Heydon, J D --- "The Public Life of John and Nancy Stone" [2010] SGSocUphAUCon 11; (2010) 22 Upholding the Australian Constitution 82

• Chapter Eight
• The Public Life of John and Nancy Stone
• Justice J. D. Heydon

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Chapter Eight
The Public Life of John and Nancy Stone

Justice J. D. Heydon

Some positive human qualities spring from the autonomous human spirit – and John and Nancy Stone have many of those. The rest stems largely from factors of heredity or environment.

What is the heredity of John Owen Stone? He is not named Lewis or Davies or Jones, but his names, particularly Owen, do suggest Welsh blood. There was a Soviet attempt to set up a top secret spy ring in Wales which taught the Russians many lessons about the Welsh. A very senior KGB agent called Vladimir was told to go to Cardiff, and take a branch line to a small village. There he was to meet a man called Jones, and say: “The daffodils are blooming early this year”. Jones was to say: “Yes, but the tulips are late”. Jones would then tell Vladimir how to set up the spy ring in totally clandestine fashion.

When Vladimir arrived at the village station he said to the ticket collector: “I am looking for a man called Jones”.

The ticket collector said: “Which Jones, bach? There is Jones the baker, Jones the grocer, Jones the milkman. And my own name is Jones, see”. Vladimir said: “The daffodils are blooming early this year”.

The ticket collector said: “Oh! It’s Jones the spy you want”.

John Stone’s father was a wheat and sheep farmer in Western Australia. The family hailed from Victoria. John’s father was the son of a farmer and one of ten siblings. His family was sufficiently prosperous to send him to Hale School, of which he was the dux.¹

John Stone’s mother was one of six siblings. Her father – John Owen Hunt – was a mine manager.² He left New South Wales to care for the family of his brother, who was killed in a bar brawl in Kalgoorlie soon after gold was discovered there. John Stone’s grandmother eventually made her way with the six children to Kalgoorlie – John’s mother being a babe in arms – but her husband died suddenly in 1905.³ She managed to raise and educate the six children without the social security of later times. John’s mother took up that most important and now wrongly neglected of occupations, school teacher.⁴

After their marriage, John’s parents moved to a heavily mortgaged, run down and only partly cleared property near Korbel, a railway siding about 180 miles east of Perth.⁵ The Great Depression, with its catastrophic effect on wheat and wool prices, was about to descend.⁶ On the farm the sole heating was a wood stove. The sole lighting was by kerosene lamp, at least initially. There was no tractor until just before the Second World War. Before then the only horse power derived from the power of horses and human muscle.⁷

On 31 January 1929 John was born. Five years later his brother was born. Of his farm childhood, with its hot summers and cold winters, he has only happy memories. Like all farm children all over the world for thousands of years, he had to work on the farm – catching and feeding the horses, bringing in wood, driving the harvester. But, in his view, he was only lightly worked. An early memory is of going with his father by horse and cart to fetch a cow at dusk and, after the cow broke away and his father went to look for it, being taken home alone in the darkness by the horse, acting like a good barrister – knowledgeably but without instructions.⁸ He retained happy memories of haymaking on warm days, dominated by “that lovely smell of freshly cut hay”, followed a few weeks later by building the sheaves into haystacks;⁹ of playing with the farm dogs;¹⁰ of building secret paths, forts and entrenchments in the bush adjoining his school, which were constructed to protect the Korbel children against the children from Belka, the next siding down the line, and which he still found in existence in 1974.¹¹ Many years later he wrote of the “marvellous” sound of the kookaburra. He went on: “I personally – perhaps because of childhood associations – feel an even greater fondness for the morning call of the magpie, than which I think there is no birdsong more glorious when heard in the open countryside when all else around is still”.¹² All his life he has been like Kipling’s Australian soldier in the Boer War, whose memories of home were stirred when he:

“smelt wattle by Lichtenberg

Riding in, in the rain”.

On the questionable assumption that not having television programmes to watch is deprivation, it was a deprived existence. The gap was filled by the little family’s participation in the social and sporting activities of the small communities nearby.¹³ John read whatever there was to be read.¹⁴ He saw his childhood as in a sense poor, but not deprived.

John was initially educated at a one teacher school at Korbel having between 14 and 22 children,¹⁵ with an interlude at a Perth primary school in Victoria Park and two periods of correspondence teaching.¹⁶

In 1941 climacteric changes took place in his life. By competitive examination he obtained one of fifty scholarships available across the State entitling him to attend any government high school he chose. And his parents divorced. From then on he lived with his mother in Perth. Apart from occasional visits during school and university holidays, the farm days were over.¹⁷

What, at that stage, were John’s assets? From his maternal forebears he had inherited the determination to triumph over misfortune. From his parents, he had gained an interest in public affairs. He had gained from them qualities of probity and morality which even his worst enemies have not credibly denied.¹⁸ Above all, he had gained qualities which are perhaps much more common in those raised in the Australian bush than anywhere else – a capacity to detect the fake and pretentious, and a spirit of independence.¹⁹ He has been marked by them for the last 70 years. It is hard to get a sense of the bush in many parts of Australian cities, but the house in which John and Nancy now live in Lane Cove used to be part of a farm, and retains that atmosphere. To that extent he has returned to his roots.

The success of a boy from a very small school in winning a scholarship was a tribute to the efforts of his mother and his teacher, and to his own natural ability. Like most other successful applicants, he chose to go to what was regarded as the best school, Perth Modern School.²⁰ In a war-time Perth where accommodation was very scarce, he and his mother and brother lived in a succession of houses. His mother resumed school teaching.²¹ He liked, admired and did well at the school, which was competitive and respected academic excellence.²² He made lifelong friends there – Lloyd Zampatti, Maxwell Newton, John Wheeldon.²³ He loved cricket as a game, partly because, as he rightly says, it is “more than a game”, and played cricket for the First XI. But he achieved his greatest success in hockey. He captained the hockey team.²⁴ He represented the West Australian Colts in 1948 and 1949 (winning the national championships in both years).²⁵

Perth Modern School was the only high school (apart from country high schools) which taught pupils for the Leaving Certificate, so that in the last two years a large influx of new pupils came in from other schools in order to study for that Certificate.²⁶ After the third form John chose to enter the science stream rather than the arts stream. The person who taught French, German and Latin was an Englishman who was respected for having played county cricket. But he looked like a frog and, with the genial malice of schoolchildren, was inevitably called “Froggy”. “Froggy” Adlard initiated the following conversation with him: “Stone, I understand that you have decided to go into the science stream?” “Yes sir”. “I think you are making a big mistake”.²⁷ The thinking behind these minatory words was evidently that even though John did very well in science and mathematics, his interests lay on the arts side – history and languages.²⁸ In one sense “Froggy” Adlard was right: John was taking a wrong turning, which was not corrected until Oxford. In another sense he was wrong: mathematical excellence is a huge intellectual asset, particularly for one who became an economist and a Treasury official.

In his Leaving Certificate examinations John Stone achieved a maximum result – seven distinctions. One of his teachers sent the news by telegram in these terms: “Congratulations. Seven distinctions. Only competition appears to be Hardwick, N E”. By “competition” the teacher meant “competition for University Exhibitions”. In due course John was given one of seven or eight Exhibitions awarded across the State – the physics/mathematics Exhibition. He was proxime accessit for a Gold Medal for English – and all his life he has certainly had at his command a muscular and clear prose style. Among the other candidates, “Hardwick, N E” obtained a general Exhibition.²⁹ Now coming events cast their shadows before. “Hardwick, N E” has entered the story for the first time, but not the last. That person will return a little later.

John Stone won a Winthrop Scholarship to St George’s College at the University of Western Australia. He lived there while reading for a Bachelor of Science degree, which he took with first class honours. He shared rooms with Maxwell Newton.³⁰ He was Senior Student of St George’s College in 1950. He served on the Council of the Guild of Undergraduates (that is, the Students’ Representative Council) for about four years, in which he became Secretary and then Vice-President, and then defeated Bob Hawke for the Presidency.³¹ He presided over a Guild Council Disciplinary Tribunal which fined a certain B M Snedden for breaking up a meeting of the Labor Club. He enjoyed university life.³² He became the 1951 Rhodes Scholar for Western Australia.³³

At Oxford he went to New College. New College, filled with products of an outstanding school, Winchester, had high academic standards. It stood in contrast with, for example, Christ Church, dominated by the sons of the aristocracy. The aim of Christ Church seemed to be not to produce scholars, but to produce gentlemen. The negative part of that ambition was amply achieved.

In those days famous historians were to be observed moving about the Oxford streets – A L Rowse, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Alan Bullock and A J P Taylor. Sightings of the last-named, of course, were a matter of chance. A J P Taylor spent much time away from Oxford, writing for The Observer, the Daily Express and the Sunday Express, staying in London or wherever else Lord Beaverbrook happened to be, going to television studios to lecture. He was a Fellow of Magdalen College. Graffiti could be seen there posing the following riddle: “What is the difference between God and A J P Taylor?” The answer was: “God is here but everywhere; A J P Taylor is everywhere but here”.

