Ron Walker: Champion for Melbourne
Ron Walker’s generosity belied his tough image.
Steve Bracks had barely left Government House after being sworn in as premier of Victoria in 1999 when the telephone rang. It was Ron Walker, the business and political identity whose profile had risen sharply during the hectic Kennett era, which was marked by political shirtfronts and economic transformation.
Labor had spent years hammering Walker over his connections to Jeff Kennett, his role with the booming Crown casino and the controversy over the Formula One Grand Prix he had “stolen’’ from Adelaide. The freshly minted Labor premier was preparing for the conversation to go anywhere; at precisely that time Walker’s great mate Kennett was dealing with the pain of life after politics.
Instead, Walker leapt out of the trenches and told Bracks: “I’m happy to serve your government and support you.”
In modern Victorian political history it was one of the more remarkable conversations and an insight into the inner workings of Walker, who died on Tuesday aged 78, after a stubborn, years-long battle with cancer.
Bracks reflected yesterday on a relationship through eight years of his premiership, strengthened by the 2006 Commonwealth Games, which Walker had overseen, and the broadening of the crucial major events calendar.
“It was very clear that he was still the federal treasurer of the Liberal Party but it was because it was clear there was no issue from where we stood,’’ he told The Australian yesterday.
But Bracks had also stared down some resistance in his cabinet because Walker was seen by many in Labor as emblematic of the Kennett years, a flag-waving, card-carrying backer of the former Liberal premier. More than that, Walker had also been one of the greatest fundraisers for the Liberal organisation nationally, a man so entrenched in its workings that when the party’s federal executive meets at its Canberra headquarters, it does so in the room named after him.
His death after a six-year struggle with cancer has opened up a new front in the Walker story, where friends are — for the first time — talking about a man who for years was known as “Mr Melbourne” but who more accurately had a key role in national and international political and sporting affairs.
His former business partner Lloyd Williams was one of several close friends who carefully started opening the book on a hidden aspect of Walker’s life. He was a man who gave generously to causes that would have seemed lost to many.
Radio 3AW’s Neil Mitchell was a friend of Walker’s who talked yesterday about how the billionaire property developer and former casino owner would randomly call in to the newsdesk and provide substantial financial assistance to callers.
“Ron would sometimes promise $10,000, $20,000 to help somebody out on the basis that we didn’t tell anybody,’’ Mitchell says. “And sure enough, the money would turn up before we got off air.’’ Williams, the Melbourne Cup-winning horse owner who partnered with Walker to build Crown casino, alludes to the same generosity. “He did a tremendous amount for people,” Williams says, referring to more than just his friend’s campaign to have the melanoma drug Keytruda made available in Australia.
“He did lots of things for lots of people that you and I would be surprised about.”
There has probably not been an unelected official in Victoria who has done more for the state in the past 40 years, at the same time as having a national and global impact, rising to become overseas treasurer of the British Conservative Party and a global player in Formula One racing.
Through all this, Walker was a conundrum, never easy to read and with his motives often under question as he managed a property-based $1 billion investment portfolio, a close relationship with the Liberal Party and high-profile public positions that ranged from the Grand Prix to major events and the arts.
The Crown casino and Grand Prix were deeply embroiled in controversy, although the passage of years is stripping layers off the anger in most sections of the community.
The record shows that Walker’s greatest strength was working with like minds, disregarding their politics and harnessing their passion for the same agendas. It explains why he worked closely with Labor’s struggling Kirner government to bid for the 1996 Olympic Games.
“He was a big-picture person. He would find a direction and set about using his federal and international contacts,’’ Bracks recalls.
Walker was so often flying overseas — particularly London — that he earned the nickname “1A” because he flew first class at the front of the plane with monotonous regularity, but with three-day turnarounds to and from Britain.
“There is nothing that he wouldn’t do,” Williams says.
Walker amassed a fortune and despite being educated at the relatively well-heeled Caulfield Grammar, did not grow up as a member of the Melbourne establishment. He was entirely self-made. Walker’s investments were dominated by property and right to the end he was knee-deep in the business, having bought his first investments at Phillip Island, southeast of Melbourne.
Those investments were sold at a loss but in the 1970s he set up the development company Hudson Conway with Williams, focusing on inner-city residential and then CBD offices. When Crown casino was built in 1997, it was a $2.2bn monument to the gaming industry, widely considered one of the best in the world.
This is a long way from Walker’s first job washing cars, including for the mother of retailer Solomon Lew.
At the heart of Walker’s endeavours was a love of money, the next deal, and public service after he became lord mayor at the age of 34.
He combined his wealth generation with his contribution to public causes.
Former Liberal prime minister John Howard was effusive in his praise of Walker when word broke of his death. Walker had resurrected the party’s finances by cracking heads together when the money needed to be raised for the 1996 election. “He was a close friend and great supporter of the Liberal Party,’’ Howard says. “He was a titan among fundraisers for the Liberal Party.”
In the mid-90s Walker was still on the golden road to becoming a billionaire but friends say he pursued business and politics with equal enthusiasm.
At the same time as he was building Crown casino, Walker was also overseeing the first Grand Prix race and helping to mastermind the Victorian major events agenda — which is the envy of Australia, if not every medium-sized Western country.
