Defining Moments: Heather Ridout

Heather Ridout’s latest ascension caps off a stellar business career.

TWAM-20150425 EMBARGO FOR TWAM 25 April 2015 NO REUSE WITHOUT PERMISSION Heather Ridout Pic : Nick Cubbin

People listen when Heather Ridout speaks. During her 33 years with the Australian Industry Group, one of the largest employer groups in the country, the petite chief executive with the convivial disposition had the ear of prime ministers, union heavy-hitters and top-end-of-town tycoons. Her voice has been front and centre through top-level debates over tax reform, fair work legislation, the GFC and climate change.

But even Ridout, accustomed as she is to the rarefied chambers of power and influence, was forced to “take a moment” when she first entered the boardroom of the Reserve Bank of Australia. “I sat down and looked around and thought, ‘How did I ever make it here?’ ” she says. “ ‘Pinching myself ’ is too banal an expression; it was just quite overwhelming.”

The room itself, high above bustling Martin Place in the centre of Sydney, has high-backed leather chairs arranged around an imposing table shaped like a squashed doughnut. For the country girl from Deniliquin, NSW, it was more than that. “It was just like everything I’d ever done professionally and everything I was interested in came together in this place,” she says. “And the feeling doesn’t go away. It’s such a public-spirited institution; it’s all about the economy and making it work for people.”

The decision in 2011 to resign from her position at the Australian Industry Group – formerly the Metal Trades Industry Association, which she’d joined as an industrial officer in 1977 – was “terribly difficult”, but Ridout felt she was leaving the organisation in good shape and wanted to give herself a chance to establish a second career. Within 12 months she was well on her way. As well as occupying one of the top seats of power in Australia at the Reserve Bank, which sets monetary policy for the nation, she was appointed chair of the huge industry super fund AustralianSuper, became a director of Australian company Sims Metal Management, the largest listed metals and electronics recycling company in the world, and was asked to join the board of the Australian Stock Exchange. “I was quite shocked because I had no idea I had a reputation that would bring those offers to me, but it’s been really nice,” she says in typical low-key style.

Softly spoken she may be but Ridout, 61, mother to three children with her solicitor husband Peter, has always relished debate. A terrific networker and intuitive tactician, she couches true grit and steely resolve in a personable demeanour. Though she has been accused in the past of crossing the line from policy advocacy into politics – her detractors dubbed her the 21st member of the Rudd government’s Cabinet – she has always painted herself as politically agnostic, interested only in working with the government of the day.

Following her first job as a researcher with NSW Liberal senator Misha Lajovic, Ridout decided early on that the bear pit of politics was not for her. However, lately, she has been half-joking about establishing the “Normal People’s Party” to represent “people with positive values and a strong sense of citizenship who are not much interested in ideology”.

“Australia’s a wonderful country,” she says. “We’ve gone through 23 years now of virtually uninterrupted growth … we have very high living standards and a very cohesive multicultural society. We shouldn’t be talking ourselves down all the time.” She ends with a quiet, but forceful, word of advice for Canberra: “The destructive nature of politics, I think, is not appealing to people. People don’t want to see politics as a blood sport – that’s not leadership.”