There were great figures in other disciplines. A rising scholar of English Literature was Dame Helen Gardner. She was a lady of the most strait-laced and impeccable virtue, but she was soon to give evidence for the defence in the Lady Chatterley’s Lover trial, as a result of which she was nicknamed “four letter Nell”.

A new work ethic had been entering the University for some time. It began with the Oxford generation which had produced Roy Jenkins – a prodigious worker all his life, despite his affectations of aristocratic languor. In those days the leader of the Labour Left was a charismatic Welshman, Aneurin Bevan. Nye Bevan, on being told, after his fellow Welshman Roy Jenkins had entered Parliament, that he was lazy, said: “No boy from the valleys who has cultivated that accent could possibly be lazy!”

John began reading for the undergraduate degree in mathematics with a view to becoming a nuclear physicist. After one term he began to doubt the wisdom of this course. The Warden of Rhodes House, then near retirement, was a shrewd Australian lawyer, C K Allen, author of many fine but now regrettably little read books. He was a veteran of the First World War, and won the Military Cross on the Western Front. Although he spent the last 50 years of his life in England without returning to Australia, his biographer said of him: “That he was an Australian might be remarked by the way he wore his hat”.³⁴ He was a deeply conservative opponent of excessive bureaucracy. He declined ever to be treated by the National Health Service. He was also a vigorous controversialist in letters to the editor of The Times. In some of these ways he may have influenced John Stone. John has always seen Medibank and its later manifestations as a disaster, both in budgetary terms and because of the welfare dependency mentality it generated.³⁵ And John is the greatest controversialist of his generation.

Whatever C K Allen’s longer term influence may have been, it was decisive in the short term. He suggested a change to economics – in particular the degree known as “PPE” – Politics, Philosophy and Economics.³⁶ After the second of John’s nine terms at Oxford the change took place. His course involved working for eight papers, the two basic papers in philosophy, the two basic papers in politics, the two basic papers in economics, and in addition economic history and economic statistics. He regarded this as a “remarkably intellectually stimulating course”.³⁷ He found it an “enormous educational experience”.³⁸ With his questing combative mind, he relished the Oxford tutorial system. “I enjoyed meeting my tutors each week and talking with them and reading my essay to them and debating it with them and arguing with them”.³⁹

His primary tutors were H G Nicholas in politics, Peter Wiles in economics and Anthony Quinton in philosophy.⁴⁰ John was very grateful to Nicholas for admitting him to PPE, admired but did not like Wiles,⁴¹ and admired Quinton.⁴² Quinton became a famous philosopher, and Oxford at that time was passing through a golden age of a certain type of philosophy. John worked very hard at Oxford, partly to make up for the wrong turning which “Froggy” Adlard, now vindicated, had warned him against. He attended lectures – Isaiah Berlin, John Hicks, Tommy Balogh. The last named, who later became an economic adviser to Harold Wilson, he regarded as a charlatan – a view which other good judges would share. Balogh was socially somewhat aggressive, and it was said that there were three types of conversation in Oxford – dialogue, monologue, Balogh.

But it was not all work for John. He played for the university “Occasionals” in hockey and for the New College cricket team.⁴³ While he had neither the time nor the money for extensive drinking, he has recorded that he has “no objection to rather hearty beer drinking, quite the contrary”,⁴⁴ and personal observation confirms this. He led the 1953 Australian cricket team – who lost the Ashes but won most of the non-Test matches – astray on the evening of 20 May 1953 by entertaining two of them in his rooms until 4 am.

Academically his change of course was a triumph. In 1953 he won the James Webb Medley Scholarship for being the best second year student in economics. He obtained First Class Honours after a formal viva on 13 July 1954 – that is, there was nothing marginal or doubtful about it. In Oxford, traditionally, the gaining of First Class Honours matters. The tale of Edward Jenks is a salutary one. In the years 1896 to 1903 he served as an examiner in Oxford for the degree of Bachelor of Civil Law – “BCL”. Among the candidates in 1897 was F E Smith, who later held the office of Lord Chancellor as Lord Birkenhead. Among the candidates in 1898 was W S Holdsworth, who later became a highly respected legal historian and Vinerian Professor of English Law. In the 1920s Jenks applied to Lord Birkenhead, as Lord Chancellor, to be made a King’s Counsel, on the ground that his high academic standing merited the honour. Lord Birkenhead’s reply was, in its totality, as follows:

“My dear Jenks,

In 1897 you gave the present Lord Chancellor a second in the BCL. In 1898 you gave a second also to the [present] Vinerian Professor. These are, I think, sufficient honours for a single lifetime.

Yours faithfully,

B”.⁴⁵

The day after John’s viva, on 14 July 1954, he married Nancy Stone.

John’s first contact with Nancy was seeing her name in his school teacher’s telegram giving the Leaving Certificate results, for she was the “Hardwick, N E” referred to. In his first year physics class in 1947 John saw a “stunning girl”. This judgment is not surprising. She still is stunning. After inquiry, he found out that this was the celebrated “Hardwick, N E”. For him it was love at first sight, but John showed uncharacteristic indecision, and they did not actually meet until a couple of years later, in the Guild Council. Like John, she had a farming background, hockey skills, and enjoyed success in science.⁴⁶ She obtained a BSc with First Class Honours. He invited her to the graduation ball in early 1951. Thereafter they became unofficially engaged. She obtained an MSc in biochemistry after John left for Oxford. She then obtained a Hackett Studentship and went to Cambridge.⁴⁷ That was a bit of bad luck, of course, but it could have happened to anyone.

Rhodes Scholars were in those days forbidden to marry. So the wedding was delayed, but only until the earliest possible moment – the day after John’s viva. Nancy’s PhD in biochemistry followed a few months later.

John has recorded that his marriage to Nancy was “by far the most important and by far the best” decision in his life.⁴⁸ No-one could possibly disagree with that proposition.

In August 1954 John began working as a Treasury official. Precisely 30 years later, he informed the then Treasurer, Mr P J Keating, of his decision to resign. Now, in general Treasury officials do not live public lives – or, at least, they did not then. Things have changed now, with Nicholas Stern’s entry onto the world stage. British peers take up the appellation of some region with which they are supposedly associated as part of their title. English villages often have unusual names – Upper Slaughter, Lower Slaughter and so on – but it is a happy coincidence that Lord Stern evidently comes from a place called Global Warming. His ally, Al Gore, too, has been fortunate. They used to say that it took a lot of money to keep Gandhi in poverty, but Al Gore is the first climate change billionaire – appropriately for the user of so disproportionate an amount of the world’s energy.

Since in John’s day Treasury officials had no public life, and, since this address is devoted to the public life of the Stones, I shall skim over the next 30 years, which are so well covered by Des Moore in his chapter. The epigraph for those years can be put in his own words: “I think I probably was less like Sir Humphrey [Appleby] than most public servants in Australia”.⁴⁹

John spent about 16 months in assisting the Treasury representative at Australia House in London. There he learned a lot – dealing with the raising, paying off or refinancing of Commonwealth Government loans in the City,⁵⁰ working on the Sterling Area Statistical Committee,⁵¹ reporting and liaising with various departments and agencies of the British Government.⁵² He then spent six months seconded to the Economic Section of the British Treasury. He found it “very instructive” to see “the way in which a major civil service worked”.⁵³

On reaching Canberra, he began working in the General Financial and Economic Policy Division, headed by Richard Randall, later Secretary of the Department. His initial area of work related to the Budget and Commonwealth-State financial relationships.⁵⁴ Randall was a man whom John greatly admired for having overcome being orphaned and having risen from real poverty and educational deprivation through an extraordinary life as a wool classer, joyride pilot and journalist – and admired too for his “most beautiful English prose style”.⁵⁵ But he was very small and scruffy looking. John was one day talking with a group of Treasury officers in a corridor of the old Parliament House when Artie Fadden, the Treasurer, a large, boisterous, jovial man, engaged them in convivial conversation. Dick Randall came shambling furtively past the group, clad in an ill-fitting suit, with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth. Fadden, who had many experiences in common with his fellow-Queenslander Randall, felt able to say to the group: “Flash bugger, Dick”.⁵⁶

In those days life was simpler in style. The Hyatt Hotel Canberra used to display the set menu from the Hotel Canberra for 1957. It consisted of soup, main course and dessert for 12s 6d, with oysters 5s extra – excellent value. The main course offered an extraordinary breadth of world cuisine – roast mutton, roast beef, roast pork and roast chicken.

John at this time began a tradition he maintained whenever he was in Canberra – going on Friday evenings to the Hotel Canberra, just across Commonwealth Avenue from the Treasury offices in West Block, and having a few drinks with other Treasury people, economists from the Australian National University, and journalists. There John became famous for besting journalists in argument, a skill for which they have never forgiven him. In much later years, after Friday drinks with the Treasury-Department of Finance social club, the party would move to the National Press Club.⁵⁷ One Friday in the 1950s witnessed a celebrated bet as to which of John and two others could reach Lake George, 26 miles away, first. John went home to change into running gear and informed Nancy, who became alarmed that so large a sum as £50 was at stake – for that was, indeed, a large sum in the 1950s. John won the race by getting to Lake George about 5 am. The other gambler came second; the third dropped out. The loser never paid. John got a lift back to Canberra on a truck, crossing Nancy in the dark as she came out to get him.⁵⁸ It does not sound like an evening calculated to generate domestic harmony, almost infinitely kind and gentle though Nancy is.

