The secret ‘wild life’ of Ken Henry

Long before Ken Henry became one of the most famous economists in Australia, he was the son of a logger in northern NSW with a ringside seat to the follies of the forestry industry and its decline.

Born in 1957, Henry grew up in Taree in a two-bedroom timber house as the middle of three boys with two younger sisters. Across the dirt road from the home where his mother still lives today was a sawmill, with two more within a 15-minute walk.

His parents both grew up on dairy farms and tried to make a go of that as newlyweds, but it only took a few years before they were wiped out by drought.

Former Treasury secretary Ken Henry in Nambucca Heads.Credit: Janie Barrett

Henry’s father went back to logging, a job he first did with his older brothers when he left school at 13. Throughout Henry’s childhood, his father worked as an employed logger for local sawmills and also took contracts for the Forestry Commission of NSW – a predecessor to the NSW Forestry Corporation.

Henry recalls his father sharing stories with the family about the “absurd” requests from the Forestry Commission – one time he was tasked to go into a forest and cut down every slow-growing tree, not to harvest the timber but to clear space for faster-growing species. In particular that meant cutting down turpentine, a valuable wood prized for its water resistance and used in marine environments.

“He told the story over the dinner table: he said, ‘so I chopped down 80 turpentine … huge trees, hundreds of years old, and just left them’,” Henry recalls.

“Some decades later, when I was in university or home for Christmas, he told me ‘you know how I chopped down all those turpentine? I went back to the Forestry Commission the other day, and I said ‘they’d still be there, they’d still be in perfect condition, can I go in and get them for the local sawmill?’ And they said no’.”

Economist Ken Henry is living back on the Mid North Coast where he grew up, and focusing on environmental work.Credit: Janie Barrett

Henry explains the organisation’s charter was not to protect valuable timber but to maximise “sustainable yield” – economist-speak for optimising the greatest volume that can be taken from a forest every year forever. This is still the legislative task of Forestry Corp, though regulations are different, and this masthead does not suggest these practices still occur.

“As a kid, you can’t possibly understand why this stuff happens, but you get a gut sense that it matters,” Henry says. “This is the reason I became an economist – I just was really interested in trying to understand how humans could do such mad things.”

Henry was a respected public servant who rose to head the Australian Treasury for 10 years, from 2001 to 2011, and was later chair of National Australia Bank.

He led reviews of the tax system for both the Howard and Rudd governments – the latter is commonly known as “the Henry review”. He has a PhD in economics, two honorary doctorates, the Centenary Medal and a Companion of the Order of Australia.

The seared half shell scallops with wakame, pickled ginger, herby bits and a sesame and soy dressing are the star of the meal.Credit: Janie Barrett

His work now focuses on the environment. He is chair of the Nature Finance Council, the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation and Wildlife Recovery Australia, and a non-executive director of Accounting for Nature Ltd and the Digital Finance CRC. In 2022-23 he led the NSW government’s independent statutory review of the state’s Biodiversity Conservation Act.

We meet for lunch at the Wharf Street Cafe in Nambucca Heads, halfway between Henry’s home near Port Macquarie and Coffs Harbour where I am reporting on the state government’s plans to create a 315,000-hectare Great Koala National Park.

I packed a nice dress for our meeting, but I was delayed in a forest in the morning so I text from the road to alert him to my casual attire. He texts back, promising he won’t be judgmental.

Ken Henry has the “berry power” smoothie with blueberries, banana, coconut and milk and I have one with mango, mint and coconut water.Credit: Janie Barrett

Henry is there when I arrive, looking fresh in a pale blue shirt the colour of the beautiful Nambucca River.

We start our meal with smoothies – berry for Henry and mango for me – and share the special of seared half shell scallops with pickled ginger and herbs, easily the best part of the meal. For mains, Henry has fish and chips and I have slow-roasted tomatoes with haloumi on sourdough, both passable.

We eat slowly while we talk and the staff are very patient with us as we linger long into clean-up time. By the time we think of coffee, they’ve already cleaned the machine.

Ken Henry’s fish and chips is snapper. He would have preferred a bit less breadcrumb but nonetheless, says it is very tasty.Credit: Janie Barrett

Henry tells me we are sitting not far from the old stomping ground of one of his ancestors: Angus Mackay, one of the settlers of Macksville who died a few months shy of 100 in 1894. Across the river, Nambucca Headland Museum holds Mackay’s Blackthorn cane – a thorny stick awarded for service in the Battle of Waterloo and brought from Scotland in the 1830s.

