jackovesk
16th June 2011, 09:06
Lunch with David Murray
Must Read for Aussie Avalonians
PUBLISHED : 10 Jun 2011
http://www.afr.com.au/rf/image_lowres/2009-2014/AFR/2011/06/10/Photos/61b5f96a-932d-11e0-99cf-30a8218dc4a1__V2F6481--646x300.jpg
If the Future Fund is not able to comment then the Future Fund is not independent, says David Murray.
Colleen Ryan Journalist
For five years David Murray, as chairman of the Future Fund, has been charged with managing $71 billion of Australian taxpayers’ money. For 13 years prior to that, Murray headed up Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
During the global financial crisis, he was one of the Rudd government’s key external advisers. He made it into the top 10 in the country on The Australian Financial Review Magazine Power List of 2009 for covert power. “The influence he exerts on the economy would be hard to overestimate,” said Power panellist Peter Mason, chairman of AMP.
But when Murray arrives for lunch with the Financial Review at Cucinetta Ristorante in Woolwich, he was focused, albeit briefly, on the little things in life. He had just knocked the number plate off his car while parking. Not a good start. It is a glorious Sydney day, the restaurant overlooks Sydney Harbour, the water is gleaming. But Murray isn’t in the mood to relax. Lunch with Murray would be short on small talk.
We begin with a discussion of China. Murray has recently returned from Beijing.
DM: “I had just been in Shanghai. The air is getting worse,”
CR: I comment. “Serious pollution [in China] is a growing problem.” But Murray isn’t here to talk about China. He launches straight into a scientific discussion.
DM: “[Carbon dioxide] has got nothing to do with pollution.”
CR: What do you mean?
DM: “Well carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, it is colourless and odourless. It is not a pollutant.”
CR: Yes, but it is still bad for greenhouse gases?
DM: “No it isn’t. It is a tiny proportion of greenhouse gases.” So, if you believe in the warming of the planet, it is a tiny proportion of that? “There is no correlation between warming and carbon dioxide.”
CR: So if you accept the warming of the planet what should you do?
DM: “Take measures to stop the effects of it,” he declares.
CR: I try again. What about the melting of the glaciers?
DM: “They’re not. The amount of ice in the world is slightly increasing. It is not decreasing. It is just staggering, staggering. “So you call something a pollutant – which it is not, it is actually necessary for life. And then the people who don’t agree with you, you call sceptics or scumbags or doubters or something.” Argument over.
CR: Murray delivers his views in a staccato fashion. His manner brooks little opposition. Murray’s tendency to be forthright led to recent speculation that a Labor government would not reappoint him as chairman of the Future Fund. (In the event, his term was extended for one year, in a March announcement by Treasurer Wayne Swan just two weeks before Murray’s appointment was due to expire.) Murray’s performance at the Future Fund has been solid, if not spectacular. But, under the circumstances, it is hard to imagine that any Australian finance executive could have done better.
Murray was the founding chairman and instrumental in setting up Australia’s first sovereign wealth fund. Not an easy task. He and the board guided it through the global financial crisis, posting just a 4 per cent negative return in 2009 when many sovereign wealth funds around the world lost up to 20 per cent of their capital.
DM: “I just wonder if we could have survived if that had happened [to us],” Murray ponders.
CR: Last year the Future Fund returned 10.6 per cent, and in the first nine months of this year, it had an 11.3 per cent return. It has reduced its share in Telstra from the 17 per cent it began with to less than 5 per cent, without disrupting the market in the stock. And it played a front seat role in overhauling Telstra’s governance, with the departure of chief executive Sol Trujillo and chairman Donald McGauchie. Murray maintains that he did not want another five-year term as chairman, and had informed Finance Minister Penny Wong of his preference last year. But there was a change of general manager and a transitional arrangement with a further one year appointment was considered the best outcome.
His outspokenness on government policies such as the national broadband network and the mining tax was apparently not an issue. David Murray is not a humble man – but there is little evidence of hubris either. He has been too controversial a character to attract the adoration bestowed on some business greats. And he has taken some hits along the way. He seems to have taken that on board and, above all, appears to value his independence. Yet, while Murray is sensitive about his image, he apparently lacks the skills to burnish it. ‘Take me or leave me” is the implied message.