This was the age in Canberra of Snow White and the seven dwarfs. Snow White was the silver haired Prime Minister, R G Menzies. While he lacked the slender daintiness of his namesake, he was certainly not dwarf-like. Who were the seven dwarfs? They were distinguished officials of large public but not physical stature: Sir Roland Wilson, Sir Richard Randall (successively Secretaries to the Treasury), Sir John Crawford (head of the Department of Commerce and Agriculture, then Trade), Dr H C Coombs (who held many important posts over 30 years), Sir Henry Bland (Secretary of the Department of Labour and National Service), Sir Harold White (head of the National Library) and Sir Allen Brown (Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Department).⁵⁹

In late 1957, at the young age of 28, John was appointed Treasury Representative in London – “a small fish among some very big fish”.⁶⁰ He stayed until 1961.⁶¹ A daughter (1959) and a son (1961) were born in London, where Nancy worked as a biochemist on cancer research at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington⁶² – a reminder of the career eventually given up.

In 1961 he returned to Canberra, to the Fiscal and Monetary Policy Branch of the General Financial and Economic Policy Division. From 1962 he was Head of the Economic and Financial Surveys Branch⁶³ – a small internal think tank, or the “long hairs” as some others in the Treasury called them.⁶⁴ It produced various public documents⁶⁵ (and John Stone was later responsible for others in the years 1970-1973).⁶⁶ Here is an early emergence of what became a dominant desire of his later life: to get public debate going on matters which he thought called for discussion. He began to indulge it at this time in another way – contact with C D Kemp of the IPA Review, in which he later published an article (in 1969) on the international monetary system.⁶⁷

Early in 1967 the Stones moved to Washington where John worked as Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund and Executive Director of the World Bank for Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (and, in 1969 and 1970, Swaziland and Lesotho)⁶⁸ – not an Australian public servant, but an international civil servant on leave from the Treasury. He recalls:

The blessing of that was that I missed almost the whole of McMahon’s period as Treasurer, except when he came through Washington for the IMF annual meetings.... However, one could always console oneself on those occasions with the thought that this terrible period could only last a week or so and he would be off again.⁶⁹

During one of the executive board meetings discussing whether an American ban on members swapping gold for other currencies was in breach of the Articles, John informed the United States Executive Director that the United States was “a nation of lawyers without respect for the law”.⁷⁰ This powerful home truth has more general application than the immediate context, and it would have been interesting to observe the American reaction. He also formed an interesting impression of Robert McNamara, President of the World Bank.⁷¹ There was one possible turning point in his career in this period at which he chose not to turn: he rejected Sir Lenox Hewitt’s offer of the deputy secretaryship of the Prime Minister’s Department in 1968.⁷²

In 1971 he was Head of the Revenue, Loans and Investment Division of the Treasury, Secretary of the Loan Council and Secretary of the National Debt Commission. In late 1971 the Treasurer, B M Snedden, whom we last encountered being disciplined by John at the University of Western Australia, wanted him to succeed Randall as Secretary to the Treasury, but the Prime Minister, Mr McMahon, and the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Anthony, favoured Sir Frederick Wheeler instead.⁷³ In November 1971 he became Deputy Secretary (Economic), a position he held until 1976.

These years included the economically difficult years of the Whitlam Government – the years when political staffers began to emerge as important, perhaps over-important, figures. Mr Whitlam’s staff was headed by Dr P S Wilenski and Mr J J Spigelman, each the son of Polish migrants. Labor backbenchers would say: “If you want to see Gough, you’ve got to get from Spigelman to Wilenski – up the Polish Corridor”.

In that masterly work, Chinese Shadows by Simon Leys (that is, Pierre Ryckmans), he claimed that the worst aspect of having to attend Chinese banquets in the years of Mao was that the band always played the same tune. Its title was: “The Production Brigade Celebrates the Arrival in the Hills of the Manure Collectors”.⁷⁴ There were some similarities with this among the political staffers in the early 1970s in Australia.

In those Whitlam years, John was coming to be more widely known. Thus, on 7 June 1974, he attended a Premiers’ Conference at which Mr Whitlam, no doubt correctly, resisted the usual Premiers’ demands for more money. One does not normally associate the memory of Bob Askin, Premier of New South Wales, with either wit or scriptural allusion, but he was provoked to say to Mr Whitlam: “Well, Mr Prime Minister, we have come here today, and we have asked for bread, and you have given us a Stone”.⁷⁵

From 1976 to 1978 he was Deputy Secretary, and from 1979 to 1984 Secretary. On moving into the Secretary’s office, he was asked what he was going to do. In the manner of a Renaissance Pope, he said: “I am going to have fun”.⁷⁶ Indeed, he has had fun all his life. But we must pass over those years, save for noting three significant speeches he made.⁷⁷ By now he was a public figure. He was the subject of journalism comparing his power to that of the Prime Minister.

Just before John left the Treasury, on 27 August 1984 he delivered the Edward Owen Giblin Shann Memorial Lecture, 1929 and All That. It burst like a thunderclap on public opinion. It impressed many in the business community. In it he raised concern about three things which had troubled Shann nearly six decades earlier – first, excessive debt produced by financial mismanagement; secondly, protectionism; and, thirdly, overregulated, ossified labour markets. While protectionism began to fade from the 1960s and is a much-reduced problem now, the first and third still have virulent power for harm.

The third theme was defined thus in the lecture: “The distortion of the markets for labour stemming from the interaction between trade union power, on the one hand, and, on the other, the framework of market regulation contained in the laws relating to arbitration of wages, hours and other working conditions”.⁷⁸ This third theme, in particular, which hardly anyone had worried about since Shann’s time until the Treasury began to do so in the 1970s,⁷⁹ was to dominate his public career which was now dawning. It rested on a concern with the “malignant influences” of “trade union monopoly power, self-serving arbitral bureaucracies and generally short-sighted governments”.⁸⁰ On the one hand, jobs in the productive economy were lost – and, in particular, John warned, jobs for young people.⁸¹ (As he later pointed out, to maintain a large proportion of young people chronically unemployed is to sow the seeds of social disaster⁸² – for he regarded the growth in “direct welfare dependency” of all kinds as an evil.⁸³) On the other hand, jobs in unproductive sectors grew – “the arbitral regulators themselves, their bureaucracies, the trade union and employer negotiators and their bureaucracies, the swollen and unbelievably bureaucratic Departments of Labour at State and Federal levels, and so on”.⁸⁴ He saw arbitral wage fixing as a “totally corrupted process”.⁸⁵ These were concerns stimulated by events which had taken place a little earlier – the large wage rises gained by union pressure on some employers, like the wage rises gained by the Storemen and Packers Union, and then by the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union in 1981 of 23 per cent per hour, the automatic feeding in of these rises for other employees through centralised arbitral wage determination, and the consequences of such large wage rises on employment.⁸⁶ After Mr Keating became Treasurer, he publicly estimated that the metalworkers’ pay rise had cost 100,000 jobs⁸⁷ – or, as he put it, created “100,000 dead men”.

John lamented that Australians had allowed themselves to be put “in hobbles by unworthy men masquerading as leaders”. On political leaders, he would have shared Lord Salisbury’s view, perhaps to be confirmed in Australia in the near future: “The logic of elections is merciful and suffers the hallowed claptrap to figure as solid statesmanship. The logic of events is pitiless, and pierces the prettiest windbags without remorse”.⁸⁸ He concluded the Shann Memorial Lecture by asking whether Australians still had the will to do great things together, and expressing the hope that they did.⁸⁹ With this outlook John ended the cloistered years of the Treasury and embarked on his public life.

At that stage John was 55 – an age by which opinions have usually become settled, and people rarely change much, except sometimes for the worse. Thirty years in the Treasury had matured his views. What were they?

He could fairly be described as being in some sense “conservative”. He was conservative in believing that a successfully functioning capitalist economy depends on some framework of settled expectations and reasonable predictability. Suddenly to abolish property law, or a key aspect of it, would bring a great shock to the system with wide-ranging and unpredictable consequences.⁹⁰

He was conservative in being an adherent of the rule of law. He was opposed, for example, to retrospective legislation, save for the one special instance of bottom of the harbour schemes.⁹¹ One reason for his opposition to high marginal tax rates is their encouragement of tax evasion, which is damaging not only to the rule of law and to tax morality, but morality generally.⁹²

He was conservative, too, in understanding that an institution is a hard thing to build, that it takes a long time to build it, but that it can be destroyed very quickly by folly or malice.⁹³ Thus he respected the institutions of Parliament, if not all its members.⁹⁴ He thought that the power of the Executive had risen too far, and would rise further – the power of the Ministry over Parliament, of the inner Cabinet over the outer Ministry, of the Prime Minister over the inner Cabinet.⁹⁵ This pessimistic prophecy has been amply fulfilled.