Seventy years later, and several hundred kilometres to the south, Henry was growing up in Taree. He was not even 10 years old when he saw the sawmill across the road close, and he saw this repeatedly as a teenager.

Henry says he saw the impact on the community and his parents’ distress at the prospect of unemployment, though he believes his father counted himself lucky it didn’t happen more often.

The bill for lunch at the Wharf Street Cafe in Nambucca Heads

“I remember when I was very young, I wouldn’t even have been in high school, I remember my father saying to the three boys: ‘this not an industry for you, this industry does not have a future’,” Henry says.

The reason for the sawmill closures was lack of timber – all the big trees had already been logged, Henry says. His father had to go further afield, spending the week camping up in the mountains and returning home on weekends with his haul of logs.

These days timber harvesting is done with huge machinery but back then, it was more like the wood chop event at the Sydney Royal Easter Show. Henry saw his father use his axe to make notches in the trunk, insert a board, climb on it, and repeat the process until he was high enough in the tree to safely cut it with his chainsaw.

I have the slow roasted tomatoes with haloumi on sourdough.Credit: Janie Barrett

Henry believes it is time to end native forestry and shift to a full plantation model for reasons both ecological and economic. He points out that Forestry Corp consistently operates at a loss, so taxpayers are underwriting the destruction of forests for a handful of jobs. I put it to him that Forestry Corp explains its losses on the fact it provides services such as firefighting and state forest recreation that are not fully subsidised by the government, but Henry says this is inconsistent with the legislation.

Former Treasury secretary Ken Henry with a wild wombat in the Southern Highlands about four years ago.

Henry disputes claims that the wood that comes out of native forests is necessary for the economy or the construction industry. Unlike Henry’s childhood home built from local hardwood, modern houses with timber frames use softwood – plantation or imported pine. The main use of hardwood in building is high-end floorboards that, Henry points out, most people can’t afford.

Henry grew up surrounded not just by sawmills but also by bushland. He spent every afternoon after school either playing sport or in the bush, climbing trees, running through the forest, and visiting what was then called a “swamp” – actually a healthy wetland full of beautiful birds such as kingfishers.

Most of the wetlands in the Manning Valley have since been drained, producing acid sulfate soils and dried peat that can burn for months after a bushfire, Henry says.

Henry was also drawn to the beach – his father was one of the founders of the junior surf lifesaving club at Crowdy Head and the three boys all learned to surf.

He tried surfing in Sydney while studying economics and law at the University of NSW in the late 1970s, but gave up after catching conjunctivitis from polluted water. His brothers still surf, but Henry lost the knack during his long decades in Canberra.

For an 18-year-old country boy, Sydney felt a bit “hostile” at first, but he grew to like it. He met his wife Naomi at university and they spent five years in New Zealand while Henry did his PhD. In 1984 the couple decided to move to Canberra for Henry to work in Treasury under the Hawke-Keating government, while Naomi Henry worked for the National Library.

He never lost his love of nature. In fact, the whole time he was running Treasury, he had a secret life as a wildlife rescuer and carer along with his wife and their two children.

A wombat joey rescued by the Henry family.

(It was not so secret to those who knew him – he occasionally came to Treasury offices wearing a joey under his shirt because the animal needed to stay warm).

The family had about 280 hectares between two properties near Braidwood, and rehabilitated hundreds of animals, including eastern grey kangaroos, red-necked wallabies, swamp wallabies, wallaroos, wombats, possums and gliders.

Henry served as president of Wildcare Queanbeyan for a few years and was particularly devoted to a Rosenberg’s monitor, similar to a big goanna, called Claws.

A small mob of eastern grey kangaroos and a wombat that Ken Henry and his family rescued as joeys. They are in a pre-release site on the family’s former property near Canberra.

The giant lizard needed physiotherapy twice a day, which meant it could not go into torpor in winter. Henry built Claws an outdoor enclosure with central heating, but after 18 months the creature died of a bowel blockage. “It was gut-wrenching,” Henry says.

Now back on the Mid North Coast with Naomi to be near his mother, Henry focuses on environmental work. He’s had faith in economics to provide environmental answers since 1992-93 when he was posted to the OECD and the very first meeting he attended was about climate change.

I ask why we are yet to solve the problem. It’s a failure of democracy to consider the needs of future generations, Henry says.

When I ask what gives him hope, he replies deadpan: “What on Earth makes you think I have hope?”

He then says younger politicians joining parliament have the opportunity to create huge change, and it is not too late to make a difference.

“I wish we’d been smarter, but I think there is an opportunity to turn things around and seeing that is really quite motivating,” Henry says.

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