tie?’ ‘Don, because you’re the Premier and it’s the protocol.’ He would do it but not necessarily like it. But anyway, we’d get off and the other fellows would drag themselves along an hour or so later to these meetings and one could see the German officials turning and looking at you, or the Swedish officials or in Japan the Japanese officials: ‘Who are these fellows, drifting in at odd times?’ So that was one of the things I had to accept.

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The second difficulty was on expenses. One has to be accountable, one way or another, and each would get so much money as an advance and take the travellers’ cheques and credit cards. ‘Right, accounts have to be paid before we leave the hotel, and we have accountability so keep records.’ One had very little problem with the Premier. You could say to him, quite straight out, ‘Premier, because this is going to be possibly scrutinised at some later date, is this purchase or expenditure something that is necessary for the trip, or is it something we could consider as private?’ Face the factor that the Premier was not a wealthy man – he had little money of his own and he was reliant very much on his salary as the Premier and allowances – and so you would be as lenient as you could, if that was possible. He did like eating in very expensive restaurants. The justification was to try the food, to see the difference between this and what he would like to introduce into South Australia. So you can see that the nightmare was partly getting people to places on time, partly keeping to schedules in the sense of who to see and not to see, and the protocol of what to wear, and of course the nightmare of the expenses at the end of the day and the end of the trip. I had no administrative control of ministerial staff, that was a matter for the Premier. However, their expenses were public funds and were of interest to me. The Premier always supported me in this.

That was what I was heading towards, that that must have been a great difficulty at times.

No public service control whatsoever, other than through the Premier’s help. You couldn’t tell ministerial officers they had to do anything, although to be honest they usually listened to advice. You could ask the question of how the money was spent, and I’ll come to an example, if I might, in a little while. So the nightmare was getting them in the lobby on time when we were leaving; making sure the accounts were paid, which in a couple of cases they weren’t – fortunately, I found out about it and was able to get the paperwork resolved. In fact, in one case the Ambassador’s chargé d’affaires rang me up and said, ‘Look, the account at such-and-such a hotel has only been part-paid. Accounts for Mr Dunstan, yourself and – – – are in order. However, there are two accounts outstanding. It’s a little bit embarrassing, what

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would you like us to do?’ And I’d say, ‘Well, look, you pay it, send me the bill, we’ll send a cheque over to cover it.’ And they would say, ‘Well, we’ll pay it, we’ll send the account to Canberra and they will then send it to you. You then reimburse Canberra.’ I had a couple of those. But they was the exception, but it was always something you had to watch. And then, of course, when you got back you had the question of going over all the expense lines and really saying, ‘Well, what happened to all this or that money?’ I mean, pornographic literature: the excuse was, ‘Well, we’re very interested in seeing what this is because we don’t know whether to ban something in South Australia, you know, we’ve got to get experience.’ Well, there could be some truth in that. So the nightmare there was twofold: one, arriving back in Australia and, secondly, the expense. Arriving back in Australia wasn’t so bad because, having been a senior Customs officer in Canberra, I was known to the Customs people. They put the group in a room and they said, ‘Mr Bakewell, has everybody as far as you’re aware signed their own incoming customs declaration?’ I would always say, because I got advice from Crown Law, ‘Mr Dunstan, the Premier, and I have signed ours personally.’ ‘Did you fill in Mr Dunstan’s form?’ ‘No, he filled in his own form, as far as I’m aware, and he signed it.’ ‘What about the rest?’ I said, ‘I can’t comment, you’ll have to ask them.’ And this solved a lot of the problems. But it did get a bit of discipline into that area, but we still had the nightmare, when you got back to Adelaide, of (laughs) ...... and the questions in Parliament that might come up at a later stage: ‘How can you justify the expense of X dollars? Was it a joyride?’ I had several private discussions with the Auditor General to resolve minor matters related to the overseas visits. Then there were the visits to do some sort of trade business, and I think Malaysia is a classic example in this particular case. The Chief Minister of the state of Penang, Dr Lim Chong Eu, visited Adelaide on the invitation of Foreign Affairs to come to Australia, and he toured around Australia with Mr Parsons, who was the Australian High Commissioner to Malaysia – who had actually recommended him for one of these duty visits, and there were a lot of these – and Dr Lim visited Adelaide. The Premier was not particularly interested in giving this visitor lunch,

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which was the normal thing to do, but it was done, then they soon hit it off like a house on fire!