He was conservative in opposing what he saw as the corporatism of the Hawke Government, in which success was measured by the extent to which government, unions and certain businesses co-operated in a spirit of altruism. Some of those businesses had the altruism of the late Lawrence James Adler, head of FAI Insurance, who remarked that if his shares were affected by a stock market fall it was a major crash, but if someone else’s were affected, it was a minor technical correction.

John was conservative in seeking to maintain standards of decency and courtesy in public life. For example, he saw the vilification of Sir John Kerr as “an example of what a despicable media we had, what a despicable academic community we had, what a despicable political community we had”.⁹⁶

But John was not what might be called a stationary conservative. He was a reactionary only in the sense of reacting against the folly, pretentiousness and arrogance of his time. He thought that in order to preserve it might be necessary to destroy. If received values were to survive, key changes were needed, particularly the reduction of institutional barriers to economic activity.⁹⁷ In this sense there was a radical element to his conservatism.

On various issues his views developed over time in the Treasury. When he entered the Treasury, although he was strongly opposed to totalitarian government, he thought that on the whole the state in Australia was benevolent: the state in general, and its Public Service in particular, provided a public service. After he left the Treasury, he became an advocate of small government in the sense that he opposed a state run by bureaucrats whose appetite for power grew with what it fed on. He came to favour the state having minimal essential integers like defence forces against external threats, appropriate mechanisms for internal law and order and core public services. But he found it almost impossible to identify anything governments did which would not be done better if people were left to do it for themselves. This change in thinking was the product of his experience in Treasury.⁹⁸ As he told the Senate in his maiden speech, “in matters of government I have come increasingly to the view that small is beautiful”.⁹⁹ He favoured government which was small, but strong. Thus he said: “whatever the role of government may be, it ought to carry it out firmly. Because if it does not, there is very little point in having it. In a sense that is almost a tautology”.¹⁰⁰

He had formed clear views on the role of public servants within the state. He saw Westminster democracy not as resting on public servants who got Ministers to accept their policies, but rather that it was for Ministers to choose, implement and defend their own policies. It was for public servants to advise them – offering, if appropriate, various choices.¹⁰¹ It was important for Ministers to trust public servants, and this could not happen if public servants became engaged in public debate and if the advice public servants gave became publicly available.¹⁰² It was wrong for public servants to get too close, personally, to Ministers.¹⁰³ It was wrong for Ministers to interfere in the actual running by Secretaries of their Departments.¹⁰⁴

In John’s farewell speech to Treasury staff, he said: “I know I will never again preside over a body of men and women of such exceptional talent”.¹⁰⁵ He left the Treasury with admiration for the capacity and the work ethic of its officials, the quality of its internal debates, and its freedom of debate; the unity it showed the world regardless of internal disagreements; and its esprit de corps.¹⁰⁶ That latter virtue was well understood by Lord Palmerston. When he and Queen Victoria were inspecting troops on parade on a warm summer’s day, she commented on how bad they smelt. Lord Palmerston replied: “Oh, Ma’am, that’s what we call esprit de corps”.

But it was not merely the approach of senior officials which John admired. He took as one “amazing example” of what the old Public Service could do the performance of a stenographer taking down his dictation of the Commonwealth’s case opposing a wage claim in the Arbitration Commission in January 1976. He dictated from 2 pm until 10 pm. He then returned to his hotel. On waking at 5.30 am he found an almost flawless typescript in an envelope under his door.¹⁰⁷

He said: “The Public Service is based upon a view about the public service and it is based upon an ethos of how to behave”. That ethos does not include leaking so as to embarrass a government with which the public servant disagrees. It does not include “transformation of it into some kind of political hackery, where people . . . become judged upon whether or not they happen to have voted for the right party on the last occasion – or at least said they did”.¹⁰⁸ Corruption of the public service began not through the taking of bribes but when public servants began to rise on the basis of their political affiliations, not their abilities.¹⁰⁹

He had become very wary of centralism. It may have been a reaction to Mr Whitlam. But Prime Ministers Gorton and Fraser, who were centralist as well, may have played an equal role in developing this side of his thinking – one which is natural in a Western Australian. Its deep-rootedness was made clear to me some years ago when he asked me to describe the qualities and defects of some possible appointees to the High Court. Fearing an explosion, I inquired: “Do you have any particular points of disqualification in mind?” He said: “No! Just tell me about the best candidates. The appointment must be entirely on merit”. I said: “Well, there are some good people in New South Wales”. Quite sharply he responded: “I thought it would have been perfectly clear that on no account is anyone on your list to come from New South Wales”. At all events, his opposition to centralism began to grow in the light of the High Court decisions of the mid-1980s.¹¹⁰

John’s outlook in 1984 can be simplified in six propositions.

1. Governments had too much power in society.

2. The Federal Government had too much power in relation to other governments.

3. Within each government, a small core of Ministers had too much power compared to other legislators.

4. Within each executive, the public service was becoming too politicised to give independent advice.

5. Trade unions had too much power over governments and other social forces.

6. These evils could only be exposed and combated by vigorous debate, which he saw as the lifeblood of democracy.¹¹¹

This summary suggests a gloomy, somewhat driven, personality. But he was a man of considerable wit. He has referred to a colleague as being “a product of that ... lost generation, Australian academics who never really grew up”.¹¹² Speaking of Mr Whitlam’s visit to Greece when Cyclone Tracy struck Darwin, he said: “there are plenty of ruins to inspect in Greece, though not nearly as many as there were in Australia by that time”.¹¹³ He said that when interviewing job applicants, one had to ask: “Does this job applicant appear to be able to tell the time of day (an important attribute for those who are beginning to have to adhere to office hours for the first time)”.¹¹⁴

A central characteristic of John is his assured mastery of language. In his hands it has been not only a trenchant weapon, but also a precise tool. He does not speak of carbon pricing, but carbon dioxide pricing. For him the pre-Euro currency in Germany was not the Deutschmark, but the Deutschemark.¹¹⁵

When he resigned from the Treasury, he had no post lined up; but opportunities presented themselves immediately.¹¹⁶ In the latter part of 1984 he was Professor in the Centre of Policy Studies at Monash University. John has set several records, but this was a record for one of the shortest tenures of a Chair in Australian university history. He moved to Melbourne. From 1985 to 1987 he was a part-time consultant to Potter Partners; a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs; a newspaper columnist; a director of Peko Wallsend Ltd and the Sperry Corporation; and a public speaker.¹¹⁷

In 1985 he became one of the four founding members of the Council for the National Interest, and served as a member of its Board of Management until 1994. It was then concerned with problems of foreign and defence policy.¹¹⁸

In 1986, his growing interest in labour market problems caused him to become a founding member (with Ray Evans, Barry Purvis and Peter Costello) of the H R Nicholls Society Inc. He served as President until 1989; Member of the Board of Management from 1990 to 1993; and Treasurer in 1994 and 1995. He delivered numerous addresses to that body. Its goals correspond with what John said in the Shann Memorial Lecture: labour market reform to increase productivity and average real incomes; the removal of arbitral tribunals to determine wages; the reduction of the ill effects of trade union power, operating through those tribunals, on the less fortunate in society; and the elimination of the widespread corruption and violence to which trade union privilege had given rise.¹¹⁹ Peko Wallsend Ltd, during his directorship, experienced considerable industrial problems, and this sharpened the interest he had already shown in this area. He developed an admiration for Charles Copeman, the Chief Executive, who was, indeed, a hero of that time, and is here tonight, in his dealings with industrial trouble in the Robe River dispute in such a way as to save particular mines and make them productive and profitable.¹²⁰ He fought against the greedy and work-shy habits of some employees at that time. It was reminiscent of the introduction of the three-day week in Britain in 1974 during the Miners’ Strike – to the rage of some, like Denis Compton, famous English batsman and journalist, who said: “I am not going to work an extra day for anyone”.

