The political return of John Olsen

SEVENTEEN years after resigning – unhappily – as SA Premier, John Olsen is enjoying the adrenaline of politics after last year re-entering the fray in time to help steer the Liberal Party to a convincing victory.

John Olsen skiing on the Torrens. Picture Matt Turner

SOMETIMES you can read too much into a moment. See things that aren’t necessarily there. But when John Olsen strode on to the stage amid much whooping and hollering at the Hackney Hotel to introduce Steven Marshall as the state’s new premier on March 17, it was impossible not to ponder what was going through Olsen’s mind.

Olsen, after all, had resigned unhappily from the post Marshall was about to fill in 2001 because of the infamous Motorola affair. It would have been understandable for Olsen to walk away entirely from politics after he quit, scarred and bitter at the turn of fate, yet here he was, all these years later, still fighting, still in the thick of it, answering the call from the Liberal Party to be its president in an election year. Did any of that occur to Olsen as he stood on that stage? Was there any sense of vindication? Of that much used word – closure? Not according to the man himself.

“I didn’t see it in that context at all,” the now 73-year-old says. “(My feeling was) one of excitement and exhilaration that after 16 long years the Liberal Party had been able to return to government and that this was now all ahead of them.”

Olsen says there was no need for any self-reflection, or indeed any self-indulgence at that moment, because he had never accepted as legitimate the reason he was forced to step away from being the premier.

Then SA Premier the late John Bannon and Leader of the Opposition John Olsen in 1983

The shorthand reason for Olsen quitting was the telecommunications company Motorola. The controversy was not related to the decision to offer the electronics firm incentives to come to Adelaide but whether they were promised a side deal for the inside running on a subsequent contract.

Olsen told parliament there was no side deal. One report by chief magistrate Jim Cramond cleared him. A second report by Dean Clayton, QC, found Olsen had misled parliament. Olsen still vehemently insists that Clayton’s report was wrong, but he resigned anyway. “I said at the time I disagreed entirely with the one man’s view,” Olsen says.

He also mentions with a certain wryness that resigning on a point of principle seems to belong to a lost era in politics. “I note that the standard I applied to myself at the time seems to have disappeared from modern politics.” Not that he says he would have done anything differently in any case. “It’s a hypothetical.”

But Olsen is still keen to point out a third report – the tie-breaker? – by former Director of Public Prosecutions, the late Paul Rofe, QC, also found in his favour.

Olsen was tapped to come back as Liberal Party president last year because he was one of the few in the party who had experienced some success in election campaigns. By the time of the 2018 election, the Liberal Party had been in opposition for 16 years and Olsen was the last leader to post a victory – a skin-of-the-teeth win in 1997.

He said yes, because he thought he could offer something – but said it would only be a short-term comeback to the world of politics.

New premier Steven Marshall says Olsen’s return – as party president – was his idea. That he wanted to tap into his experience as both a premier and as a long-serving opposition leader. “He knew exactly what I was going through,” Marshall says. “As we got closer to the election I just thought he would really help us navigate the final months of the election campaign. He was exceptional and a big part of our success.’’

Marshall says Olsen’s big skill is to remain calm when the heat is on. The Liberals, and Marshall in particular, were under a lot of pressure to finally win an election after so long in the wilderness. Then there was the sudden, unexpected entry of Nick Xenophon into the race, just to further complicate matters.

Then SA Premier Dean Brown and John Olsen in 1995

“He doesn’t stress, he looks at everything through a very cool lens. He makes decisions in a calm, informed way,” Marshall says.

He says while Olsen was initially reluctant to take on the party presidency, as the campaign unfolded he observed that he “was really enjoying it’’, chairing the daily campaign meetings and working “virtually full-time” on it.

Which all makes sense, because there is certainly something about politics that Olsen still struggles to shake. An addiction he just can’t quite quit.

SAWeekend has been down this track with Olsen before. In 2009, I interviewed Olsen in New York and Los Angeles. After he quit politics, Olsen bobbed up in diplomatic circles. He secured first the post of Australia’s Consul-General in Los Angeles and then in New York. He became the driving force behind the highly successful G’Day LA and then G’Day USA trade and cultural events designed to boost Australia’s profile in America.

The interviews occurred eight years after he left South Australia and just before he was to return home after the expiration of his New York tenure. But even at that distance from his resignation there was still a rawness to him about the way he left politics. But to my surprise there was still also an attraction to the profession which had left him so wounded. This is from the 2009 story: Surely there’s no way he would even consider a comeback? “That’s an interesting question.” He pauses. “Yes, but no,” he says almost wistfully.