Really?

Which was unbelievable to me, because Lim was very loquacious, but a nice person and interested in working with us. Anyway, I allocated an officer, at the Premier’s request, Mike Sullivan, to accompany him around Adelaide and show him what was going on in development matters. Before he left, he formally invited the Premier to visit Penang, which the Premier accepted. When Dr Lim had gone I said, ‘Well, first of all – fair enough – you’ve got to fix a time; secondly, you’ve got to check the weather situation, because they do have quite violent changes of climate; thirdly, we’ve got to go through Foreign Affairs because you’re entering a country that isn’t ours, and therefore Foreign Affairs have got to go through the High Commissioner to the federal government of Malaysia, et cetera.’ So eventually it was all teed up and we went, with Tony Baker, Stephen Wright, Peter Ward, one other of the ministerial employees and myself as the solitary public servant. We arrived in Penang with all the ministry of the state government (which in Penang has very little power compared to the state governments here) waiting to meet the Premier. Everybody was introduced without one knowing who was who, of course, with Stephen Wright, I think, listed as the head of the Premier’s Department! Then we drove into town in a procession of about ten cars, and the streets were all decorated: ‘Welcome to the Premier of South Australia’ and all this. ‘Getting out of hand,’ I sort of felt, and I was getting a bit worried as to state–federal relations. We arrived at our hotel and they had arranged that we wouldn’t stay that night in the hotel, but go up the Penang Hills to stay the night. And then things got really out of hand. We found they’d made arrangements for a big meeting to discuss how the two states could combine industry and agriculture matters. Fortunately, I found an ally in a fellow called Chet Singh, who was general manager of the Penang Development Corporation. We then met formally (after doing a tour of the island looking at various industries) and Lim Chong Eu then proposed that the two states cooperate, and the Premier replied in agreement. And then the two ministers simply said, ‘Well, what do we do now?’ Dr Lim asked Chet Singh and Don turned to me and said, ‘Bob, well now, what do you think?’ And I said, ‘Well, firstly you’ve got

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to consider we’re in a foreign country. Kuala Lumpur’s involved as the head of government, and the current Prime Minister, Tun Razac, would need to be consulted, but through Foreign Affairs, but I’d like to talk to Chet Singh to get his views on this. Some days later it was agreed that there was one way, the formation of two companies, one operated in South Australia and one operated in Penang. Chet Singh and I advised that we didn’t know how many directors, but that these two companies sell to each other and distribute and we try and find out what is necessary in Penang and SA. And I said, ‘From what Chet Singh tells me, housing and various things like this seems to be desirable here. But we’ve got to do this in a formalised way.’ Anyway, the Premier and the Chief Minister then signed various agreement that had me absolutely petrified as to the effect this might have, without any High Commissioner being present or anybody to sort of formalise anything. I was particularly concerned at what Canberra’s views might be. Then the Premier and Chief Minister planted trees outside and then, to my horror, Chet Singh and I were asked to plant a tree each, which we did. But the concept was basically two-way trade. One, their prawn season was opposite to our prawn season, therefore you could sell prawns (in season) from Malaysia to South Australia. South Australia could send prawns to Malaysia in their off season, and you had to have some mechanism to do it. Two, yes, they wanted simple housing, and therefore it was possible to think of setting up a small housing factory in Malaysia, Penang, and what could we, SA, put in it? Well, very little, because Simpson’s sinks, stainless steel sinks and all sorts of things were rather expensive, but there were things we could send eventually, small things in the kitchen area and in the areas of laundries, which were helpful. Then Don quite rightly came to the conclusion that fresh vegetables were something that was needed in Malaysia, and why not try and get the market garden situation in SA to produce product that could be sent – and it’s still going on – by air to Malaysia. Don also asked me to approach Gerard’s, who were a large manufacturing company in Adelaide, to see if they’d be interested in setting up a business in Malaysia, and other such companies. So the two companies were formed after approval from the federal governments in Kuala Lumpur and Canberra. The Penang company had three Malaysians on their board, one of whom was federal and two state, and two South Australians. A