In 1987 he was elected to the Senate, and elected as Leader of the National Party in the Senate. He was the only former permanent head ever to have become a member of Parliament.¹²¹ He served as Shadow Minister for Finance – at least until September 1988, when he was dismissed by the National Party Leader, Ian Sinclair, at the request of the Leader of the Opposition, John Howard, for declining a request to speak only about matters relating to the Finance portfolio and settled Coalition policy.¹²² He bore no ill will – he now views John Howard as rivalling R G Menzies as our greatest Prime Minister. In the 1987 election campaign the National Party promised large cuts in public expenditure. The atmosphere of the time is captured in the following riddle around Canberra: “What’s John Stone’s response to 5000 public servants at the bottom of Lake Burley Griffin?” to which the answer was: “A start”.¹²³

He informed the National Press Club in 1987 that he proposed to pursue his political career in “boots and all fashion, as I’ve tried to do most things in life”.¹²⁴ He made good that promise, as can be seen from his speech to the National Press Club on 6 September 1989¹²⁵ and his numerous Senate speeches. In his maiden speech, after making a few trenchant points about economic policy, he said: “I hope that I have not transgressed unduly on the accepted canons of debate on such occasions as this, and I hope also that in sedulously seeking not to transgress them I have not erred on the other side by being dull. If so, perhaps I can be more lively next time”.¹²⁶ He certainly was. Five days later he told the Government that “in the past four years we have been like locusts eating the seed corn”.¹²⁷ Standards of parliamentary debate in Australia have not been uniformly high. But John’s Senate speeches were of the highest class. They were flawless in form. And they were powerful in substance, for no other Senator has ever had the expertise which he could bring to bear on questions of economic policy and public administration, and he made himself very familiar with the background to questions on which he had had less experience, such as war crimes legislation. His speeches revealed another trait, and an unusual one: he was prepared publicly to express esteem for those of his Labor opponents whom he did esteem, like Senator Tate,¹²⁸ Senator Button,¹²⁹ Senator Ray,¹³⁰ and the capable but cantankerous Western Australian, Senator Walsh.¹³¹

In the Shadow Cabinet at the time, according to John Spender, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, he revealed himself to be “a man of extraordinarily entrenched views, but highly intelligent, and great fun”. That should be qualified in only one respect: the views are entrenched, but they are open to reason, and some of them have changed over time. John Spender did also say, and rightly, that it was good that people like John Stone, Nigel Bowen and Bob Ellicott went into politics, and a pity that no-one like that – people with significant professional success outside politics – does now.

He resigned from the Senate in order to run for the House of Representatives in 1990, but was defeated. This was a real loss to the Parliament. But it was a gain to public debate. He was Senior Fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs until 1995. He was Chairman of J T Campbell & Co Ltd from 1994 to 1996. He was a member of the Committee to inquire into the Efficiency and Effectiveness of the Australian Defence Force in 1996 and 1997. He had engaged in journalism even while in the Senate, and he has continued to make voluminous contributions both in newspapers and periodicals – for example, Quadrant, the National Observer – until the present day.

The topics, both before and after 1990, extend way beyond arbitral wage fixation,¹³² economics¹³³ and taxation policy.¹³⁴ They include the environment,¹³⁵ federation,¹³⁶ the structure of the public service,¹³⁷ the course of government policy,¹³⁸ the quality of national leadership,¹³⁹ immigration, citizenship policy and multiculturalism,¹⁴⁰ Aboriginal policy,¹⁴¹ cultural and social issues,¹⁴² an Australian republic,¹⁴³ national sovereignty,¹⁴⁴ and “climate change” controversies.¹⁴⁵ They also include memoirs and obituaries¹⁴⁶ and observations of contemporary events.¹⁴⁷ All his work is full of force, dash and vitality. The themes are treated in a sombre, tragic and impressive way. They reveal a dedicated patriot worried about the potential decline of his country – a highly cultivated thinker worried about the decay of his culture. These writings also reveal a paradox, a sort of creative tension – for the descriptions and predictions of feebleness, decline and decay are to some degree falsified by the vigour, the intellectual powers and the cultural quality their author manifestly possesses. No-one can be right all the time, particularly in relation to prophecy, but John has been uncannily prescient on many questions. Take just one topical example. In early 2008 it was expected that Mr Rudd would be Prime Minister for at least a decade before taking on a leading role on the world stage. Almost all journalists were fawning and abasing themselves before the titanic statesman they thought they perceived or had created. If memory serves, John at that very early stage was almost alone in foreseeing that Mr Rudd would not lead Labor to the next election. This forecast was made in an article on Mr Rudd’s future in spring 2008, which concluded – a long two years ago: “Enter Julia, stage Left”.¹⁴⁸

The principal activity of John’s last 20 years, however, has been his founding and fostering of The Samuel Griffith Society in 1992. In 1992 he began to edit and publish the volumes recording the proceedings of each annual conference under the title, “Upholding the Australian Constitution”. As we all know, the primary goal of the Society is to promote wide debate on issues to do with the Constitution and the country’s political and legal institutions, emphasising federalist views and the decentralisation of power.¹⁴⁹ In the foreword to the first volume, John praised the quality of the papers and the enthusiasm they generated. Taken as a whole the series is an immensely rich resource of materials for thinking about our Constitution. Not least of those are John’s own contributions. The value of the series will endure well past our lifetimes. But praise for that success should not be laid at John’s feet alone.

Throughout John’s life he has had to make important decisions, some of them potentially catastrophic from a personal financial point of view, like possible resignation from the Treasury in 1982,¹⁵⁰ actual resignation in 1984, and standing for the Senate in 1987.¹⁵¹ Every one of them was shared with Nancy. The work of a senior Treasury officer and Permanent Head over two decades, involving long hours, relentless, grinding pressures and no gratitude, allowed no leisure. It was Nancy who must have borne the main and doubtless heavy burden of raising their daughter and their four sons. It was not an existence sustained by Lucullan wealth. Nor could it be said of John and Nancy Stone that in his Treasury days they had their snouts in the public trough. Nancy only twice travelled with John on his numerous trips abroad – for the first time in 1982, to IMF and World Bank meetings in Toronto,¹⁵² and for the second time in April 1984 to Amsterdam, for the Annual General Meeting of the Asian Development Bank.¹⁵³ The quality of life within the Stone family depended much on the domestic labours of Nancy.

The health of The Samuel Griffith Society depended on her labours too. Running a substantial organisation like The Samuel Griffith Society calls for a lot of painstaking administrative and clerical work. Speakers must be organised, venues booked, meetings arranged, subscription reminders sent out. Tardy authors must be harried; their papers must be improved; proofs must be corrected; printers must be pacified. The greater the efficiency with which such a society runs, the more fully concealed is the dedicated and conscientious labour of those who run it. The Society could not have prospered as it has without Nancy Stone’s tireless activity in most of these respects.

But Nancy Stone’s contribution to public life is greater and more profound than that. It lies in this: she was the complement to John, and without her he would have achieved much less.

John is peppery and pugnacious. He does not shy away from a fight. He can take it, but he can certainly dish it out. Many a speaker at a Quadrant dinner or a Samuel Griffith Society conference or an H R Nicholls Society meeting will take to their graves the vivid recollection of the puzzled and frowning face of John, advancing towards the podium in order to extirpate the speaker’s fallacies with the intellectual equivalent of fire and sword. He is a modern Dr Johnson – the Dr Johnson who said: “Well, Sir, we had a good talk”, to which Boswell replied: “Yes, Sir, you tossed and gored several persons”. The daily follies of our rulers vex him considerably. It used to be said of R G Menzies that he could not suffer fools gladly. On an occasion late at night a bibulous backbencher poked him in the stomach and said: “The trouble with you, Bob, is that you can’t suffer fools gladly”. With commendable calmness, Menzies replied: “What do you think I’m doing now?” John prizes frankness over hypocrisy, bluntness over Olympian detachment.

It is true that the angry moods can pass quickly. First, there is the storm, then the calm. John very rarely forgets slights, but he more commonly forgives them. Even where he has not forgiven a slight, he nurses no desire for revenge against the person responsible. He does not allow grievances to accumulate indefinitely at compound interest. Thus, on receiving an offensive question from Mungo MacCallum at the National Press Club on 9 July 1987, during the election campaign, he responded:

Mungo, I’ve always felt a certain affection for you because ... you were the first, and indeed, one of the only two journalists whom I’ve ever issued a writ against for libel. But ... I have never held grudges about that or indeed any other matter, and particularly since you apologised and paid my costs.¹⁵⁴

A little later he used of Mr MacCallum the expression: “gentlemen or people like yourself – I should correct myself”.¹⁵⁵

John had much in common with Joseph Chamberlain. To John can be applied the luminous words Asquith used in the House of Commons on 6 July 1914 on Chamberlain’s death: “In that striking personality – vivid, masterful, resolute, tenacious – there were no blurred or nebulous outlines, there were no relaxed fibres, there were no moods of doubt and hesitation, there were no pauses of lethargy”.¹⁵⁶ Even those unsympathetic to John concede the penetration of his intellectual power and the formidable force of his character.¹⁵⁷

Now the role of Nancy has been to soften these asperities. She has been a sympathetic sounding board, a source of serenity, a calming influence, a soothing presence, and, with her high intelligence, a stimulant to further thoughts. John’s extraordinary career has been fuelled by a fiery energy. Ideas crackle from him like an exploding firework. But that energy may have burnt itself and him up without Nancy’s complementary qualities. For that her country owes her an immense debt. While John has many enemies – and we love him for those enemies – Nancy has none.

There have been troubles in John’s life. His parents divorced.¹⁵⁸ His brother died in early adulthood.¹⁵⁹ His father died relatively young, aged 57.¹⁶⁰ Among John’s attractive qualities are stoicism in relation to disappointment and gratitude for the good things life has given. They include his happy country childhood,¹⁶¹ the self-reliance which life on isolated farms can bring to young children,¹⁶² intelligent parents, the quality of his Korbel schoolteacher, Mrs Gwen Munyard,¹⁶³ the quality of his education at Perth Modern School,¹⁶⁴ his Oxford education and his lifelong good health.¹⁶⁵ Modern politicians, or their press secretaries, tend to urge on the public reciprocal claims that “my father’s log cabin had a lot more holes in the roof than your father’s log cabin”. John never saw his own youth in that way. Another happy characteristic is his lack of regret for what he has done in life¹⁶⁶ – but it is coupled with a lack of vanity and arrogance.

