A speech to the Broadmeadows Rotary Club 16 April 2025

When I read Michael Church’s excellent Age article about Glenroy once being thought to become the Toorak of the North it made me think about when we moved from Carlton to South Street Glenroy in the early 1950s. To me it felt like we had gone bush.

Looking back on my life and career from then much of it could be summed up by the words – it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Many of my life and career decisions were not so much a result of considered thought but more a case of intuitive decisions – some of them bad and some of them successful.

Moving to Broadmeadows – South Street Glenroy was not my decision obviously – it was my parents who wanted to move out of a rented floor of a terrace house in Carlton to the new suburb.

I missed my mates and the Saturday arvo pictures at the Palace Cinema – now demolished – was one of the highlights of our week but mainly we made our fun roaming the streets.

Oddly enough we were very tribal in geographic terms and today I have friends who lived a few blocks from me back then but who I never met until decades later.

Recently we were having lunch with friends in Rathdowne Street Carlton and afterwards we drove around to Canning Street. The streetscape hadn’t changed much but like Port Melbourne, where we now live, there were massive extensions behind our old home. The tin shed down a lane where my maternal grandfather had run his SP bookmaking business had been replaced by another massive extension.

After a police raid – they were infrequent and my grandfather was always given much warning – they charged my father who was both a son-in-law and a silver clerk. He never regretted it in one way as he never got called up for jury duty.

But when we moved to South Street Glenroy my roaming was much more extensive – particularly through the paddocks dotted around and up to the old water filled quarry where we went yabbying.

The circus would occassionally come to a paddock on the corner of South and West Streets and various animals were in cages and people could just walk among them. There was great satisfaction when an objectionable young kid had been poking fun at some monkeys and made the mistake of sticking his finger into the cage only to have much of it bitten off.

So if anyone here is missing a digit and wants to ask a question I suggest they raise the other arm.

The road was unmade and there was no sewerage. Going to the dunny in the dark was a bit of challenge for a kid enrolled in fourth grade at Westbreen Primary.

Later our location was very convenient because we could duck over the stiles at the Northern Golf Club and play three or four holes far from the club house before we got kicked off. Later a few of us earnt money – six bob if I remember – caddying for members.

My father, who served in New Guinea in the Engineers, was told by his former CO – then a successful engineer and urban planner – that South Street would be widened at some stage so our front fence was set back further from the road than most of our neighbours – introducing me to the idea that sometimes it is not so much what you know but who you know.

After Westbreen I went on to Glenroy High and met both Neil O’Keefe and John Carroll there.

I also met the Murray boys and that ultimately lead to my long involvement with Indigenous campaigns. Among other things writing business plans for the Koorie Heritage Trust and persuading my boss Frank Wilkes to submit a private members bill for the first native title rights in Gippsland.  Currently I am working on a campaign around the Australian War Memorials’ failure to represent our very first wars – the Frontier Wars. As a Vietnam veteran I find it unconscionable that these warriors have not had the recognition I have been given.

After High school I made my first big mistake from following the – it seemed like a good idea at the time – approach. I enrolled at Melbourne University Law School and within a year I hated it. Instead of looking for another course I got involved in student politics and edited Farrago the student newspaper and then did some journalism and had my first job in PR.

The couple of years after going to uni were what I remember as my ratbag years. Years with lots of bad choices which I was saved from by being called up for National Service. I wasn’t a conscientious objector and fronted up and a few days later ended up at Puckapunyal.

While we were there we were shown a film of the Officer Training Unit at Scheyville and the food and quarters looked a lot better than those at Puckapunyal. They were – but there were also punishing schedules and activities.

I survived them – but graduated near the bottom of the class.

The Adjutant, just before Graduation Day, came to give me some counselling about what corps I might go into. He suggested I might like to join the Army PR unit which would have resulted in my being a temporary Captain with better pay.

In a fit of what seemed like a good idea at the time madness I replied that “As I was in the Army, Sir, I rather thought I should serve in a combat arm.” He looked at me, said OK and later I found myself in training at the Artillery School and then as a Section Commander and later GPO in Vietnam in 1968-69.

This was an example of what seemed good idea at the time decision which turned out well.

Incidentally when I read John Carroll’s book about Vietnam it was so gripping that I thought he had actually been there.

I learned a lot about leadership in the Army– particularly that leaders didn’t lead by giving orders but by setting and sharing objectives and behaviours.

It also provided me with access to War Service Homes assistance which made a huge difference to my housing choices and financial situation.

After I got back from Vietnam I got a job with a PR company and then had a couple of journalism jobs at the old Sunday Observer and Age Suburbans. I also had time at the Environment Protection Authority which gave me more insights into how governments worked or didn’t.

Soon after that my life changed dramatically when I was approached for a job as a Press Secretary to the then State ALP Leader, Clyde Holding, and subsequently, Frank Wilkes. The five years in that job taught me an enormous amount about politics which became very important in later years.

When John Cain was challenging Frank I was offered a job if I changed sides but I couldn’t do that and took the meagre package and left. The day after, my old boss at Age Suburbans offered me a job which I took up for a bit over a year. I did apply for some jobs but kept being passed over for various reasons. Over qualified was a frequent reason but persona non grata with the Cain Government was probably a greater one.