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company was formed in South Australia with three directors from South Australia, no federal representatives, and two from Malaysia. This setup was laughed at and was given a pretty rotten reception. What was it called by the media? The ‘rice straw houses’, or something? Anyway, it got a pretty rough press – was set up but it withered away very rapidly, particularly because the ministry, in Des and Jack and Geoff, said, ‘What a lot of bloody rubbish,’ you know, ‘we’re more interested in getting workers working and we shouldn’t be investing in an overseas company and we shouldn’t be doing this, we should do that,’ which is fair enough, so it did wither away, particularly when Dunstan retired. I think Dick Cavell became Chairman of the SA company and closed it down very rapidly. But various industries from SA remain in Malaysia. Chatterton’s one worked in the area of dry land farming in North Africa, which was very well received internationally. SA efforts in Malaysia were well received by the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Could we come to that later? I’d like to do that in more detail.

Oh, sorry.

No! Don’t worry, Bob. The reason I’m saying that is that the example you’ve given, which I think is a fabulous example of Don Dunstan’s personal attributes of seeing something that actually had potential and following it through, but I wonder does it also show, if you like, an Achilles heel, which was that perhaps at times with his selection of people – as you once said to me – it wasn’t always the wisest selection of person?

That’s very true. Don was – I can’t say he was always a bad selector of people, because I suppose he selected me! Without even meeting me.

Whoops!

So it’s a very difficult one. But first impressions of people were what he based everything on. He took his staff on first impressions and that didn’t always work out because of the great expectations he had of various people that wasn’t always achieved. Yes, he was a bad selector of people. I think I got through the net because, one, I was given a good reference by Black Jack McEwen, because he wrote and said that he’d had good experience of me – I did see the letter: it said I could be trusted, et cetera. Also Max Dennis, which surprised me, backed me – I think that made him suspicious, to be quite honest, because he sort of saw that this

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might be a leakage to the area. Thirdly, I had not met him when initially appointed Public Service Commissioner. But selection of personal people around him, in my view, was very, very poor as he tended not to take advice on this. There were exceptions. I think Tony Baker was a very good press writer: he had an ability with words that helped Don. Peter Ward10 was excellent in the early years till something went wrong. But the rest of them – well, to be very honest, pretty poor selection of people. He was disappointing in this aspect. Ceruto11 and Dempsey12 were disasters – however, Templeton13 was a good choice.

Bob, were there times where Don’s personal life impinged on his political and governance, life in governance, in that sense?

I suppose reluctantly I’d have to say yes. His personal life was a tremendous worry to Des, in particular. His bisexual attitude to life was a worry in arranging things and did cause some difficulties. It was a worry to me, but I kept away from it, leaving it to his own staff. And his relationships with some people could strain friendships. I think it did, it could have affected him politically. He was laughed at behind his back by a lot of people – totally unfairly, I think, but he was laughed at. But that was the way he was made and that’s his business. I mean I was horrified when I had to go to his house to get some papers signed, once, and he was in the swimming pool and all the people were swimming around in the nude. But I mean there was me, all dressed up, as it were, to get papers signed for the Executive Council – and they were quite urgent – and I was aware, because – I’m trying to think of a delicate way of putting it – I was aware that some of the things going on were not very nice; but I don’t say that Don was instigator or doing them himself. But yeah, it did give worries. Some of the ministers would try and quiz me. You know, they would sort of say, ‘What’s happening with this young man or that young man?’ Or ‘What’s happening with Adele?’14 And I would say, ‘Well, look, I don’t know.’ I said, ‘I very rarely visit his house or flat and I can’t comment.’ ‘When you

10 Peter Ward, Senior Ministerial Adviser. 11 John Ceruto, Ministerial Adviser. 12 Robert Dempsey, Ministerial Adviser, Environment. Later he took over Peter Ward’s role. 13 Les John Templeton, appointed to the Premier’s Office. 14 Adele Koh, Don Dunstan’s wife.