But given all that, he is actually very likeable. Warm but prickly. Smart but dogmatic. His views, whether you agree with them or not, are passionately held. Despite the critics, who claim he has been far too noisy, Murray doesn’t see the chair of the Future Fund as a platform from which to voice his views on policy.
DM: “If you look back over it I haven’t said much at all . . . there are people deliberately in the media a lot more than I am.” And the kicker: “If the Future Fund is not able to comment then the Future Fund is not independent.”
CR: Today, however, the views expressed are his own. Murray had chosen Cucinetta because it is a local favourite and close to his Hunters Hill home where he lives with his wife Stephanie and youngest child. He settled on the main course special – chicken involtini with spinach and sultanas on a bed of baby lentils. I chose the risotto special with salmon and mascarpone. A glass of wine each – Vasse Felix chardonnay – and then it was back to the big issues of the day.
CR: “The boom has been wasted,” Murray declares. Isn’t that a bit harsh when we have come out of the financial crisis quite well? Not according to Murray.
DM: “We have a boom with no discernible productivity improvement, rising indebtedness, a strong currency hurting our other export industries. There’s been no policy response of any effectiveness. The guarantee was costless. The guarantee was easy to do, should have been done, that was the right response. The rest of it, in hindsight, not necessary at all. “At any time, every council in Australia has got some shovel-ready work, they could have done some if that was the worry.” So that would have been more effective than giving taxpayers money to spend at stores? “Well half of it got spent, half of it got saved. “Ideally governments should always have some of the highest-quality long-term projects on their books ready to go – for counter-cyclical purposes or for these situations.”
CR: Do we have that now?
DM: “[B]No, because the methodology by which you determine which ones are important and which ones are not is pretty much lost on the political process.”
CR: Murray has strong views, too, on the role of the public service.
DM: “One of the best defences you can have is a highly effective public service capable of fearless advice.”
CR: And he is a strident defender of states’ rights and a believer in small government:
DM: “Under our system, the states do most things that cost money yet, since the Second World War, the Commonwealth collects most taxes including income tax . . . I would far prefer to allow the states to tax whatever they like and cause them to compete with one another to see who wants to live there and who prospers and who doesn’t. Just about everything the Commonwealth touches they waste money.”
CR: Lunch with Murray is bit like a tutorial. There is no let-up. But it is not boring either. Murray describes himself as a passionate Australian.
DM: “The reason I am passionate about [policy] is because I am a passionate Australian. My parents and grandparents were brought up in wars and depressions and I feel strongly about being able to express a point of view and being able to participate in a democracy and defend a democracy.”
CR: Murray’s grandfather lost an arm in WW1, his father spent four years in prisoner of war camps in Germany in WW2. Murray, now 62, was born in Armidale and raised on Sydney’s north shore, his father a Commonwealth Bank manager and his mother a teacher. When he left school (St Aloysius at Milsons Point) he eschewed university and joined the Lindfield branch of the Commonwealth Bank – he was to stay with the bank for 39 years, one-third of that time as chief executive. His university education (a Bachelor of Business from UTS and an MBA from Macquarie University) were mostly completed part-time, while continuing to work. In his early career he spent two years with the bank in Papua New Guinea where, as a member of the Citizens Military Force, he would re-enact WW2 battles.
Murray has been married twice and has four children ranging in age from 27 to 8. There has been some speculation that Murray has his eye on a future in politics after his term at the Future Fund is complete in April next year. Is there a grain of truth in that?
DM: “No,” Murray says firmly. “I think if you have been fortunate enough to have had a lot of great experiences then it’s useful to think about whether you can make a difference but I am a great believer in specialisation. You can criticise politics but there is a degree of politics that is required to do what politicians do and in its own funny way it is a specialised area and I don’t pretend to have any special skills in the political process. I might be able to make some contribution to policy but I haven’t been brought up in politics. “It is a different and important role but it is different. Similarly not many politicians convert to business to commerce.”
CR: But Murray is not ready to put his feet up. Come next April, when his role at the Future Fund is finished, he is headed back to the private sector –
DM: “that’s where human beings create value, that’s where it’s done every day”.
CR: On that note, lunch is over. It’s time to fix that number plate.
http://www.afr.com.au/p/national/lunch_with_david_murray_dbZ3Z3QmNQgA3nykjhOSoN
PS - Its Good to Know their are some Honest Aussies with COMMONSENSE in high places that are on our side!