When the Stones arrived in Canberra in 1956, John was at once impressed by the Secretary to the Treasury, Sir Roland Wilson. He has described him as “perhaps the most distinguished public servant in many ways that Australia has ever had, with the possible exception of Garran” – a high tribute, coming as it does from one who would himself have high claims to be short listed for that position.¹⁶⁷ He described Wilson as “an extraordinarily lucid thinker and writer and ... speaker”,¹⁶⁸ a man held in “high respect” around Canberra,¹⁶⁹ “a very stimulating person; to talk to he was so sharp and so quick”;¹⁷⁰ “[h]e had a somewhat mordant wit”;¹⁷¹ he had “a very supple and subtle mind, and he had a rich vocabulary and an excellent command of English, and a force of personality ... which simply was impossible to dismiss”.¹⁷² So spoke John on Wilson. Every expression is equally applicable to the speaker.

John and Nancy Stone share one quality he admired in E O G Shann – an “abounding love of Australia”.¹⁷³ They share others: complete independence of spirit, total integrity, acute mental powers, precision, lucidity, great selflessness, warm friendliness. Theirs are two great Australian lives. Their public activities since 1984 amount to a shared and intertwined odyssey. In the last three decades John has become the greatest Australian polemicist, publicist and controversialist of our time – perhaps of any time. Nancy made that career possible. When you think of the Stones, you think of the young Robert Cecil, later Marquess of Salisbury, Walter Bagehot and James Fitzjames Stephen in the Victorian era. You think of George Orwell in 20th century England. You think of William F Buckley in America. They were the consciences of their age. The task which those writers performed for their generation in their time is the task which the Stones have performed for our generation in our time. Ionesco said: “To think against one’s age is heroism, but to speak against it is folly”. In that sense John is the most heroic of fools. He is a prophet too little honoured in his own country. His voluminous writings, with their dramatic and pungent style, are too little known. Those who have ears, let them hear. Those who have eyes, let them read.¹⁷⁴ We must wish the Stones many more years of good health and vigour, from which will come many more speeches to hear and articles to read.

In 1984, in his Shann Memorial Lecture, John Stone informed his audience at the University of Western Australia that although he had not lived in Western Australia after 1951 he had continued to think of himself, and had always been proud to describe himself, as a Western Australian.¹⁷⁵

That is true of Nancy, too. Here they are in a room full of friends, although some of us may occasionally have tested the friendship. It is entirely appropriate that here, tonight, in the capital city of the State in which they were brought up, friends pay tribute to this couple. They have made collectively one of the greatest contributions to Australian public life in their time – or any time. They are the greatest Western Australians of their time.

Select Bibliography

This is not a complete bibliography of John Stone’s articles, notes and speeches. It is only a selection of the more accessible.

National Observer

“The Debates We Have to Have”, (2002) No 51, 15

“Constitutional Lies, Damned Constitutional Lies and Plebiscites”, (2004) No 61, 54

“The 2004 Federal Election”, (2004) No 62, 56

“What Mr Howard’s Government Needs to Do”, (2005) No 63, 54

“Michael Crichton on ‘Global Warming’”, (2005) No 64, 25

“The Future of Mr Peter Costello”, (2005) No 65, 44

“Solutions to the Muslim Problem in Australia”, (2005) No 66, 14

“Mr Mark Latham and the Labor Party”, (2006) No 67, 40

“The Howard/Costello Decade”, (2006) No 68, 12

“Mr Peter Costello’s Wasted Opportunities”, (2006) No 69, 22

“The Unmentionable Problem of Australian Citizenship”, (2006) No 70, 12

“‘Global Warming’ Scare Mongering”, (2007) No 71, 29

“‘Global Warming’ Scare-Mongering Revisited”, (2007) No 72, 19

“Mr Costello’s Repeated Budget Failure”, (2007) No 73, 13

“Australia’s New Government Should Understand the Following”, (2007) No 74, 9

“Kyoto the Fraud: How Australians Are Being Conned”, (2008) No 75, 9

‘“Reshaping Australia’: 2002 and All That”, (2008) No 76, 56

“The Future of Mr Kevin Rudd”, (2008) No 78, 8

“Defective Analysis and the ‘Never Never Budget’”, (2009) No 80, 8

Quadrant

“1929 and All That”, October 1984, 9.

“Hawke’s Next Budget: the Prime Minister’s ‘Trinity’”, April 1985, 16

“Deregulate or Perish: Signs of a Society in Decay”, October 1985, 19

“The Future of Clear Thinking: A Response to Robert Manne”, January-February 1992, 56

“When the Hissing Has to Stop: Reform of the Australian Taxation System”, November 1985, 61

“There are Two Views About H W Arndt”, June 1986, 52

“Do We Need a Consumption Tax?”, June 1990, 9

“The Australian Economy: What Is To Be Done?”, May 1991, 26

“Does History Have A Future?”, October 1991, 72

“Michael Pusey’s Economic Rationalism In Canberra: Two Views”, July-August 1992, 57

“Yes, Minister? Politicians and Bureaucrats in Canberra”, October 1992, 14

“Two Views of Thatcherism”, May 1993, 53

“Black Africa and Australia”, September 1999, 41

“Does Australia Need A Racial Vilification Law?”, November 1994, 10

“The Muslim Problem and What to Do About It”, September 2006, 11

“The Dismal Beginning to the Fraser Years”, July-August 2007, 12

“Our Greatest Prime Minister”, March 2008, 12

“Time to Stop the Dreaming”, April 2008, 48

“Inflation: Who’s To Blame?”, May 2008, 58

“Liberty, Productivity and Jobs: Workplace Relations under the Howard Government”, July-August 2008, 67

“Aboriginal Employment and the CDEP”, September 2008, 72

“Growth, Jobs, and Prosperity”, January-February 2009, 14

“The Origins of the Crisis in Immigration Policy”, December 2009, 6

“Eleven Decent Years”, January-February 2010, 28

“Immigration Policy: Our Self-inflicted Wounds”, September 2010, 30

The Adelaide Review

“Skullduggery”, July 1999, 8

“The republic: facing defeat in all six States”, August 1999, 10

“Six painful truths”, October 1999, 8

“Gloom over the succession”, March 2000, 12

“An opening salvo on immigration”, April 2000, 16

“Murphy’s Law in reverse”, July 2000, 10

“Serious questions”, December 2000, 10

“Whose ABC?”, February 2001, 6

“Eating Crow”, March 2001, 12

“Attention: Peter McGauran”, June 2001, 10

“Beazley’s the Problem”, August 2001, 9

“The New Terrorism”, November 2002, 9

The Age

“Wrong story on mining, protection”, 18 October 1991. 13

“Time for a culture of cooperation”, 19 May 1992, 11

The Australian

“Former Chief Justice keeps fine company”, 4 November 1997, 12

“Yes, Prime Minister, you’re in a bind”, 4 June 1998, 11

“Howard must court One Nation voters”, 19 June 1998, 13

“A leader with his head in the sand soon loses it”, 24 June 1998, 15

“Hanson infighting buoys doomed PM”, 1 July 1998, 13

“Careful, double standards are showing”, 10 July 1998, 13

“Howard’s date with fool’s place in history”, 17 July 1998, 13

“Send Liberals, Nationals and Labor to the political knackery”, 31 July 1998, 13

“Opposition loses on economic credibility”, 1 October 2001, 13

“Untruths for Howard’s own ends – the cultural divide”, 13 May 2002, 11

“Who led us to court disaster?”, 24 June 2002, 11

“Boring and stupid in succession”, 20 September 2002, 11

“Something real to pique our interest”, 26 September 2002, 11

“Costello as PM just won’t do”, 3 January 2003, 11

“In uncertain times, we have nothing to fear but media chatter”, 24 January 2003, 11

“ID could guard against sleepers in our midst”, 28 February 2003, 11

“Full steam ahead, but the creep’s a sleeper”, 15 May 2003, 13

“Plenty of precedent to go on and on”, 4 June 2003, 15

“Trouble in the water for Abbott’s centralist agenda”, 3 July 2003, 11

“Public service rot started with Labor”, 19 August 2004, 15

“Grow up and change jobs, Mr Costello”, 15 October 2004, 15

“Haunted by spirit of Gough”, 13 December 2004, 7

“Archives distortion demands remedy”, 17 January 2005, 9

“Howard’s great betrayal”, 18 April 2005, 15

“Inside the campaign for Canberra – Joh Bjelke-Petersen: 1911-2005”, 25 April 2005, 14