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were travelling overseas with him did you notice anything?’ I said, ‘No, my time was my own. I had dinner with them and if they wanted to go somewhere, well, that was their business. If they wanted to go to the theatre I might go with them, but no, I have no comment.’ It did worry some of the ministry. It worried Hugh Hudson, somewhat to my surprise.

Is that right?

Yes, it did worry Hugh, I think because he could see a possible political backlash coming if it had got out. Hugh’s a bit straight, you know. He wasn’t a – he didn’t like some of the suggested things messing up the situation. He could see the bigger picture, I think. But Des didn’t like it and I don’t think Geoff did. Jack Wright, I don’t know because he wouldn’t talk about it. I’m not sure if that’s answered your question.

It has, Bob, because when we spoke last there seemed to be quite a distinction in, if you like, the eras of Don’s Government in the way you describe things. In those early years after the Department was established there was an enormous rush of policy and progression, if you like –

Yes.

– and then things come off the rails a bit at a later time. There was just that feeling I had, that – – –.

Yes, it’s true. ‘We’ – I shouldn’t use that word – my angle was to get the policies of the government approved by Cabinet. How long did the government have? Were they going to be in power for three years, were they going to be in power for six, seven, nine years? So we had to get the policies through so there was a rush. And a relief when they went through. Then of course there was a split in the Premier’s Department, which meant that I moved out, into Economic Development I think it was called, and I took with me a substantial size of the Department, which was opposed by the incoming head of the Department.

That was Mr Inns, was it?

Graham Inns. Yes. Matters did go off the rails somewhat. I won’t talk about things like Salisbury at this stage because you’d – – –.

I’d like to do all that separately, I think.

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I was away from the main action and would only see the Premier perhaps once a fortnight unless I had something that I wanted to talk to him about personally, and eventually my minister became Hugh Hudson, so I got further and further away. There was a lot of infighting, I gather, going on. How badly that was I’m not sure.

This was within Premier’s, or within the Cabinet?

In Premier’s, yes. I don’t know what happened in Cabinet, because I wasn’t in the Department. I just don’t know why this occurred. From where I was sitting in Economic Development, I had no input into the Premier’s Department any more, and while I’d get leaks from the Premier’s Department – the Department leaked like mad towards the end – I wouldn’t really know. By then Don had decided to move Len Amadio and the Arts section to John Bannon, a new Minister. All this was happening – – –. No, that’s later he became Minister of Arts. I think Glen Broomhill might have been initially. As I said, I used to work every Saturday in the office to do Cabinet submissions and sometimes I’d have to phone up and say, ‘Look, I’m looking at this submission, Premier. There’s two questions. Either can you give me a comment or do I defer it?’ The phone might be answered by various people, who’d be at his home. People were friends, I saw nothing wrong with that. Yes, there was that stepping away. The ideal had passed, people were trying to break up the strength of the Premier’s Department, which was truly broken when divided. When David Tonkin came in it was truly broken at that stage of the game. So you did get that feeling of things coming apart and the power game changing – which is fair enough, it’s life.

Yes, but I guess what I’d pick, as a researcher, looking at it is that the cohesive push also changed.

Yes, I think that’s true.

That’s how I’d view it, at least.

I think you’re probably right. Remember I wasn’t there.

No, no, I understand that, Bob. I wonder, could we just, for a short time, Bob, explain how you came to go to Economic Development and what that all meant, and who were the people involved?