Thanks for reading this...
Regards,
Jack
Must Read for Aussie Avalonians
PUBLISHED : 10 Jun 2011
http://www.afr.com.au/rf/image_lowres/2009-2014/AFR/2011/06/10/Photos/61b5f96a-932d-11e0-99cf-30a8218dc4a1__V2F6481--646x300.jpg
If the Future Fund is not able to comment then the Future Fund is not independent, says David Murray.
Colleen Ryan Journalist
For five years David Murray, as chairman of the Future Fund, has been charged with managing $71 billion of Australian taxpayers’ money. For 13 years prior to that, Murray headed up Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
During the global financial crisis, he was one of the Rudd government’s key external advisers. He made it into the top 10 in the country on The Australian Financial Review Magazine Power List of 2009 for covert power. “The influence he exerts on the economy would be hard to overestimate,” said Power panellist Peter Mason, chairman of AMP.
But when Murray arrives for lunch with the Financial Review at Cucinetta Ristorante in Woolwich, he was focused, albeit briefly, on the little things in life. He had just knocked the number plate off his car while parking. Not a good start. It is a glorious Sydney day, the restaurant overlooks Sydney Harbour, the water is gleaming. But Murray isn’t in the mood to relax. Lunch with Murray would be short on small talk.
We begin with a discussion of China. Murray has recently returned from Beijing.
DM: “I had just been in Shanghai. The air is getting worse,”
CR: I comment. “Serious pollution [in China] is a growing problem.” But Murray isn’t here to talk about China. He launches straight into a scientific discussion.
DM: “[Carbon dioxide] has got nothing to do with pollution.”
CR: What do you mean?
DM: “Well carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, it is colourless and odourless. It is not a pollutant.”
CR: Yes, but it is still bad for greenhouse gases?
DM: “No it isn’t. It is a tiny proportion of greenhouse gases.” So, if you believe in the warming of the planet, it is a tiny proportion of that? “There is no correlation between warming and carbon dioxide.”
CR: So if you accept the warming of the planet what should you do?
DM: “Take measures to stop the effects of it,” he declares.
CR: I try again. What about the melting of the glaciers?
DM: “They’re not. The amount of ice in the world is slightly increasing. It is not decreasing. It is just staggering, staggering. “So you call something a pollutant – which it is not, it is actually necessary for life. And then the people who don’t agree with you, you call sceptics or scumbags or doubters or something.” Argument over.
CR: Murray delivers his views in a staccato fashion. His manner brooks little opposition. Murray’s tendency to be forthright led to recent speculation that a Labor government would not reappoint him as chairman of the Future Fund. (In the event, his term was extended for one year, in a March announcement by Treasurer Wayne Swan just two weeks before Murray’s appointment was due to expire.) Murray’s performance at the Future Fund has been solid, if not spectacular. But, under the circumstances, it is hard to imagine that any Australian finance executive could have done better.
Murray was the founding chairman and instrumental in setting up Australia’s first sovereign wealth fund. Not an easy task. He and the board guided it through the global financial crisis, posting just a 4 per cent negative return in 2009 when many sovereign wealth funds around the world lost up to 20 per cent of their capital.
DM: “I just wonder if we could have survived if that had happened [to us],” Murray ponders.
CR: Last year the Future Fund returned 10.6 per cent, and in the first nine months of this year, it had an 11.3 per cent return. It has reduced its share in Telstra from the 17 per cent it began with to less than 5 per cent, without disrupting the market in the stock. And it played a front seat role in overhauling Telstra’s governance, with the departure of chief executive Sol Trujillo and chairman Donald McGauchie. Murray maintains that he did not want another five-year term as chairman, and had informed Finance Minister Penny Wong of his preference last year. But there was a change of general manager and a transitional arrangement with a further one year appointment was considered the best outcome.
His outspokenness on government policies such as the national broadband network and the mining tax was apparently not an issue. David Murray is not a humble man – but there is little evidence of hubris either. He has been too controversial a character to attract the adoration bestowed on some business greats. And he has taken some hits along the way. He seems to have taken that on board and, above all, appears to value his independence. Yet, while Murray is sensitive about his image, he apparently lacks the skills to burnish it. ‘Take me or leave me” is the implied message.
