Short excerpt from Jonathan Aitken, Land of Fortune (London: Secker and Warburg, 1971), p. 40.

When I interviewed him [Lang Hancock] in his modest Thomas Street offices in Perth, I asked him how he was going to spend his new fortune. In personal luxuries? “No, I’m just a knockabout Joe Blow — your clothes probably cost more than mine do. I’m not an extravagant type.”

In endowing charitable or educational institutions, like universities? “Give money to universities — that would be asking for trouble. All those places do is turn out more Communists.”

Would he then sit back and let the government take it all in taxation? “Not on your life. The Government is getting too rich from minerals without doing any work for it. All they do is spend money on civil servants. We’ve got one civil servant for every 3.8 per cent of the working population,” he claimed indignantly.