David Gonski AC on Sustaining Success in Leadership

Transcript

Brett Kelly:
Ladies and gentlemen, I recognise it’s been a full-on day and a half. I hope you’ve enjoyed our time so far. I have the enormous honour this afternoon of introducing David Gonski, who is featured here as an Australian public figure. David’s been the chairman of many significant organisations and has had a very distinguished career, with a lifetime of contribution. It’s a great privilege to have him here today to share that story. So David, welcome.

David Gonski:
Thank you.

Introduction

Brett Kelly:
Thanks for coming. I always like to start at the beginning—it’s a good place to start. Where were you born? And as I say, the story of the father is often embedded in the son. I read your recent profile in the Qantas magazine. Can you share where you were born and the impact of your mum and dad?

David Gonski:
Sure. You probably ask that question with a bit of hesitation, because as you get older, you either embellish where you were born or forget it entirely. But in my case, I was born in Cape Town, South Africa. I was born to a young brain surgeon and his wife. My father was a very modest man. I grew to know many brain surgeons in my life because that was the family business. He was a very humble and wonderful surgeon. He was quite happy living in South Africa.

My mother, on the other hand, was the daughter of a very wealthy South African businessman. And, contrary to his wishes, she wanted to leave. So at the age of seven—my age, seven—she decided she was going. She told Dad, "You either come with me or I go alone." When I think back now, knowing a bit more about life, I’m not sure what she was thinking. She had four kids, no money, and at the time, couldn’t take any money out of South Africa. But still, it was a pretty serious threat, and Dad came.

Brett Kelly:
And what year was that, that they came to Australia?

David Gonski:
They came to Australia in 1961. Basically, they had four kids under the age of seven—I was the eldest. They came, ostensibly, because Cape Town University decided it wouldn’t admit Black people. Mum thought that was just abhorrent. I must say, I agree with her. She didn’t want her kids growing up in that sort of environment. At the same time, there were the shocking massacres happening. Anybody from South Africa will know what that refers to, and that really galvanised her thinking.

Brett Kelly:
You were very lucky to have a mum who was willing to take a stand like that, which is fascinating, especially in terms of how the world has developed. Your dad comes here, he’s a respected brain surgeon in South Africa. How did he go re-establishing himself, and how do you think it impacted your journey?

David Gonski:
Well, it impacted my journey a lot, even as a young kid. When Dad came here, to be honest, he was trained in Edinburgh. It wasn’t a matter of saying, “South Africans don’t know what they’re doing,” because, by the way, that’s untrue. They’re well-trained. But he was trained in Edinburgh, and the brain surgeons of the day in Sydney weren’t keen to admit him.

So he came as the head of neurosurgery at a hospital called Prince Henry Hospital, which is now called Prince of Wales. But there was no neurosurgery at Prince Henry. Dad wasn’t really a businessman. He arrived here and there was absolutely nothing—no wards, no staff, no patients. So he went to a young university called the University of New South Wales, and they took him on as a senior lecturer in anatomy. He helped develop the cadavers, et cetera, that are still used today. And, frankly, that’s how he paid the bills for the family. Fast forward many years, and you’ll understand why I ended up going to UNSW and eventually became Chancellor there.

Early Career Aspirations

Brett Kelly:
Amazing. That’s an incredible story. So, as you grew up and finished school, did you know what you wanted to be when you grew up?

David Gonski:
Yes, I did. I wanted to be an architect. And I don’t know if there are any architects here, but in the ‘60s, there were no computers. So if you couldn’t draw, you could have the most amazing ideas, but no way to sell them or get them done. It took me until I was about 16 to realise I didn’t want to be an architect. And I have to say, that was only half my problem. My dear father wanted me to be a neurosurgeon, and I definitely didn’t want to do that. So I did a fair bit of shifting around, and ultimately, I knew I wanted to be a lawyer.

Brett Kelly:
And when you were young, thinking about being a lawyer, what did you think it meant to be a lawyer, compared to how it actually turned out?

David Gonski:
Well, when I thought of being a lawyer, I thought I’d be Perry Mason. And now half the audience is probably wondering who Perry Mason is! For those who don’t know, Perry Mason was this brilliant and very articulate barrister—private investigator on TV—and I thought he was fantastic. I was a debater at school, and English was easy for me—many other things weren’t. So that’s what I wanted to do.

Brett Kelly:
So, you went to university at the University of New South Wales and studied law. When did you realise it wasn’t going to be quite like being Perry Mason?

David Gonski:
Before I answer that, it might be useful to point out that in those days, Sydney University was the only law school. UNSW started its law school one year before I came along.

Brett Kelly:
So that was 1971?

David Gonski:
I started in 1972, and they started the law school in ’71. I remember everyone at Sydney Grammar School telling me, “You go to Sydney Uni for law and then you go to a particular law firm,” which I won’t mention just in case anyone here works there, which I didn’t do. Basically, that was the conventional path. I remember I took a step in the opposite direction, and I thought it was the right choice. I saw the commitment of the people at UNSW, and how much they’d done for my dad. I saw it as the university for immigrants, and I liked that. That’s why I chose UNSW.

