Reflections on finishing up as Chief Economist at ANZ
Profile | 15th August 2009
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Ali Moore | ABC Lateline Business | 30th July 2009
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Jordan Chong | Sydney Morning Herald | 7th August 2009
Both of these interviews refer to the episode in March 2002 when the then Australian Treasurer (Finance Minister) Peter Costello rang my then boss, ANZ Chief Executive John McFarlane, threatening to take (according to the latter) “regulatory action that ANZ would not like” in response to comments I’d made earlier that day in answering a question at a conference of chartered accountants as to whether the then Australian Government had ever engaged in any ‘creative accounting’, in which I had replied, “yes they have”, and gave three examples, including the pretence that the goods and services tax (GST) which had been introduced two years earlier was a State, rather than a federal tax, but also noted that previous governments had also engaged in ‘creative accounting’. To his great credit (in my view), John McFarlane did not threaten my security of employment, but did ask me to attempt to ‘smooth things over’ which Mr Costello (who I had known personally since the early 1980s) – which I attempted to do, but he wouldn’t take my call. I related this episode to a few journalists on the condition that they couldn’t use it until I left my position or Mr Costello left his, whichever came first. When Mr Costello foreshadowed his resignation from the Australian Parliament, after the Government in which he had been Treasurer was defeated at the December 2007 election, some of those wrote up the story, including Fairfax Media’s Peter Martin and Tim Colebatch, and the West Australian’s Andrew Probyn.
Sydney Morning Herald international editor Peter Hartcher also included an account of the episode in his book on the 2007 election, To the Bitter End (Allen & Unwin, 2009)