Heather Ridout’s passport to influence in Australia’s big policy debates for more than four decades was an honours degree in economics and her decision in the late 1970s to work in the pro-protectionist manufacturing industry association at the heart of the nation’s sclerotic industrial relations system.

She was one of very few women blazing a trail as a public policy advocate in the ’80s and ‘90s. Ridout was instrumental in persuading the Metal Trades Industry Association to drop its long embrace of tariffs in the mid ’80s, helping the industry navigate the waves unleashed by the Hawke-Keating economic reforms, as head of policy, then chief executive of its successor, Australian Industry Group. The influence didn’t stop there – after leaving AI group she joined the board of the Reserve Bank and chaired what became the nation’s industry superannuation behemoth.