Brett Kelly:
So, was it in you, growing up, to look for a different angle, or did that inclination only start to develop then? Because most people follow the status quo—they go to Sydney Grammar, they go to Sydney University Law School, they work in a certain law firm. That was a pretty unconventional choice.

David Gonski:
Well, we were definitely brought up with the idea that we had to have a profession. There was nothing particularly unconventional about changing direction; that was left up to us. My grandfather, who was successful in South Africa, came to the country at 15 with nothing and made his fortune. Mind you, he made it in the wrong country. But we can talk about that because, ultimately, it was worth zero. But, in any case, we all had to have a profession, and all of us did that—except for the eldest, who took on the family business of neurosurgery, which I didn’t do.

Brett Kelly:
So, you study law. What did your dad say when you told him about your decision?

David Gonski:
Dad was very modest and passive. He wasn’t someone who pushed me. He was probably running off to operate on someone who’d been hit by a car or something. But he understood. He always said to me, “Whatever you do, do it well.”

When he passed away in 2007, I remember him saying to someone just before he died, “I’m really proud of my son. I don’t know what he does, but I think he does it well.” And I’ve always told myself that’s what I want to say to my sons. I want them to know I’m proud of them, even if I don’t know exactly what they do.

Brett Kelly:
So, you finish university and decide to join a law firm. Which firm did you join? Why did you choose them, and how did you know which area of practice you wanted to pursue?

David Gonski:
Well, I decided to study commerce law, and I loved business. But I think it’d be unfair to say I loved it just for the money—what interested me was people. I wasn’t the type who could sit at the back of a room reciting poetry or writing long, important discourses on things. I was a people person, and I could see that business law was full of opportunities. So, I wanted to focus on business law.

And, to be honest, you might think I had interviews and was the best in the class. It’s all complete rubbish. At my brother’s bar mitzvah, a guy I’d never met before came up to me and said, “I’m a partner at Freehill Hollingdale & Page,” which later became Herbert Smith Freehills. “You’ve got a job with us when you finish uni.” And that was my job interview.

Brett Kelly:
So you land as a young lawyer. What did you have in your mind your career would look like?

David Gonski:
I was absolutely certain I’d practise law for five years and then go to the Bar. I loved the cut and thrust of the Bar, but I misjudged what I told you earlier about my love for people. One of the things I realised... We used a lot of QCs because I was in mergers and acquisitions. I realised how lonely they seemed to be. And I apologise if there are any barristers here who enjoy that, but they sat in their little box, sometimes with an associate, sometimes not. Whereas when I left them and went back to the firm, there were hundreds of lawyers who wanted to know what I was doing. There were clients I could go and talk to, entertain, speak to and so on. I realised being a barrister was not for me.

Brett Kelly:
Very lonely. I think their chambers were called cells. And there's probably something in that.

David Gonski:
That could be.

Brett Kelly:
So you're doing mergers and acquisitions. They made you a partner at 25?

David Gonski:
24, actually.

Brett Kelly:
So the youngest partner admitted?

David Gonski:
Which I think was a mistake. A mistake for them and a mistake for me.

Brett Kelly:
And what was the process, and how do you think they could’ve got it right?

David Gonski:
How could they have got it right? I think they should have... I was very keen to go to Harvard. I had this idea in my head... I had two uncles, both of whom were professors at Harvard. And basically, I thought, “I’ll go there.” I’ll either do an MBA or a Master of Laws. If I had known what I know now, I would’ve said, “Take this young guy who’s really someone who wants to work hard, send him off to Harvard, give him some time, then have him come back.” Because what happened was I became a partner at 24, and I left the firm when I was 33. And the reason was I’d done everything I wanted to do in the law. I was the 32nd partner at Freehills, and there were 132 when I left some 10 years later. It was time to go. Whereas, I think, if they’d done it the other way, I would’ve stayed for a long time.

Brett Kelly:
You’d have had a lot more longevity. Do you regret not doing that study?

David Gonski:
Yes. Not because of the study, and I shouldn’t say that as a Chancellor. Of course, universities are wonderful, but I regret not having a longer period of time to see how other people live. I mean, if you look at my life, sure, I’ve travelled, I’ve been lucky. A lot of my clients were overseas clients. But in terms of sitting down and putting roots down in a place, I can only claim almost seven years as a little boy in Cape Town, other than living in Sydney.

Becoming a Billionaire Specialist

Brett Kelly:
So you didn’t get the opportunity to see, particularly an institution like Harvard. It’s that global, broad perspective. So, at 33, you make the decision to leave. What did you leave to do?

David Gonski:
That’s a very good question. When I look at it now, I was mad. I had a very good practice, a wonderful, nurturing firm, Freehills in those days. We didn’t earn astronomical sums, but I had two kids at the time, so it was okay. So, I went off and set up my own firm. Another partner came with me from Freehills, and we set up what some would call an advisory merchant bank. I wanted to specialise in billionaires. I’d worked it out that they needed help. And I had a billionaire. His name was Frank Lowy. So, I was able to have him as a client. And my partner at the time was very heavily, you’ll laugh at this, in Lendlease. So, in this little room, we started our firm with two clients: Lendlease and Westfield, who couldn’t stand each other and were fighting for every site of shopping centres. But their two main advisors sat next to each other and shared profits.

