Errol Simper, The Australian, February 21, 1990, p. 2.

When the Industries Commission chief, Mr Tony Cole, gets up to make a speech, most people can’t help but smile. He takes a dry, old subject like tariff protection by the lapels and makes it almost hilarious.

“Economics,” says Mr Cole, the principal private secretary of the Treasurer, Mr Keating, between 1982 and 1985, “can be extremely boring. I’ve been an economist all my life and I’m aware of that.”

What the 43-year-old does about it on the talk circuit is to take the tariff protection debate, dispose of tariffs in a few terse sentences, then rip the intestines out of government-owned business.

Yesterday, at an outlook conference hosted by the economics consultant, Syntec, at Sydney’s Regent Hotel, he was quite ruthless about it — totally unapologetic.

The head of what used to be the Industries Assistance Commission believes government business enterprises are almost inevitably inefficient.

But intermingled in this serious economic talk are some amusing anecdotes including one about Dick Randall, who died in 1982 after a distinguished reign as secretary to the Treasury.

Syntec’s executive chairman, Mr David Love, explained how Sir Richard Randall was an unusual man as senior bureaucrats go. He preferred, for example, to roll his own cigarettes. And he wore one particular baggy suit for many, many years.

When he took the trousers to a Canberra tailor for repairs one day, the tailor decided his customer was so potentially disreputable he asked for a likeness of Sir Richard’s signature.

Sir Richard, whose signature adorned every Australian banknote as secretary to the Treasury, thought for a moment then produced a ten shilling note. Slapping the note on the counter, he growled: “That’s about as good a likeness as you’re likely to get.”

The tailor’s reply is not reliably recorded.

Mr Cole, who believes a little more efficiency — micro-economic reform — could save us a collective $16 billion a year, is himself fond of telling Bert Kelly stories. Mr Kelly, a former South Australian federal Liberal MP, wrote a column entitled The Modest Member for many years and was one of politics’ most amusing raconteurs.

Mr Cole, who believes the rail freight system is about as inefficient as you can get, tells the story of Mr Kelly heaping praise one day on a country station master who worked indefatigably for local charity, coached football and cricket teams and was generally willing to give anyone a hand who needed it.

The station master listened to Mr Kelly for a while, then told him: “It’s keeping me alive. You see, I have to have something to do.”

Says Mr Cole: “The situation with government-controlled enterprises really is appalling. Fortunately, I believe most governments are now in the mood to do something about it. They know the problems. There are, of course, moves to privatise. There is another view that you should induce an element of competition to get government enterprises up to speed, then sell them off.”