“Unjust, unimaginative gall of withholding cuts”, 2 May 2005, 9

“Harry Gibbs a wealth of wisdom”, 1 July 2005, 28

“One nation, one culture”, 22 July 2005, 17

“The case for assimilation”, 15 August 2005, 8

“Turnbull tax too modest”, 9 September 2005, 16

“Advice for the Treasurer”, 7 October 2005, 16

“Some will not integrate”, 18 November 2005, 14

“The Gerard affair and ‘due process”‘, 5 December 2005, 10

“Trials and tribulations of our worst Cabinet”, 2 January 2006, 10

“Gough’s ministry of truth”, 10 January 2006, 10

“Take the initiative this time”, 17 April 2006, 6

“A bigger storm is brewing”, 17 November 2006, 14

“Devaluation of a fiscal legacy – 1976 Cabinet papers”, 1 January 2007, 12

“Inflation dragon breathing fire – 1977 Cabinet papers”, 1 January 2008, 12

“Howard was Thatcher, Reagan rolled into one”, 4 March 2008, 16

“RBA in charge whatever the fiscal policies”, 2 May 2008, 12

“Pretend jobs hold back Aborigines”, 20 June 2008, 12

“Records show Rudd reprising a scratchy old ‘78”, 1 January 2009, 10

“Old formulas don’t fit when factors are unknown”, 28 May 2009, 12

“Recession they won’t admit is happening”, 13 July 2009, 8

“Policy levers set to irrational”, 1 January 2010, 18

“Cut migrants, and keep out those who don’t fit in”, 5 August 2010, 16

Sydney Morning Herald

“You never know just who may turn up”, 3 September 1986, 6

“Mr Hawke gropes for his security blanket”, 10 September 1986, 14

“Saving face can be a costly business”, 17 September 1986, 12

“Halfpenny’s changed his spots, and pigs may fly”, 24 September 1986, 10

“Last thing we need is another accord”, 1 October 1986, 16

“Why small business is leaving the ‘club’”, 8 October 1986, 14

“Statistical juggling in the name of progress”, 15 October 1986, 12

“Selling up in the face of infantile solutions”, 22 October 1986, 16

“The little victims’ hopes hit bedrock”, 29 October 1986, 14

“Why talk won’t help our ragged economy”, 5 November 1986, 14

“Our drive towards a day of reckoning”, 12 November 1986, 18

“Hard work is needed, not talk of elections”, 19 November 1986, 20

“Unsworth’s plan does nothing for my optimism”, 26 November 1986, 14

“Why the Japanese are eyeing our assets”, 3 December 1986, 16

“When will Keating admit he is wrong?”, 10 December 1986, 12

“Keating’s strategy is on a dangerous course”, 17 December 1986, 10

“The eve of trade union reform”, 24 December 1986, 6

“Why should innocence be called on to justify itself”, 31 December 1986, 6

“Happy New Year for Australia? Perhaps not”, 7 January 1987, 8

“‘Tis the season of silliness”, 14 January 1987, 10

“A hot money junkie looks for the quick fix”, 21 January 1987, 10

“A warning – but is anybody listening?”, 28 January 1987, 10

“Spread of corruption a cause for alarm”, 4 February 1987, 12

“All in the same union-free boat”, 11 February 1987, 12

“Sir Joh and the power of honest policies”, 18 February 1987, 12

“National debt ends Hawke’s poll hopes”, 25 February 1987, 12

“Where Joh paddles, Hawke follows”, 4 March 1987, 14

“Why our new house casts a long shadow”, 11 March 1987, 14

“Telling it like it really isn’t”, 18 March 1987, 12

“Save, or end up in Argentina”, 25 March 1987, 18

“Cynicism beyond contempt”, 1 April 1987, 14

“Stop all the creative accounting, Mr Keating”, 8 April 1987, 14

“It’s time Japan started to play fair”, 15 April 1987, 16

“Keating can’t have it both ways”, 22 April 1987m 12

“Better a ‘sweated’ job than no job at all”, 29 April 1987, 18

“Govt limit on audience casts doubt on product”, 6 May 1987, 20

“The industry that’s trying to pull all of us down”, 13 May 1987, 16

“Keating has won a great illusionist’s victory”, 20 May 1987, 16

“Power to the people not the public servants”, 27 May 1987, 14

“The outlook is poor and it will get poorer”, 3 June 1987, 10

“An election all about records and somersaults”, 10 June 1987, 20

“Why I am standing for the Senate as a National”, 17 June 1987, 20

Endnotes

1. Schedvin at 1:1-3.

2. See further, John Stone, “The Muslim Problem and What to Do about It”, Quadrant, September 2006, 11 at 14 for his religious background.

3. Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, Senate, 6 December 1988 at 3609.

4. Schedvin at 1:2-3 and 5.

5. Schedvin at 1:5-7.

6. The price of wheat fell from five shillings per bushel in 1929-30 to less than two shillings and six pence in 1930-31: John Stone, “1929 and All That”, Quadrant, October 1984, 9 at 12.

7. Schedvin at 1:6-7.

8. Schedvin at 1:13-14.

9. Schedvin at 2:2.

10. Schedvin at 2:2.

11. Schedvin at 2:6.

12. The Environment in Perspective (Institute of Public Affairs Ltd, 1991) at 1.

13. Schedvin at 1:8, 2:5.

14. Schedvin at 2:7.

15. Schedvin at 2:5.

16. Schedvin at 1:15-16, 2:6.

17. Schedvin at 1:16-17, 2:8.

18. Schedvin at 1:9-1:10.

19. Schedvin at 2:1.

20. Schedvin at 2:8.

21. Schedvin at 2:9.

22. Schedvin at 2:11-2:14, 3:1.

23. Schedvin at 3:3-3:4.

24. Schedvin at 2:15.

25. Schedvin at 3:3.

26. Schedvin at 3:2.

27. Schedvin at 2:13.

28. Schedvin at 2:14.

29. Schedvin at 3:7 and 5:5.

30. Schedvin at 3:7-3:9.

31. Schedvin at 1:12, 3:11-3:12.

32. Schedvin at 3:13-3:14, 15:11.

33. Schedvin at 3:15.

34. E T Williams, “Sir Carleton Kemp Allen”, in E T Williams and C S Nicholls (eds), The Dictionary of National Biography: 1961-1970, Oxford University Press, 1981, 24 at 26.

35. Schedvin at 28:10.

36. Schedvin at 4:3-4:4.

37. Schedvin at 4:5.

38. Schedvin at 5:1.

39. Schedvin at 5:1.

40. Schedvin at 4:4.

41. Schedvin at 4:8-4:9.

42. Schedvin at 4:4.

43. Schedvin at 5:3-5:4.

44. Schedvin at 4:12.

45. John Campbell, F E Smith: First Earl of Birkenhead (Jonathan Cape, 1983) at 479, quoting Mark de Wolfe Howe (ed.), Holmes-Laski Letters, vol. 2 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1953) at 1231. There must be a question mark over the veracity of this anecdote in view of its source in H. J. Laski; on the other hand, it rings true and was probably beyond even Laski’s powers of invention.

46. Schedvin at 5:7.

47. Schedvin at 5:6.

48. Schedvin at 5:7-5:8.

49. Schedvin at 6:4.

50. Schedvin at 6:5.

51. Schedvin at 6:2.

52. Schedvin at 6:2, 6:10.

53. Schedvin at 5:12.

54. Schedvin at 6:10-6:11.

55. Schedvin at 7:10-7:11.

56. Schedvin at 8:10-8:11.

57. Schedvin at 42:5, 42:7.

58. Schedvin at 6:13-7:1.

59. Schedvin at 7:8-7:9.

60. Schedvin at 9:12-9:13.

61. Schedvin at 8:6.

62. Schedvin at 10:12-10:13.

63. Schedvin at 5:15, 11:1; Hyslop at 15.

64. Schedvin at 11:9.

65. For example, The Meaning and Measurement of Economic Growth.

66. Hyslop at 22-23. For example, Economic Growth: Is It Worth Having?, Treasury Economic Paper No. 2, AGPS, Canberra, 1973.

67. Schedvin at 43:5-43:6.

68. Schedvin at 6:1 and 12:10-12:13, 13:3.

69. Schedvin at 12:10.

70. Schedvin at 13:5.

71. Schedvin at 13:12-14:5.

72. Schedvin at 14:8.

73. Schedvin at 13:2, 15:13 and 16:1.

74. Simon Leys, Chinese Shadows, Viking Press, New York, 1977 at 29.

75. Schedvin at 22:1.

76. Schedvin at 32:15.

77. Hyslop at 13-14 and 24. One was “Australia in a Competitive World – Some Options”, delivered to the 21st General Management Conference of the Australian Institute of Management in Sydney on 19 November 1979. The others were to the Victorian Branch of the Economic Society in November 1981 (“Australia in a Competitive World – Some More Options” and the Agriculture Economic Outlook Conference in 1981.

78. “1929 and All That”, Quadrant, October 1984, 9 at 13.

79. Schedvin at 7:6-7 and 32:10-11.

80. “1929 and All That”, Quadrant, October 1984, 9 at 15. He devoted much attention to trade union power in his Senate speeches, for example, Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, Senate, 20 November 1987 at 2133-2135.

81. “1929 and All That”, Quadrant, October 1984, 9 at 18-19.

82. “The Scandal of the Young Unemployed”, Quadrant, August 1985, 21 at 24.

83. Schedvin at 28:15.

84. “1929 and All That”, Quadrant, October 1984, 9 at 16.