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When Don came back from a trip which I declined to go on15, or declined to go on – John Holland went, poor bugger, he came back absolutely shattered, but anyway – I met them in Melbourne and got them through Customs and did all those sorts of things and sat with them on the plane back to Adelaide, and Don turned to me. He said, ‘I think I’ve solved your problem, Bob.’ I said, ‘Oh, Premier, terrific.’ My problem was I’d told him that if I didn’t ease up somehow my marriage would break up, because I was working every Saturday and frequently I’d go in Sunday mornings because Cabinet always met on the Monday. And I said, ‘Well, you know, the pressure’s just getting too much.’ And I had [high] blood pressure. He said, ‘I think I’ve solved your problems. I’m thinking of forming a new department to push industrial development. I’ve got a fellow called Bill Davis, who’s already involved in this area; you can take over the department and we’ll still see each other fairly regularly. You work out what staff you want to take and what you need. What do you think of that?’ And I said, ‘Well, that sounds pretty reasonable to me.’ I said, ‘It will get the pressure off. And who have you got in mind to take over the [Premier’s] Department?’ He said, ‘I thought the current Public Service Chairman might be suitable,’ and I said, ‘It’s your choice. It’s very important that you choose whom you feel you can work with, rather than having him or her imposed on you.’ So we just talked about it generally. And then, when he got back, there was one hell of a row, because while he’d been overseas there’d been a problem with Adele Koh – might have been in Rome, I’m not sure – and I had had to go to Corcoran while Dunstan was overseas – I don’t wish to say what the problem was – and mention it to him and say, ‘Now, what do I do as far as the government’s concerned?’ And he said – which was quite reasonable – ‘Do nothing, pay up and shut up.’ So I thought, ‘All right, fair enough.’ So my backdrop was that eventually the Auditor General would be coming along and he’d do whatever job he’s got to do. So I did no more about it. When the Premier got back John Holland took me aside and said, ‘This ado about Adele, what do you think?’ And I said, ‘Well, I did hear about it through the Embassy and I did talk to the Acting Premier and the instruction I got was, “Do nothing, shut up,” sort of business.’ So then of course it turned out she also had

15 I had been on four and so had learnt what went on. – RB

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cancer, which also was a problem. Don was absolutely furious that this home matter had got out, furious with me for mentioning it to Des, because Des told him of our discussion and the instruction he gave me. So Dunstan was furious with me and we had words, which is understandable – again, I don’t have any objection to that because it was his personal life. I then said, ‘Well, I’m going to proceed to this new department.’ He said, ‘Yes, do that.’ We didn’t have a name for the department at that stage in the game – it became Economic Development. So we went ahead and put it through the Public Service Board. The new department went through very easily because the head of the Public Service Board was going to come to the Premier’s Department and so it was in his interest to get the thing done, so everybody that I wanted, which included Economic Intelligence Unit, was transferred to Economic Development and we went from there. And, as I said, Hugh Hudson then took over as its minister in due course. I’m not sure if I’ve covered your question.

So that was in 1977 I think you took that up, was it?

I can’t comment for sure, but I think it was. I could check that fact, but I don’t see why you’re wrong.

I’m just trying to remember: ’70 to ’74 was at Premier’s Department?

I went on to become Ombudsman in 1980 –

That’s right. Seventy-seven, then that’s right.

– that would be probably right. Then it became, when the Liberals came in, they changed Economic Development to Trade and Industry.

Yes, that’s right. And what – I mean, one of the things that has also struck me about the early Dunstan era, Bob, is that there were ventures such as the establishment of the Solar optical factory at Lonsdale –

Solar, yes.

– which was incredibly successful –

Very successful.

– in international and national terms –

Very.

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– but was a joint venture between government, private enterprise, Housing Trust. It was the best of [?all-comers/all colours?], really.

Good example of what happened. A lot of credit there, to be honest, has to go to a person called Alec Ramsay. You’ve got to remember Solar International was previously David Pank and three other people who –

Noel Rosscrow, Bob Jose.