Brett Kelly:
So what was it that you saw that the billionaires needed help with?

David Gonski:
I think that being a billionaire, just as, by the way, I think being a CEO and I’m developing a view in being a chairman as well, it’s quite lonely. Most people are sycophantic around them. I watched unbelievable conduct around the very rich. The very rich were never wrong. And yet I knew they were wrong. I mean, no one’s perfect.

Brett Kelly:
And they probably knew that too.

David Gonski:
They did. And the interesting thing is the higher you went up the chain, the more they knew that they had to test themselves.

And so, what I offered was somebody who would be just thinking of you, someone who would try and get you the best accountant, the best lawyer. We never underwrote the transactions. When we acted for Packer, UBS was our chosen broker, or Potter is actually in it, we won’t go back into that. And basically, we would direct, and we’d argue with them to try and get the best fee and so on. And after about five or six years, we were the gatekeepers for six or seven billionaires. It was a good life, and the firm was very active. It started to get bigger, and I liked that. That was a wonderful period. That was the ‘90s.

Brett Kelly:
And who were these big six or seven clients?

David Gonski:
I don’t know that I’ve ever said exactly who they are. But, I mean, my relationship with Kerry Packer, which by the way, I’m not hiding from, I loved the guy. He was legendary. And for me, he was a wonderful person. Frank Lowy, obviously. In the end, I went on his board. I didn’t stay long, about 28 years on the board of Westfield. And Westfield was a tiny company when I left. It was an enormous company that had nothing to do with me. It was all him – he’s a brilliant guy. There were others. Kerry Stokes, we did a lot for. And we even had a period working with Rupert Murdoch, who by the way was colossal. It was a wonderful, wonderful period.

Brett Kelly:
What was it that made Rupert Murdoch colossal? The 60th anniversary of The Australian newspaper is an incredible story.

David Gonski:
I’ll tell you with an example. I remember talking to him about something, and then he said, “David, I don’t want to be rude, but I need to dictate an editorial for The Australian tomorrow. And if I don’t do it now, it won’t be checked.” He was a real newspaperman. “It had to be checked and so on. Do you want to sit outside?” We didn’t have mobile phones. “Can I give you an office?” So I said, “Rupert, do you think I could sit and just listen?” And he said he was a bit surprised I didn’t have something better to do. But anyway, I sat there.

He had a yellow pad with one of those green, I don’t know if anybody remembers, those green pins on the top. He got his secretary in, and he dictated the editorial. He didn’t write anything down. And I think it was word perfect. And what was it on? Not a business issue at all. He was talking, I believe, about trading seven days. In those days, shops closed at lunchtime on Saturday. I just couldn’t believe it. Every word, beautifully thought through. I suspected he’d been thinking about it while he was talking to me, but that was fine.

Brett Kelly:
Of all the people you advised during that period, what was it that made them good clients and able to get the best out of you as an advisor? And what was it that made them so good at what they did?

David Gonski:
Well, first, why were they such good clients? Their work was just unbelievable. They were always pushing to the nth degree, and your brain was... I mean, I had to keep up, and I loved that. It kept me really engaged.

What was special about them? I’d say the way they think is different to how I think. I’ve always said, and by the way, the greatest advice I’ve ever given, or indeed received, is that you should know your own shortcomings and, therefore, work out what’s good in what you do. My shortcoming is that I don’t necessarily know where you should go if you’re at point A. Whereas people like Lowy, Packer, and so on, they dare to dream that point B is the right place. What I’m good at is getting them from A to B.

And as soon as I worked that out, and I had a period of my life when I was involved in the entrepreneurial side with Frank, we did it as part of my retainer. And I don’t think I was much good at it. But I was good at helping people get from A to B.

Brett Kelly:
Yeah, very interesting. I heard a billionaire interviewed recently, and he said the difference between billionaires and millionaires is how well they know themselves. So that very much aligns with what you’re saying. So you get to your early 40s in this advisory business. Did you think again that you’d be there doing that forever, or what was the master plan?

David Gonski:
Look, to be honest, I knew I wanted to work until I dropped. You talk about the influence of your father. My father retired as a surgeon at 70, but he kept working as someone who could diagnose your back, your headaches, and so on, until he was 86. And by the way, he retired at 86 because the general practitioner who sent him his work – who was 98 – decided to retire. So I thought, “I’ll go till I’m 86 and see how I go.” But it was interesting. I knew that it was a young man’s game, and I still believe when you’re rushing around, spending hundreds of hours working, that is a part of your life that does come to an end. And the clever thing is to reorganise, keep your mind active, still keep involved, but not try to replicate what the young can probably do better.

Brett Kelly:
And what age were you when you sold that business?

David Gonski:
Well, I was 48, and I could see the dreaded 50 coming. Now, when I look back, 50’s young, but I could see it approaching. And then, out of the blue – totally out of the blue – we received a large offer for our business. I had always thought that the business would die with us. It’s not like Kelly and Partners, they were four partners, and we were all doing our thing with the people that were ours. And suddenly, a large bank, ironically from South Africa, wanted to buy us.