Then a former Labor MP I had worked with, Derek Amos, approached me about a PR and lobbying company he was setting up with another person which I joined. Derek pulled out of the firm first and I followed later setting up my own PR company then called simply Turnbull Public Relations.

Later it became Turnbull Fox Phillips with offices in every capital city.

We had some big clients including Amcor and the Mars companies. We also built up a big client base with major industry and professional associations. These ranged across forestry to accounting and health care. We also started to get big accounts including a wide range of government clients from the Federal Government to various State Governments.

Eventually, as the dinner invitation blurb says, we became the largest PR company in Australia. We later sold part of it to Clemenger and became part of the international Porter Novelli group where I joined the international Porter Novelli Board.

A few years later I was getting sick of all the travelling in Australia and overseas. I wanted to step back a bit and we appointed a new CEO and I remained Chair. It was one of the worst things we did. I had grave doubts about him as did one other Board member but he impressed the Clemenger people. He was a disaster area and they replaced him after a short time and we reorganised things bringing in the New Zealand CEO to be CEO of both offices.

But I had enough.

Soon after that I retired and sold the rest of my shares.

What did I learn from that career in PR?

First, lots of successful business people – particularly in very large companies – don’t know much about politics and how to deal with governments and their impact on companies. I remember one client was having a problem with government and a group of us were talking about various lobbying strategies.

Some of their staff wanted to bring in a lobbyist to handle the issue. I asked the CEO and his staff if they knew how much they contributed to the Government in taxes and excise.

You might guess here that it was something in the alcohol industry. They weren’t exactly sure, but it had to be huge. I suggested that instead of a lobbyist the company Chair ring the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff and ask to talk to the PM, tell him about the problem and ask if he might fix it.

After some tooing and froing that’s what they did and it worked.

Second, speaking as a consultant, you don’t always need consultants to solve problems. At one of my major industrial clients I was advising on something else when the plant manager mentioned to me that he was troubled by a quality control problem. I said it wasn’t my area but let’s go down to the factory floor and talk to the staff.

We talked to one long-serving staffer operating a machine about the problem. He said he was aware of it because another manager had changed the way the product went through a machine and that had created some problems. All you need to do, he said is switch how it goes into the system back to what it was. Problem fixed.

Ironically this lead to a lot more business. Shortly after that we started to get quite a few cold calls about new business. Later I found out that the GM of the company we had helped had been recommending us to other companies because we had solved a problem and didn’t charge anything for it.

Third, have a life outside the company. I think I have a not-for-profit CV longer than my work CV – probably like many Rotary members – and still do pro bono consulting today.

Our company tried to give back to others the benefits of our success through pro bono work and I served on many not for profit Boards from the Melbourne International Arts Festival to government boards where I never took sitting fees.

Fourth, if I was to offer one single thing of value from my career – indeed the most important thing in my business career – which every manager should understand.

It is about what’s called framing theory – how you frame an issue, a project or a plan in a way which determines how other people see it. It is much more effective than telling people to do things because it is about how to change what they think, what they are doing and why they should do it.

A great example is calling inheritance taxes death taxes and another is global warming instead of climate change. A famous US political operative – George Lakoff – wrote a great book about framing called Don’t think of an Elephant. He also worked for both Presidents Bush.

(Demonstrated how it works to the audience.)

I should mention that Lakoff did take a huge ideological turn after his house was burnt down by a raging fire in a heatwave and he began to promote the reality of climate change.

After my parents died and we sold their house my visits to Glenroy were rare. Mostly it was only when we drove down South Street on the way to Fawner cemetery for funerals. The old house was still there last time we did although the backyard – where we had a full sized cricket pitch now houses a large apartment. Not sure how I would feel if it had been demolished but you can’t demolish the memories.

Indeed, my last connection to Glenroy is probably Fawkner Cemetery because my parents’ ashes are buried there.

I must mention here my parents. Both came from families with 12 children. Don’t make any assumptions about their religion as you would be wrong. If you are also thinking about my poor grandmothers they both outlived their husbands.

My father was a truant for much of his school life and it was his time in New Guinea in the Engineers which changed his life. My mother fought with her parents about the younger children being allowed to stay at school after they turned 14 but lost the argument.

I think the Army and my mother’s experience drove their belief in higher education and perhaps influenced why I became an only child – they felt they only had enough to bring up one child.

A final thought. Naturally I didn’t interview all the people we employed over the years but I tried to speak to as many of them as possible.

Some of you may recall – or be aware of – St Agnes’ Girls’ Home in Glenroy which was established by the Mission of St James and St John in 1926. The Mission opened the Home to care for girls aged 5 to 14 who were born to unmarried mothers and who could not be cared for by their own families. It was just around the corner from Glenroy High School.

Our mothers were very keen that we stayed away from them as if their supposed sins were somehow inherited.

One day one of my staff asked me if I would like to talk to someone they had just interviewed for a job.

I did and in our conversation it emerged that she had been a St Agnes girl. I didn’t say much about that to the candidate but thanked her and then said to the staff member – It’s up to you but if it was me I’d give her the job.

People with tough starts in life are often the best employees you can get.