– Noel Rosscrow, Bob Jose, and there was one other man.

Ewen, Ewers.

Ron Ewers, yes. It was extremely successful. They pushed it. David Pank was a very competent person who liaised with the Premier on other matters. He set up and was chairman of an Industry Committee. But the real pusher or helper, when it comes down to it, as far as industrial development was concerned, was Alec Ramsay. There was a meeting in the Adelaide Club at which David Pank, Ramsay, a couple of other people were at – not Noel Rosscrow, but they were at this particular meeting – and that was pushed from there, and it was really put up as a fait accompli. Obviously the government of the day supported it, I mean it was logical to, and it was one of the most successful examples of industry ever supported, and a chap called John Heine really took it on to the next stage, in America. The product was called CR-39, if I remember correctly.

The type of plastic, correct.

Yes, and then we called it – we had a file called ‘CR-39’ because of the glass. It was a good example of government coordination. Don was a great supporter of industry development. Alec Ramsay contributed a lot also in this and other industrial developments with Housing Trust constructions.

Now, furthering that on, also out at Salisbury where there was some semi- industrial land, I think it was about the same time or maybe the mid-’70s that RM Williams, for instance, moved from Prospect out there –

Correct.

– and I think Alec Ramsay had a hand in that, too, am I right?

..... the factory, if I remember correctly.

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I think he did. And those two examples seem to me to encapsulate an industrial reawakening –

Yes – as I said previously, the development of industry went hand in hand with the policy of creating jobs.

– that, if you like, Playford was credited for in earlier years, but this was quite different.

Totally different, with no reflection on the Playford era.

And has stood the test of time.

It wasn’t only those two examples as there’s quite a few other examples that one could think of. The concept of Technology Park was formed, particularly for small industry, but with the help of the Housing Trust. I think that Ramsay being a member of the Adelaide Club was part of the problem with Dunstan. I had a lot of time for Alec Ramsay in what he could do and what he achieved – he did help Dunstan, too. And Don, to his credit, agreed with what was going on and happily pushed the various projects along. I’m glad you raised Solar, it’s been something I’ve known about for years, but – I’m not sure if this is on the record or off the record – when that was being formed there was a very dangerous situation, because they suggested that it might be good for the people in the public sector who were involved that they all take up some shares, in other words, buy them cheaply. I was asked would I like some shares, and I said to them, ‘Just explain this to me a little bit,’ after which I said, ‘No.’ I also said, ‘You shouldn’t offer any to the Premier, you shouldn’t offer any to any public servant involved.’ They did – not through Noel; I think it was Pank suggested it to the Premier. The Premier had the ethics – he was not a wealthy man – and the guts and determination to say no, and I admired him tremendously because I knew how relatively poor he was and how dramatically these shares could go up. Some public servants did get shares, which I felt was wrong.

And they did.

They did. Anyway, the Premier said no. There were a number of business people that did help Don, people like Myer Solomon and Max Lieberman, for example.

Myer Solomon? Yes, he was Solomon’s Carpets.

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Yes, Solomon’s Carpets.

I was going to ask you about Max, that’s interesting.

Quite a few of these people. Oh! Sir John Marks was another one that helped him. And this would always be a worry to me, because when Don sold the house in George Street, Norwood he then lived in a poky little flat on Fullarton Road, where Ceruto was involved in a business which was a bit unfortunate. And then these people, with the help of Morrie Downer, Max Lieberman, Bob Howells and Sir John Marks, did help Dunstan towards the financing of a new house, for which I admired Don very much because he did ask – he said, ‘Now, what’s the situation if these people offer to do something? They sincerely believe they can help.’ And they helped and never asked, as far as I’m aware, anything in return. So RDC –

RDC – Realty Development Corporation.