To this day, I don’t know if one of my partners organised it. He might’ve, but I’m actually thankful I’ve never asked him, and he’s never told me. And so they came and they offered us what I thought was an extraordinary sum of money. And I mean, we’re talking relatively in Chatham House here. I think I’m probably the only person – and now, when I say it, no one will ever use me for advice – but the guy came, who was actually in the hotel there on George Street, and he put a piece of paper across the table and said, “That’s the number I’m going to buy your business for.”

I looked at it and I said, “No.” And he was crestfallen.

He said, “David, that is about double what it’s worth.”

I said, “It’s too much. I’m not taking it.” And the reason I didn’t take it was because I was staying with the business. I didn’t want to sit there and have them telling me, “We shouldn’t have paid so much. We shouldn’t...” I didn’t like that. And one of the conditions of the sale was that some of us, at least two of us, stayed. Three out of four stayed and went with them.

Brett Kelly:
How long did you have to stay with them?

David Gonski:
Five years.

Brett Kelly:
Five years.

David Gonski:
And I stayed 13.

Brett Kelly:
Yeah. So you knew that if you took... And it’s very interesting. We bought a firm into our group, and I very much admired the business, made an offer that was far larger than the market would typically expect, and that gentleman, a wise man, came back to me and said, “Brett, I want to join Kelly Partners. I want this price, not that price, because I can’t make the commitment required to make that price make sense.” And he’s still with us and showed a huge amount of insight. It’s very, very rare.

David Gonski:
But the interesting thing is, I was wrong. We did make the value that I thought was too high, and two of my partners reminded me of that. If they were here, they’d get up and say it. But I didn’t know that. I was 48 years old. I wasn’t doing this for the money. By the way, the contract – I’ve still got it in my drawer – basically said I could have as much holiday as I wanted. And by the way, I hardly took any, because I wasn’t that interested. I could do all the not-for-profits that I liked doing. So my life seemed quite assured, but I felt I didn’t want them to feel I had screwed them.

Brett Kelly:
You’re now within what became, I think, a more global business out of South Africa. Investec?

David Gonski:
No, it was already global.

Brett Kelly:
Yeah. Okay, so a global business. Did that give you a bit of opportunity to work more globally or see things that most...

David Gonski:
Well, it’s interesting. We had 11 people working in our office. The next day, 1st of January, we had 411. I was the chair, and Geoffrey Levy, who was with me, was the CEO. It was quite a big thing for us. Suddenly, we had three floors of people in Chifley Tower. Actually, to begin with, it was next door in what’s the Australian Club, and then we moved next door. It was much more international but much more checked as well. I mean, I’d never had to ring somebody in South Africa, or in our case sometimes in London, to tell them what I was doing. I was lucky to tell my other partners what we were doing. It was a very easy life previously. But we did it, and we became much more of a bank than we were. Previously, we were the gatekeepers, and now we were starting to own our own gate.

Moving into Banking

Brett Kelly:
Now, what did you know about banking when you got into that bank? And was that part of the attraction in terms of the learning opportunity?

David Gonski:
No, I knew absolutely nothing about banking. But I should add, if anybody looks up the dates, I became a director of ANZ around that time. So I was starting to do quite a lot of banking. And basically, I ran the two together for a while.

Brett Kelly:
And what was interesting about banking for you that drew you to that?

David Gonski:
Well, look, firstly, can I say, banking is the most phenomenal business? It is the heart of the body. People who malign banks are really maligning probably their experience that they’ve had with the bank. Not everything’s perfect, I accept that, but the bank is the bloodstream of the whole body. I remember when I became chairman of the ANZ Bank, I realised that we had $920 billion of assets and equity of $68 billion. Think about it.

Brett Kelly:
That’s massive.

David Gonski:
That’s a lot of debt.

Brett Kelly:
Yeah.

David Gonski:
That is a lot of debt. $850 billion of debt. That’s banking.

Brett Kelly:
15 to 1 leverage.

David Gonski:
You get used to it. Yeah, you get used to it.

Brett Kelly:
And the size of the workforce at that time?

David Gonski:
In ANZ?

Brett Kelly:
In ANZ, yeah.

David Gonski:
83,000.

Today, there would be probably somewhere around 56,000, something like that.

Brett Kelly:
Yeah. So an enormous step change. What drove that? Was it just the desire to learn? Was it an opportunity that was in a plan? Was it impromptu?

David Gonski:
Well, being honest, the first... As you probably know, in ANZ, I spent six years on the board of ANZ from 2001 to 2007. And then, I decided that the GFC was obviously coming, not that I even thought of it. And so I stepped off.

Brett Kelly:
Perfect.

David Gonski:
And then I came back as chairman in 2013. So I missed a lot of the action there. Having said that, I'd have to say that right throughout, I was not the runner of the bank. And as I said, to be honest with everybody, my first stint was probably vanity.

Brett Kelly:
And was it offered to you by...

David Gonski:
Yeah, the chairman rang me up from Melbourne. I didn’t even know he knew me. He offered me the role to be a director. I said, “I don’t know anything about banking.” He said, “That was a good thing.” And off we went. He was a very clever man, Charles Good, still alive. And I think it was total vanity. The second time I came back, I called it my second coming. I was very aware of what banking was, and I thought that it would be something that I really could, in terms of an intellectual joust, do something with.