But given all that, he is actually very likeable. Warm but prickly. Smart but dogmatic. His views, whether you agree with them or not, are passionately held. Despite the critics, who claim he has been far too noisy, Murray doesn’t see the chair of the Future Fund as a platform from which to voice his views on policy.
DM: “If you look back over it I haven’t said much at all . . . there are people deliberately in the media a lot more than I am.” And the kicker: “If the Future Fund is not able to comment then the Future Fund is not independent.”
CR: Today, however, the views expressed are his own. Murray had chosen Cucinetta because it is a local favourite and close to his Hunters Hill home where he lives with his wife Stephanie and youngest child. He settled on the main course special – chicken involtini with spinach and sultanas on a bed of baby lentils. I chose the risotto special with salmon and mascarpone. A glass of wine each – Vasse Felix chardonnay – and then it was back to the big issues of the day.
CR: “The boom has been wasted,” Murray declares. Isn’t that a bit harsh when we have come out of the financial crisis quite well? Not according to Murray.
DM: “We have a boom with no discernible productivity improvement, rising indebtedness, a strong currency hurting our other export industries. There’s been no policy response of any effectiveness. The guarantee was costless. The guarantee was easy to do, should have been done, that was the right response. The rest of it, in hindsight, not necessary at all. “At any time, every council in Australia has got some shovel-ready work, they could have done some if that was the worry.” So that would have been more effective than giving taxpayers money to spend at stores? “Well half of it got spent, half of it got saved. “Ideally governments should always have some of the highest-quality long-term projects on their books ready to go – for counter-cyclical purposes or for these situations.”
CR: Do we have that now?
DM: “[B]No, because the methodology by which you determine which ones are important and which ones are not is pretty much lost on the political process.”
CR: Murray has strong views, too, on the role of the public service.
DM: “One of the best defences you can have is a highly effective public service capable of fearless advice.”
CR: And he is a strident defender of states’ rights and a believer in small government:
DM: “Under our system, the states do most things that cost money yet, since the Second World War, the Commonwealth collects most taxes including income tax . . . I would far prefer to allow the states to tax whatever they like and cause them to compete with one another to see who wants to live there and who prospers and who doesn’t. Just about everything the Commonwealth touches they waste money.”
CR: Lunch with Murray is bit like a tutorial. There is no let-up. But it is not boring either. Murray describes himself as a passionate Australian.
DM: “The reason I am passionate about [policy] is because I am a passionate Australian. My parents and grandparents were brought up in wars and depressions and I feel strongly about being able to express a point of view and being able to participate in a democracy and defend a democracy.”
CR: Murray’s grandfather lost an arm in WW1, his father spent four years in prisoner of war camps in Germany in WW2. Murray, now 62, was born in Armidale and raised on Sydney’s north shore, his father a Commonwealth Bank manager and his mother a teacher. When he left school (St Aloysius at Milsons Point) he eschewed university and joined the Lindfield branch of the Commonwealth Bank – he was to stay with the bank for 39 years, one-third of that time as chief executive. His university education (a Bachelor of Business from UTS and an MBA from Macquarie University) were mostly completed part-time, while continuing to work. In his early career he spent two years with the bank in Papua New Guinea where, as a member of the Citizens Military Force, he would re-enact WW2 battles.
Murray has been married twice and has four children ranging in age from 27 to 8. There has been some speculation that Murray has his eye on a future in politics after his term at the Future Fund is complete in April next year. Is there a grain of truth in that?
DM: “No,” Murray says firmly. “I think if you have been fortunate enough to have had a lot of great experiences then it’s useful to think about whether you can make a difference but I am a great believer in specialisation. You can criticise politics but there is a degree of politics that is required to do what politicians do and in its own funny way it is a specialised area and I don’t pretend to have any special skills in the political process. I might be able to make some contribution to policy but I haven’t been brought up in politics. “It is a different and important role but it is different. Similarly not many politicians convert to business to commerce.”
CR: But Murray is not ready to put his feet up. Come next April, when his role at the Future Fund is finished, he is headed back to the private sector –
DM: “that’s where human beings create value, that’s where it’s done every day”.
CR: On that note, lunch is over. It’s time to fix that number plate.
http://www.afr.com.au/p/national/lunch_with_david_murray_dbZ3Z3QmNQgA3nykjhOSoN
PS - Its Good to Know their are some Honest Aussies with COMMONSENSE in high places that are on our side!
Thanks for reading this...
Regards,
Jack