Eight years later Olsen doesn’t dispute this interpretation.

“Politics does have a pull,” he says. “It is adrenaline. It’s a tough life, it’s not easy. It’s hard work but it does have adrenaline and you can make change. For people who really want to make a difference, make a contribution, that’s what draws them to politics.”

Of his own time as premier he nominates starting the Tour Down Under, the Adelaide V8 race, the Holdfast Shores development, building and broadening the state’s economic base, more investment in schools, focusing on food and tourism, increasing exports and the Adelaide-Darwin railway line as significant achievements.

Then, of course, there was the sale of ETSA. A controversial decision at the time and remarkably still a live issue in the 2018 state election, with Labor trying to deflect the blame for today’s high energy prices and unreliable electricity supply back to a decision taken two decades ago.

Olsen said he was bemused by Labor’s continual focus on ETSA during the campaign, but took it as a good sign.

“I thought if that was the crux of their argument, something that is some 20 years ago, they were bereft,” he says. “I just don’t think that had one semblance of traction in the campaign and was never going to.”

He gives an example from his 1997 campaign as an illustration. The Liberals, led by Dean Brown, had strolled to victory in the 1993 election on the back of the horrors of the State Bank disaster. Four years down the track, and after Brown had been deposed in a typically bloody internal Liberal coup, Olsen naturally thought the State Bank collapse would still feature prominently in the minds of South Australians. So much so the Liberals held their campaign launch in the plaza at the State Bank building.

“It was a reminder. No traction. They (the voting public) had moved on,” Olsen says. “If that was four years and this is 16, I took the view that ‘hey guys if that’s the thrust you have missed it’.”

There is something of the indefatigable about Olsen. Given the way he left politics it would have been natural to quietly retire and never be heard from again. Perhaps a little like John Bannon did after that State Bank collapse. Olsen says it was the country boy in him that allowed him to bounce back. He is from Kadina at the top of the Yorke Peninsula. His father, Stanley, and mother, Joyce, ran a farm fuel and machinery business, while John went to primary and high school in Kadina, where he met future bride Julie. But Stanley died when John was 19. He had a heart attack while racing a speedboat at Wallaroo. John was in the seat beside him when it happened.

It thrust responsibility on Olsen at a young age. He left his job at the Savings Bank of South Australia and took over the running of the family business. It taught him “resilience”, “perseverance” and “determination”.

“I was born, bred, educated in the country,” he says. “You have to make your own way, it’s not handed to you on a plate. You have to work your way against odds and disadvantage in country areas that city areas don’t have.”

Governor Hieu Van Le with Premier Steven Marshall and former premiers Rob Kerin, John Olsen, Dean Brown and Steele Hall. Photo: Tricia Watkinson

His first political post was as mayor of his home town, becoming the youngest person to hold the position in South Australia. In 1979 he was elected to the state seat of Rocky River and was elevated to Cabinet in the government of David Tonkin. He became opposition leader after Tonkin was defeated by Bannon in 1982 and would lead the Liberals to defeats in 1985 and 1989.

After that second defeat he departed to the Senate in Canberra, but the federal life didn’t take and he came back in 1992 and was expected to be reinstalled as Liberal leader. But other people had other plans.

Long-term rival Dean Brown was parachuted in instead and led the party to the 1993 election win but was overthrown in 1996.

After the events of 2001, the overseas postings were a chance to reclaim a reputation. He threw himself into life in the United States, a place and a people he had admired since a parliamentary delegation took him there in 1976. And perhaps imparted a few life lessons as well.

“It was the can-do attitude, the resilience, the perseverance – when you fall down dust yourself off, get up and have another go. I admire those characteristics and I have tried to emulate that in my life.”

For these reasons he is less worried about the future of the US in the Trump era than some others.

“One of the things I recall from my time in the US is never discount the US. It has the greatest capacity to keep reinventing itself.”

Olsen is also chairman of the American Australian Association, a bipartisan think tank on relations between the two countries which regularly provides advice to government.

He points to the way the US bounced back from the Global Financial crisis to remain the world’s most powerful economy as evidence. The financial crash did though cost him some of his retirement money. A fact which mainly annoys him because he would have been okay if he had taken the advice of a certain Rupert Murdoch, who happens to own this newspaper. Olsen and Murdoch were talking at an event in New York.