Brett Kelly:
Right through this career of yours, you did an enormous amount in the community. I read about the Bundanon Trust. What year was that?

David Gonski:
Bundanon Trust would've been in the early '90s. I don’t know if anybody knows what the Bundanon Trust is, but you might know of Arthur Boyd, the great Australian artist. Arthur owned a property called Bundanon. And when he died, well actually just before he died, he gave it to the people of Australia. And Paul Keating accepted it and gave a sum of money from the government to go into the trust. And I was the initial chairman. And we had to work out what we did with the Bundanon Trust. It was quite difficult. And in the end, we determined that we wanted to bring children from all over Australia to have an experience of learning about Arthur, living on a farm, and basically have an artistic experiment. And it’s been going ever since.

Brett Kelly:
You were doing that at the time of running your advisory business.

David Gonski:
Sure. Sure.

Brett Kelly:
How much were you working with now teenage children?

David Gonski:
I wasn’t working a lot with the teenage children.

But I like working. I mean, I gave up golf when the golf pro that was teaching me saw my four-year-old son, and said to me, “Do a deal. Why don’t I go to the beach and he’ll make my four-year-old into a golfer.” I realised what he was saying and he was right. I was pretending to be something I wasn’t. I don’t go out to play golf for days. I sit at home and work.

David Gonski:
But to play golf for days, I sit at home and work and I like it. And the not-for-profit was just the most incredible growth. I got to know artists. I chaired NIDA, the Sydney Theatre Company. I’ve been allowed into so many parts of the arts and education. And so my little narrow mind, which is a business mind, has been pushed, sorry, to an enormous degree. And that’s made my life.

Brett Kelly:
So for our audience who are less aware, you do this work with Arthur Boyd, as you’ve mentioned, you were chairman of NIDA, you're still the chairman of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

David Gonski:
Yes. For 19 years.

Brett Kelly:
For 19 years. And during that, do you want to share a little bit with everyone what’s happened at the art gallery? Because it’s a tremendous story.

David Gonski:
Well, I’m not sure what you mean by that. We’ve had 19 Archibald Prizes given during my period. It’s been criticised that we’ve chosen the wrong piece of art for 19 years.

I’ll miss next year not being the pariah of bad art. But I’ve enjoyed that very much. Along the way, you are given nine years maximum as chairman or president, and so I actually did that under the great Edmund Capon and I loved that. But then they asked me to come back because they wanted to build a new art gallery.

And I loved building, I wanted to be an architect. So the plans had already been put together, ironically by Stephen Lowy, who was one of my predecessors. And I just had to get the money and put it together. And I loved it. And for the last, well, we finished it on the 3rd of December 2022. And by the way, if you haven’t been there, that’s criminal. It’s absolutely beautiful. Designed by Sana, the Japanese architects. It’s for Australians, indeed for New South Wales people.

And the difficulty they had was they had to justify to the government how to pay $350 million for a new art gallery. So I put a deal to them that we would find a hundred privately if they find 250. And Mike Beard said, “Done.” And I remember walking out of his office, “How do you find a hundred million for an art gallery?” And I’d been so strong, I must’ve been an idiot. But we did. We actually found much more than that because we paid for the art that’s in the court there and so on. And we are now paying for the garden that’s being built, an Indigenous garden in between. I loved it. And by the way, we finished it on time, on budget, and I think it’s just a fabulous building. And it’s my job till 31st of December to get everybody, encourage you to come. So please do.

The Important Things in Life

Brett Kelly:
So for the people listening, the things that have helped you the most in your life and career, your book is tremendous. What are the things that you think have made the most difference in your life and in your business career?

David Gonski:
I think I have been very blessed in my life. Firstly, I married the girl who lived next door and that was a good move. I’ve been extremely lucky, hardworking, intelligent, high performing in terms of her work, probably achieved more than I have, but is very clever. She doesn’t want anybody to know. I’ve been lucky that my three kids are a great thing for me. My father was a very close friend and someone I miss enormously. I have three siblings that I adore. I’ve had a very lucky, lucky break in that regard. In terms of just generally looking at the question of how you steer all these things, I think you work on time management and I think I am a very good time manager.

Brett Kelly:
What does your week look like?

David Gonski:
Well, I’ve got to say firstly, when it is relatively empty, which is not often, I hate it. I’m not a person who can just sit there. I like being overbooked, but I’m also, you and I have met, I didn’t keep you waiting. I don’t keep people waiting. The person who sat here or wherever a few minutes ago, John Howard, you could rely... I used to see John a lot when he was Prime Minister. If you had a meeting at 10 AM, the door would open not at a minute early or a minute late, at 10:00 AM.

And John would dispatch the previous person, could be the President of the United States, wouldn’t matter, for you because he appreciated the value of people. I learned that from him and that’s the way I live my life.

Brett Kelly:
So how do you set up your weeks and how do you set up your years?

David Gonski:
Well, I’m a company director. So my weeks, my diary for the next two years is delineated by various board meetings and around that my secretary is quite good at what she does, moves people around and makes sure... By the way, she always double checks, that’s a thing I’m sure your secretary has worked out. The number of people, particularly those who are not paying to see you, who forget to come, is enormous. People who are paying, the billionaires, never forget, but so she double checks to make sure at least there’s a good chance they’ll turn up.