A friend tells The Australian that as federal Liberal treasurer, Walker was a tough, hands-on, fundraiser.
“He would actually go around and say the party needs money and it needs a big cheque,’’ the friend recalls.
“He wouldn’t leave until he got that big cheque.”
As recently as the last election, Walker was doorknocking for cash for the Liberal Party, with Malcolm Turnbull declaring on Monday: “We will not see his like again.”
And yet, as The Australian’s Pamela Williams noted in The Victory, her bookon the 1996 federal election, Walker was counselled to give more thought to protecting his business interests, which included Crown casino, in which Kerry Packer was a major shareholder.
Walker’s political ties to Kennett and the Liberal Party more broadly had been putting the spotlight on his business interests.
Of his business partner Sir Rod Carnegie, Pamela Williams wrote: “Carnegie had advised Walker that politics and business did not mix well and suggested he give up fundraising for the Liberal Party. Walker was only the fifth federal treasurer in 50 years. In that time the party had had 25 presidents.”
In some senses, Walker had been a victim of Kennett’s success and the vitriolic, Labor and union-inspired campaign to undermine the then state Coalition government. The battle for the casino tender had become central to Victorian Labor’s attempts to claw back lost ground after the record loss in 1992.
In this context, it’s even more remarkable that Walker decided to make that call to Bracks in 1999.
All the way, Kennett backed Walker with vigour, constantly declaring: “He is a generous, magnificent man.”
Kennett was probably Walker’s biggest backer, stating on the day of his friend’s death: “No individual’s unselfish, consistent contribution has delivered so much to what is rightly magnificent Melbourne today.”
As active as Walker was in Liberal politics, he played a quiet game. He rarely intervened publicly in party matters and seldom commented on governments of the day. Bracks had him pinned as a small-“l” liberal but Walker’s alliances in the party were broad and transcended factional politics. He was friends with both Howard and former leader Andrew Peacock, enjoyed the company of state Liberal president Michael Kroger, and was close to Kennett.
But he rejected attempts by former Liberal prime minister John Gorton to draft him to run in Gorton’s seat of Higgins. Melbourne was his town; Canberra a place to visit only when essential.
Pamela Williams noted: “Unusually for a Melbourne Liberal, he had also succeeded in straddling the byzantine factional hatreds that ruled the party, comfortably sustaining friendships with senior figures who openly loathed each other.”
To that extent, Walker was an elite networker.
While he ran Fairfax for several years, Walker reckoned that Melbourne’s heart beat loudest in the offices of the News Corp-owned Herald Sun and through the voice of Neil Mitchell and the dominant commercial TV stations.
Walker, a self-made man who grew to wear establishment suits, never forgot his roots or the people he needed to win over. At the same time, he was hostile to criticism and unafraid to raise his elbows if he felt his interests were being harmed.
Walker recently said that his biggest contribution to public life was his role in the campaign to have the anti-cancer drug Keytruda offered as a mainstream option in Australia. The change meant that patients with a concession card would pay $6.10 for each prescription. Before that, it was a $150,000 yearly investment.
When Walker’s death became public, the tiny community of Walwa on the Murray River responded quickly.
In 2002, Walker had saved the then Walwa Bush Nursing Hospital in northeastern Victoria from closing through a donation of $150,000.
While the donation has long been forgotten in Melbourne, the local community of fewer than 300 people responded with passion on hearing of Walker’s death.
The hospital’s chief executive, Sandi Grieve, told local media that the township may not have survived without Walker’s help.
“That $150,000 gave us the breathing space to start a new service,” she said.
“There’s a very real possibility without that we would have no service at all and as a result of that have no town because of a lack of medical services.’’
Walker’s death has sharpened the focus on his headline achievements.
Meanwhile, small pockets of battling Australia are quietly remembering the generosity of a man who helped rescue a state and build a personal fortune on the back of an unmatched network and exquisite political compromise and negotiation across both major parties.
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LIFE & TIMES
Ronald Joseph Walker is born September 20, 1939, son of a Hoyts cinemas supervisor.
He earns pocket money as a Caulfield Grammar schoolboy by concocting for sale backyard dishwashing detergent and cleaning cars.
Marries Barbara Lawson in 1967, they go on to have three children.
Elected to the Melbourne City Council in 1969 at age 30, and chosen as lord mayor in 1974 .
Propels his business career as a developer after selling a chemical company for $11 million in 1979.
Servesas federal treasurer of the Liberal Party 1987-2002.
Labor premier Joan Kirner makes him chairman of the Melbourne Major Events Company in 1991.
In 1993, with Liberal Jeff Kennett as premier, he lures the Formula One Grand Prix away from Adelaide.
Co-founds Hudson Conway, the company behind Melbourne’s Crown casino, which opens in 1994 .
Leads a failed bid for Melbourne to host the 1996 Olympic Games but wins rights for the 2006 Commonwealth Games.
Appointed Fairfax chairman in 2005.
Launches an unsuccessful 2011 bid to buy The Age newspaper and talk radio station 3AW.
Diagnosed with melanoma in 2012, he flies to the US for trials of the costly drug Keytruda, which he champions as a PBS medicine for Australian patients.
Dies at 78 from cancer on Tuesday.
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