– yes, they came in and they helped, but it was all done openly and there was no money just given to Dunstan. There was a proper mortgage taken out, in other words. Dunstan – I’m not degrading him – was no businessman, though he had many other valuable talents. He had an over-the-top attitude as far as business [was concerned], while at the same time he’d give his last penny to a person in need. So he wasn’t thinking as a businessman, he didn’t know where to get the highest or lowest interest rates, and these people helped him. I think they sold him things at good discount prices, but they were paid and they weren’t gifts. People like Rothauser (Caroma) supplied baths and toilets and hand basin at price, the factory price. Well, there’s nothing wrong in that as long as it’s paid for. Rothauser’s factory was built by the SAHT16 and Caroma’s were one of the successes of the state. The mortgage was paid off when he died, as far as I’m aware. So anybody saying that he got gifts is totally wrong.

I would say in Solar’s case, if he’d taken those shares, within nine years he would have been a very wealthy man.

Might have been in jail, too, mightn’t he?

He could have been, exactly. But I was just thinking of Pilkington’s.

16 SAHT – South Australian Housing Trust.

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Yeah, well, Pilkington’s –

Took them over.

– took over. Well, Heine went to Pilkington’s –

He did, he did.

– John Heine went to Pilkington’s, and I know them very well, Barbara and John. John died suddenly. Anyway, Don was no businessman and really did not look after his own affairs very well. I went to Fiji on his behalf and met some of his old family friends, in other words his father’s friends, and they told me exactly the same thing about the father. They mentioned Dunstan not wanting to go to Adelaide and on to St Peter’s College. And I went there with Rob Dempsey, a ministerial adviser, for the purposes of seeing if there was any two-way relationship that could be found between Fiji and Australia – I went to Western Samoa as well on that particular trip. But Don was not a businessman and he didn’t understand business, which was a bit of a handicap being in charge of industrial development. He received great support from many business people.

And yet the thing I kept coming back to, Bob, is that that early ’70s period, that very first part of the ’70s, you have these longlasting successes that are still going on, in terms of the state’s commercial history.

Well, you talk to Geoff Gerard – he’s dead now, but if it hadn’t for some of the things done [by Dunstan] in my view they wouldn’t have got where they are today. While they may not have liked Dunstan, they still saw where they could help each other.

Exactly.

No, I think those early days, when you look at some businesses we’ve got in the state, Dunstan did it in a totally different way to Playford, totally different, and he achieved it in a coordinated and structured way with environment factors very much in front. But he did have this bug about the Housing Trust. There was a clause in the Housing Trust Act that every four years there had to be an enquiry as to the methods and what they were doing and whether they were doing it successfully, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and he took these enquiries very seriously. He did put Max

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Lieberman as the Chairman of the Housing Trust at one stage. Alec used to come to me and he said, ‘It’s a perfect nightmare. Max is a very shrewd businessman, a very astute businessman that doesn’t always let his left hand know what his right hand’s doing,’ and I think that this was a great difficulty for Alec, and of course he knew that the Chairman was going to go and talk to the Premier without Alec being present. Totally different situation when you had a person like Les Hunkin or Wainwright or some of these other old stagers, who had worked with Playford. I think, to be honest, they really ran the state.

I don’t think there’s any doubt about that!

And Alec was in that team. Poor Alec went to old Gilbert Seaman for advice one day. He said to me, ‘It’s just going beyond the Pale.’ Gilbert mentioned it to me and said, ‘Can you do anything, Bob, as head of the Premier’s?’ And I said, ‘Well, you know, I have tried to tell the Premier that in Alec we have someone who has abilities to get things done and that the SAHT has good structure to achieve it.’ Don was not a businessman but he had vision, and he did achieve things. His thinking process was excellent and he could visualise the future. Dunstan was honest and farsighted in his role of looking at the big picture of government. He certainly gave leadership, although some ministers and senior public servants did not seem to want to understand where he was going or coming from – one wondered if this was perhaps deliberate. In conclusion, he was an inspiriting and challenging person to work for, who could stretch a person far beyond what one might feel one is capable of.

END OF INTERVIEW.

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