Brett Kelly:
So what sort of workday do you think is sustainable for most people?

David Gonski:
I don’t tell people what is sustainable for them. I’ll tell you, for me, I like to leave the house at seven in the morning. I’ve always done that. I don’t like sitting in traffic. And so I’m in the office at 7:20 and I love that I never make meetings for 7:30, they’re always at eight. And I have that 40 minutes, which takes away the guilt of perhaps not preparing as well for that meeting because I’ll do it then. And then I’ll just, like a dentist, move through the day and I always like to get home by half past seven in the evening. My wife used to have a rule when the kids were young, that dinner is at 7:30. She’d keep them up until then, even when they were three or four years old. If you don’t turn up by 7:30, we’ll eat. And by the way, you can make your own dinner when you come home. It was very rare, even in those days of no computers, that I didn’t get there at 7:30.

Brett Kelly:
Yeah, we’ve always run a similar arrangement, which has worked really well. So as you look forward now, you’ve had this portfolio of a career. What do you see as the next decade?

David Gonski:
Yeah, no, that’s a very interesting question. For me, I’d love it to continue as it is, but I can see that as you get older, you have to be magnanimous. As I said earlier, you’ve got to change the pattern of your work. I think people need you in a way more, but they need your time probably less. So, I’ve got to work. I chair Barrenjoey, where we’ve got 370 people, and by the way, about 300 of them are younger than me, they’re half my age. And I have to be aware of that. And I love that they come and see me. That’s the biggest buzz for me. And if they don’t come and see me, I guess I’ll close my door and leave. But that hasn’t happened yet.

Brett Kelly:
And what I’ve observed is you’re working so well with your children, and that’s been a huge joy. Do you want to share a little bit about how that happened and how you’re doing that, and how that surprised you?

David Gonski:
It surprised me in many ways. And I don’t know, there are probably some family offices here. After we sold the business when I was 48, suddenly I had capital, which is something you don’t usually have as a professional. So I had to set up some way of dealing with this capital. And the first thing I realised is it couldn’t be on the premises where I do my work, because I’d never look at it.

So, I set up an office, which we’ve still got in Barangaroo, and I got some people. Over time, I’ve been very lucky. Both my boys did law. One is a partner, ironically, in the old firm I was with. And both of them are interested. Working with them has been an absolute pleasure. And I never thought I’d trust anybody. I suspect you’re the same as me, but we won’t go there. You trust yourself and whatever, but you want to make sure everything’s done. But with them, I’m very happy. And quite often I’d say to them, “You make the decision. I don’t want to.” And I feel quite good that I don’t have to make that decision. And if it’s wrong, that’s fine. I know they’ll try.

Brett Kelly:
We have such a privileged position with so many clients doing different things, at different ages and stages. And one of the great things I’ve seen with you, David, is seeing how this has developed with your children and the joy it’s given you. I’ve seen it with other clients, and it always sort of creeps up on them and surprises them. I’ve got a nineteen-year-old now, and I’ve been joyfully surprised at how competent he is. You just hope, and sometimes you feel it, but you’re not quite sure what’s going to happen. And when they can do something and want to take it on, it’s amazing. And I feel very privileged to have seen that in your life.

David Gonski:
But one thing I’ve learned is that if you give somebody trust, they generally live up to it. It’s quite amazing. And the people who’ve let me down have generally been the ones I didn’t trust in the first place.

Developing Talented People & Mentorship

Brett Kelly:
So, you’re known as a great mentor of people and have always had a real interest in developing talented people. How did that start? Was there somebody who did that for you, and how’s that contributed to your journey?

David Gonski:
I’ve had three fabulous mentors in my life. One of them is the guy who gave me the job when I was 16 or 17 years old. It’s good having a job ahead of time. You only have to get the degree, and off you go. But he was a fabulous mentor of mine, a man called Kim Santow. Ironically, he became Chancellor of Sydney University, and I became Chancellor of UNSW. Those were the golden days. But unfortunately, Kim died early of a brain tumour. But he was fabulous, always thinking what’s best for me, always listening to my rubbish. And I felt I owed the world quite a lot, having got that from him.

The second point I’d make is, when you are the son of a brain surgeon and you live in a small community in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, every second person comes to you and says, “Either I was operated on by your father, or my brother, my sister, or someone else.” By the way, you never ask what it was for, because it could be terrible or they might have even died. But you are lauded, and your dad is a king. How do you replicate that in a mere business life? And the way to do it, in my opinion, is to help other people and to be involved in not-for-profits.

It’s interesting for those who disagree with me. The economist I’ve mentioned before wrote an article about four years ago, which said, “If you want to help the world, don’t become a doctor, become a merchant banker.” And I didn’t write it. The essence is that a doctor looks after the patient in front of them, while a merchant banker has the ability to look after a legion of people.

Brett Kelly:
Now, who were the other two mentors?

David Gonski:
There was a man called Fred Street. He’s now 97, and a wonderful man. He had a company called Kalamazoo. Probably no one remembers Kalamazoo, but pre-computers, Kalamazoo printed in a way where you could write, for example, for a taxi company, they could write one thing and tear it up into five pieces—give you one, the driver one, and so on. That was his business. And he taught me how to be philanthropic. And he’s the man, by the way, who gave us the money at Bundanon to build what is now the Pritzker-winning building, the most beautiful building. And if you haven’t seen it, it’s just beautiful on the shores of the Shoalhaven River.