85. Schedvin at 20:10.

86. “1929 and All That”, Quadrant, October 1984, 9 at 16-17.

87. National Press Club 1987, questions, at 4.

88. Quoted by Robert Taylor, Lord Salisbury, Allen Lane, 1975, at 79.

89. “1929 and All That”, Quadrant, October 1984, 9 at 19.

90. Schedvin at 39:2.

91. Schedvin at 35:12-35:14.

92. John Stone, “When the Hissing Has to Stop”, Quadrant, November 1985, 61 at 67.

93. Schedvin at 42:3-42:4.

94. Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, Senate, 7 October 1987 at 809-810.

95. Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, Senate, 29 August 1988 at 405.

96. Schedvin at 30:14.

97. Schedvin at 42:12-42:13.

98. Schedvin at 37:13.

99. Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, Senate, 16 September 1987 at 169.

100. Schedvin at 13:10.

101. Schedvin at 39:6; Hyslop at 53.

102. Hyslop at 28-31.

103. Hyslop at 33.

104. Hyslop at 34-36; Schedvin at 42:5.

105. Schedvin at 15:2.

106. Hyslop at 52-53.

107. Schedvin at 28:6- 28:7.

108. Schedvin at 30:12. See also John Stone, “There are Two Views About H. W. Arndt”, Quadrant, June 1986, 52 at 53.

109. Schedvin at 39:8.

110. See Hansard (Senate) 17 May 1988.

111. John Stone, “Deregulate or Perish: Signs of a Society in Decay”, Quadrant, October 1985, 19 at 21.

112. Schedvin at 22:12.

113. Schedvin at 22:14.

114. John Stone, “Does History Have a Future?”, Quadrant, October 1991, 72 at 73.

115. John Stone, “Deregulation or Perish: Signs of a Society in Decay”, Quadrant, October 1985, 19 at 25; Schedvin at 10:9.

116. Schedvin at 43:1.

117. Hyslop at 4-5; Schedvin at 43:2-44:1. Among the notable addresses of the period are those published as “Hawke’s Next Budget: The Prime Minister’s ‘Trinity’”, warning of the economic difficulties which became evident in 1986, delivered in December 1984 (Quadrant, April 1985, 16) and “Deregulate or Perish: Signs of a Society in Decay”, delivered on 24 May 1985, urging a deregulation of the labour market (Quadrant, October 1985, 19).

118. Schedvin at 44:15-45:1. John Stone has since written extensively in National Observer, a periodical it publishes.

119. Schedvin at 44:10-14. See also John Stone, “Let’s Start All Over Again: The Origins and Influence of the H. R. Nicholls Society” (2006) http://www.hrnicholls. com.au/archives/vol27/vol27-3.php at 1.

120. Schedvin at 43:7-15. See also John Stone, “Liberty, Productivity and Jobs: Workplace Relations Under the Howard Government”, Quadrant, July-August 2008, 67 at 68-69.

121. Hyslop at 5-9 and 12.

122. Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, Senate, 27 September 1988 at 749-750.

123. National Press Club 1987, questions, at 7.

124. National Press Club 1987, questions, at 3.

125. National Press Club 1989.

126. Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, Senate, 16 September 1987 at 172.

127. Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, Senate, 21 September 1987 at 392.

128. See, for example, Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, Senate, 24 September 1987 at 681.

129. See, for example, Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, Senate, 17 November 1987 at 1862.

130. See, for example, Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, Senate, 25 August 1988 at 346-347 and 22 December 1989 at 5122.

131. See, for example, Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, Senate, 26 October 1987 at 1213, 17 November 1987 at 1861-1862 and 4 April 1989 at 855. See also John Stone, “The Future of Clear Thinking”, Quadrant, January-February 1992, 56 at 60.

132. “What Kind of Country?”, Quadrant, December 1984, 9; “Liberty, Productivity and Jobs: Workplace Relations Under the Howard Government”, Quadrant, July-August 2008, 67. He delivered many speeches to the H. R. Nicholls Society on this topic.

133. “Hawke’s Next Budget”, Quadrant, April 1985, 16; “The Australian Economy: What is to be Done?”, Quadrant, May 1991, 26; “The Future of Clear Thinking”, Quadrant, January-February 1992, 56; “Two Views of Thatcherism”, Quadrant, May 1993, 53; “Inflation: Who’s to Blame”, Quadrant, May 2008, 58.

134. “Political ‘Trade-Offs’”, Quadrant, January-February 1985, 29; “Putting Australia Right”, Quadrant, September 1985, 10; “When the Hissing Has to Stop”, Quadrant, November 1985, 61; “Do We Need A Consumption Tax?”, Quadrant, June 1990, 9; “Skullduggery”, The Adelaide Review, July 1999, 8.

135. See also The Environment in Perspective, Institute of Public Affairs Ltd, Melbourne, 1991.

136. “Our Greatest Prime Minister”, Quadrant, March 2008, 12 at 16-17. He made many contributions to The Samuel Griffith Society conferences on this subject.

137. “Yes, Minister? Politicians and Bureaucrats in Canberra”, Quadrant, October 1992, 14.

138. For example, “The 2004 Federal Election”, National Observer, (2004) No 62, 56; “The Future of Mr Peter Costello”, National Observer, (2005) No 65, 44; “The Howard/Costello Decade”, National Observer, (2006) No 68, 12; “Mr Costello’s Repeated Budget Failure”, National Observer, (2007) No 73, 13; “Australia’s New Government Should Understand the Following”, National Observer, (2007) No 74, 9; “Defective Analysis and the ‘Never Never Budget’”, National Observer, (2009) No 80, 8.

139. “Gloom over the succession”, The Adelaide Review, March 2000, 12; “Mr Mark Latham and the Labor Party”, National Observer, (2006) No 67, 40; “‘Reshaping Australia’: 2020 and All That”, National Observer, (2008) No 76, 56; “The Future of Mr Kevin Rudd”, National Observer, (2008) No 78, 8.

140. “Black Africa and Australia”, Quadrant, September 1999, 41; “Solutions to the Muslim Problem in Australia”, National Observer, (2005) No 66, 14; “The Muslim Problem and What to Do about It”, Quadrant, September 2006, 11; “The Unmentionable Problem of Australian Citizenship”, National Observer, (2006) No 70, 12; Immigration Policy: Our Self-Inflicted Wounds”, Quadrant, September 2010, 30.

141. “Our Greatest Prime Minister”, Quadrant, March 2008, 12 at 18-19; “Time to Stop the Dreaming”, Quadrant, April 2008, 48.

142. “Our Greatest Prime Minister”, Quadrant, March 2008, 12 at 19-20.

143. “The republic: facing defeat in all six States”, The Adelaide Review, August 1999, 10; “Constitutional Lies, Damned Lies and Plebiscites”, National Observer, (2004) No 61, 54.

144. “The Debates We Have to Have”, National Observer, (2002) No 51, 14.

145. “Michael Crichton on ‘Global Warming’”, National Observer, (2005) No 64, 25; “‘Global Warming’ Scare-Mongering”, National Observer, (2007) No 71, 29; “‘Global Warming’ Scare-Mongering Revisited”, National Observer, (2007) No 72, 19; “Kyoto the Fraud: How Australians are being Conned”, National Observer, (2008) No 75, 9.

146. He wrote on H. W. Arndt in “There are Two Views About H. W. Arndt”, Quadrant, June 1986, 52; on Sir Harry Gibbs in The Australian, 1 July 2005; and on the Treasury in the mid 1970s in “The Dismal Beginning to the Fraser Years”, Quadrant, July-August 2007, 12.

147. For example, his account of the celebration of the centenary of the original sitting of the Commonwealth Parliament: “Attention: Peter McGauran”, The Adelaide Review, June 2001, 10.

148. “The Future of Mr Kevin Rudd”, National Observer, (2009) No 78, 8 at 16.

149. Upholding the Australian Constitution: Proceedings of The Samuel Griffith Society Inaugural Conference, The Samuel Griffith Society, Melbourne, 1992, at 272-276.

150. Schedvin at 36:1.

151. Schedvin at 45:11.

152. Schedvin at 35:12.

153. Schedvin at 39:12.

154. National Press Club 1987, questions, at 2.

155. National Press Club 1987, questions, at 3.

156. United Kingdom, House of Commons Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), 6 July 1914 at 848.

157. See Malcolm Fraser and Margaret Simons, Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2010, at 352-354 and 526.

158. Schedvin at 2:10.

159. Schedvin at 2:1.

160. Schedvin at 2:3.

161. Schedvin at 2:5.

162. Schedvin at 2:5.

163. Schedvin at 2:6-7.

164. Schedvin at 2:11.

165. Schedvin at 2:3.

166. Schedvin at 42:10.

167. Schedvin at 5:15.

168. Schedvin at 7:3.

169. Schedvin at 7:3.

170. Schedvin at 7:4.

171. Schedvin at 7:4.

172. Schedvin at 7:5.

173. “1929 and All That”, Quadrant, October 1984, 9 at 9.

174. See the attached select bibliography.

175. “1929 and All That”, Quadrant, October 1984, 9.