Then John Olsen with wife Julie in 2006

According to Olsen, Murdoch told him that News Corp has just put all its free cash into government bonds – an investment seen as safe, if not offering attractive returns. When Olsen questioned him why the company was taking a more conservative option, Murdoch replied “we have put all our money in government bonds because no bank is safe”.

It was a prediction Olsen, with his Australian view that banks were always solid and dependable, had trouble processing. He went home to Julie, a little confused.

“Rupert just told me ‘no bank is safe’,” he told his wife. “I just couldn’t get my head around that.”

As a result he didn’t act on the advice and subsequently watched his portfolio dive along with the stock market.

When the Olsens left America, it was to come home to a life of retirement. They had an apartment at Glenelg. But Olsen likes to be occupied and he was soon restless. “The first month was good, the second month was okay. By the time I got to the third month I said ‘Julie I can’t stand this. I have cabin fever. I have to do something’,” he says.

This is what led him to the SANFL as chairman and to the Stadium Management Authority to help oversee the generational shift of football to the city and the redevelopment of Adelaide Oval. But first Olsen had to deal with a heart attack. When he left New York, as happens to all diplomats, he was given a full health check-up. The advice was to have an angiogram, just to be on the safe side. He said he would do it later. Then- Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was soon due to visit New York and he had a lot on his plate.

When he returned to Adelaide he did have the check-up, including the angiogram, and he was given the all-clear. Although there was some disagreement between the doctor and the cardiologist. “The doctor and the cardiologist had a bet. A dollar bet. The doctor said ‘you will have to go in and do some work’, the cardiologist said ‘no, he’s all right’. Four months later, I have a heart attack.” Olsen was taken to the Flinders Medical Centre and the cardiologist was called. “The cardiologist said, ‘Who have you got there? John Olsen? I bet he’s pissed off with me’.”

Given his family history, the heart attack was a serious concern. His father and his father’s parents both died from heart disease in their 50s. Aware of his genes, Olsen said he had always tried to look after his health, but still some plaque dislodged itself from an artery and caused a blockage. Since then Olsen has been even more rigorous in his approach to fitness. He’s a regular at the gym and still indulges in his passion for barefoot water skiing, even winning a medal in the “super, super veteran” category in the national championships that were held on the River Torrens in April.

The health scare passed and Olsen threw himself back into the cause. As president of the SANFL he was in the midst of the to-ing and fro-ing over whether football would return to the city. He then became a member of the Stadium Management Authority, which oversaw the ground’s redevelopment. Olsen enjoyed what he calls the “battle of ideas”, which finally resulted in footy and cricket reuniting at the Adelaide Oval.

“In a way, it was like being in government because you were dealing with the public, dealing with quite strongly held views, passionate views about what we were doing and why we were doing it.”

He stepped down as SMA chairman in April and was replaced by former governor Kevin Scarce but is undeniably proud of the legacy of the Oval he helped create.

“This stadium has soul and character and always will,” he says.

The Oval has been a boon for the city and the state but Olsen says the state’s economy needs a lot of work. “The fact that Tasmania, in a number of respects, is outperforming South Australia is galling,” he says.

He also points to slow population growth and the fact that South Australia recently lost a federal seat as a result. But he says there are no quick fixes. That it could take between “five and eight years” before improvements are visible. He believes the new government needs to focus on lowering business costs in South Australia to attract new business here. In particular he detests payroll tax.

“If you are a small-business owner, as I was, the thing I hated every month was writing out a cheque to send to the government because I was paying employees’ wages.”

When he was premier he tried to convince Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello to eliminate payroll tax nationally by raising the GST rate to 12.5 per cent from the proposed 10 per cent.

“They were of the view if they went above 10 per cent there would be public resistance to the GST and they were not for turning.”

The key, as he sees it, is bringing more jobs to the state. More jobs equals more opportunities equals a more attractive state.

“If you are someone coming from overseas with a skill set and you are looking at where you are going to locate you are going to go where there are several opportunities, not where there is one opportunity,” he says.

Olsen is keen on space and defence. On increasing exports and the state’s “clean, green” reputation and is “really optimistic” about the future of the state.

Of his own future, that long-awaited retirement may be creeping up on him. Olsen has stepped down as SMA chair and will relinquish his Liberal Party spot in August. He is also contemplating what to do when his chairmanship of the American Australian Association expires next year. The regular 6am flights to Sydney and Perth where the association has campuses at universities are starting to weigh him down.

He also wants to go while others still think he’s useful. “The secret in all these things,” he says, “is to finish before your use by date.”