Brett Kelly:
Is this the Glenn Murcutt building?

David Gonski:
Yes.

And so he taught me that you don’t just give, you basically… I know that fellow Peter Singer calls it ‘effective altruism’. Well, Fred was ahead of his time. That’s what he used to do. He used to really challenge me, “Do you really need to get involved with those people?” And I’d say, “Well, they’re saving the world.” He’d say, “Have you actually asked them? They seem to be driving trucks, not saving the world.” Always checking.

And the third person was Frank Lowy. He was my business mentor. And people say, “Frank’s so driven by Westfield.” If you said to him, “Frank, can I have some advice?” Westfield would get out of his mind. He just sits there and says, “Okay, hit me.” And you give it to him. And he was just an amazing mentor.

Brett Kelly:
How did you first meet him, and what do you think drew him to be prepared to make that investment in you?

David Gonski:
I met him in 1980 when I was a young partner at Freehills. His lawyer was retiring, he was 92, and he’d chosen us as a successor. Kim Santow and I went, and of course, it required work all weekend. Frank was quite a taskmaster. Being young, I did it over the weekend, and by the Monday, we were best friends.

Brett Kelly:
It’s great in his biography. If anyone hasn’t read Frank Lowy’s biography, or I think it’s an unauthorised biography, but it’s a great book. And there’s this anecdote—I don’t know if you ever saw it, David—where he would, if he came up against a great lawyer on a deal, he would get his deal done and then go and hire that lawyer. Did you ever see this behaviour?

David Gonski:
Oh yeah, but he would've been... Look, he didn’t go to high school. He never went to uni. One of the great things I was able to do as Chancellor of a university was offer him an honorary doctorate, which was his first degree. And by the way, it's legendary. He got up in front of 600 people and said, “I wish my mother was alive. She wanted me to be a doctor.” And he was very excited about that. But the fact is, he has that brain that would allow him to do that, but he didn’t have the opportunity. I remember when we took over a whole lot of shops from Meijer, Meijer sold a whole lot of shopping centres to us, he read all the leases. Now, he didn’t ask me to, and I wouldn’t have. That wasn’t my thing. He read all the leases because he was looking to see that he could open them more, that he could change the footage, and so on. That was his genius.

Brett Kelly:
So, as you look forward now, what’s the big challenge on the horizon? What’s the big philanthropic project you’re on?

David Gonski:
I would say I’m looking for a project, is what my answer would be.

Brett Kelly:
You’re the chairman of the airport.

David Gonski:
Yeah, but that’s not philanthropic. That’s a business. Very good airport, by the way. But no, look, I’m Chancellor of a university, and at the end of next year, I’ll have done it for 20 years. It’s time to stand down. I’ve served 20 years of their then 76 years of being there. It’s time for somebody new. That has been a massive amount of time, about a day and a half a week, and I love it. And I think we’ve built a great university. It’s number 19 in the world, and it’s secure now unless they stop international students. I won’t go there. And I think I’ve got to look for the next thing, and I’ll find it. And it may be something small, it may be something big.

But the one thing you learn in the game I’m in is that if you are keen and you are a worker, and I still am a worker, that’s all I am, a worker, something will come. I still remember that I was interviewed like this after I left the Art Gallery the first time. And I said in the interview that I’d put out an advertisement that I’d love something in the arts, and no one had answered the advertisement. It’d been six months, no one had come. So I got a phone call from a woman called Cate Blanchett, and she said, “I’m answering your advertisement.” And I thought, “Is she nuts? I haven’t put an advertisement.” She asked me if I’d be chairman of the Sydney Theatre Company, and having her as the CEO was delightful.

Brett Kelly:
Yeah. Fantastic. What year was that?

David Gonski:
I would say that would’ve been 2006.

Brett Kelly:
Yeah. Amazing. So you’ve constantly been working, you’ve constantly put yourself out there, and those opportunities have come to you as a result.

David Gonski:
So far.

Brett Kelly:
I want to thank David for being with us today and go to our little question system we have here. It’s impossible in really any amount of time to encapsulate the great experiences you’ve had, but I’d love to take some of these questions. This is a great one to start off with. What advice did you give Kerry Packer with the creation and end of World Series Cricket?

David Gonski:
No, he had already done it before I got there. The interesting thing was that our little office got very involved with Kerry Packer on Rugby Union, on a similar thing to what he’d done for cricket. Many who love Rugby Union should read the books. My partner, Jeff Levy, basically took a year off work—he doesn’t see it that way—to do that, and that was an incredibly interesting time. I would arrive in our office, and there’d be all these famous footballers sitting there. And Jeff would say, “What do you think?” I wouldn’t know any of them.

Facing Adversity

Brett Kelly:
What’s the greatest adversity you’ve ever faced, and how did you deal with it?

David Gonski:
I think probably for me, the greatest adversity was that I had a pain in my stomach a few years ago, and they did all these biopsies and they thought it was cancer in my kidney, and that scared me. As the son of a doctor, you hear a lot about medicine, and you know sometimes it doesn’t go so well. And I was pretty scared. I am lucky. My brother’s a doctor, my wife’s a doctor, my daughter’s a doctor, and they were phenomenal. But I wanted to plan it like I would a deal. I had to have major surgery. I knew that. I knew it could be bad. And I found a retired urologist who I like, whose wife I know very well, and I asked him to act for me. And he helped me, the gatekeeper, and it was marvellous. And you know what? Once I had this all in place and I knew who the anaesthetist was going to be, we’d chosen the doctor, I knew when it was going to happen, I wasn’t so scared.

The Future of Higher Education in Australia

Brett Kelly:
Yeah. Amazing. Are you optimistic about the future of higher education in Australia?

David Gonski:
Well, I assume higher education there is talked about as university. Look, we’ve got a bit of a bubble at the moment. I don’t know if maybe somebody here knows. If they do, please take me aside and help me. I don’t know why you would stop the second biggest export from New South Wales, and I think it’s the sixth in Australia, which is the export of education to international students. But both sides, both the government and the opposition, want to cut our numbers. And the numbers are very easy, by the way, just for those of you interested in numbers, our university operates on $3 billion a year. These are big enterprises, and we need roughly $550 million to make sure that the research money we get covers the research and the money we get from the government covers the education costs because they don’t pay full dollar. Where do we get $550 million from? International students.

Brett Kelly:
For the University of New South Wales as an example, how many students are there? And what proportion are overseas students?

David Gonski:
We have 69,000 students and 42% of them are international.

Brett Kelly:
And so what is the government’s plan to bridge the gap? Put the prices up by 42%?

David Gonski:
No, no, just be more efficient. And let me tell you, people say... There are three things that are said about universities: one, that they’re inefficient; two, that they’re very up themselves. That’s not the words that are used; and three, that they’re very left-wing. All are wrong. My university is a technology. The University of New South Wales is marvellously... It creates the best engineers, the best lawyers, the best doctors. That’s what I think, and I really believe it. They’re not necessarily left-wing. They could be right-wing. Are they so up themselves, etc.? Well, we are not number one in Australia. I think Melbourne is, by the way, but we’re number 19 in the world, which is pretty good. And we just need to get this across to politicians. And if anybody can do that by tonight, that would be great.

Brett Kelly:
If you were 30 again now, what skills would you focus on to become the leader you could become?

David Gonski:
That’s an excellent question. Look, when I look back at 30, I felt very grown up, but I don’t think I was. I could have listened a bit more when I was 30. I think a skill to listen. I think I listen more now than I did when I was 30. I was quite a strong lawyer in those days. And you might say, “Well, that got you some of these people, and virtually billionaires, they like strong people.” Yes, but at the same time, listening would’ve been good. I think the second thing was that I could structure any deal. Now I know you need a skill to work out whether you should. And there were a couple that I did structure. Gosh, I’ve been so lucky in my life they didn’t proceed because they couldn’t get the money together. When I think back now, we shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t illegal, but it was just not right.

Brett Kelly:
Very, very interesting. Do you think the law schools... When I think of that comment, do you think that the law training had enough content to get people to think about what they were doing?

David Gonski:
I think the law school that I went through, and I hope it’s still the case at UNSW, made me, because it was Socratic method. You didn’t just go to lectures. In fact, we had no lectures. You were basically arguing over things. I think that it did a very good job there. The problem was that there was a certain elite that started to develop, that we were the people who knew the answers in the class. In fact, when I became a lecturer, which I did for five years, I always mixed up the people who were really smart. I knew who they were. It was obvious, but I wanted one sitting over there and one sitting over here to make the class great, rather than just have an elite and the rest of them just on their coattails.

Brett Kelly:
Yeah. Okay. What makes a great chairman?

David Gonski:
Well, can I firstly say, just like everybody drives cars differently, everybody does life differently. For me, a great chairman is somebody who listens. It’s somebody who is strong, but not basically so stringent that you think your view is the only one that can pertain. I believe I am the conductor of the orchestra when I’m a chairman. I’ve got to make sure the violins, the violas, like everybody gets to hear, but at the same time, they mustn’t dominate. I’ve got obviously a soloist and the CEO, and I’ve got to look after him or her. And I’ve got to make them good, and I’ve also got to clip their wings if they’re no good. So I think a listening, hardworking chairman who doesn’t get carried away.

I’ve said very often, I still remember it, in the car park at the ANZ Bank many years ago, the guy opened the door to let me out of the ANZ car, and he said, “Hi, boss.” And the whole day I was debating, am I the boss? And the answer is you’re not. You are the conductor. You have the front seat, but you’ve got to take it very carefully.

Brett Kelly:
As it turns out, with all of our guests, and we’ve been so blessed over these two days to have such interesting guests and such wonderful guests, I could ask you many more questions. But in the interest of your observation about Mr Howard and the importance of sticking to a timetable, I just want to thank you so much, David, for your, in particular, how well you’ve worked with our firm, how well you’ve worked with the advisors that work with you from our firm, and the impact that you’ve had, the positive impact you’ve had on them and your generosity in sharing with us today. Thanks so much.

David Gonski:
Pleasure.

--End of transcript--