5 Minutes With David Gonski, Chancellor of the University of New South Wales Sydney
Despite a long and distinguished career, the chancellor of UNSW Sydney is still driven to do more.
My first job was stacking shelves at Woolworths Double Bay [in Sydney]. I learnt a lot about retailing and about the customer. One day, they asked us if we wanted to be in charge of the shelves for canned fruit or for women’s toiletries. I remember all the boys saying, “We don’t want women’s toiletries.” But I worked out very quickly that the toiletries weighed less than canned fruit so I became in charge of women’s toiletries. Not only was it less muscle use – because the items were much lighter to stack onto the shelves – but I think I got a better type of customer as well.
The first boss who had a great influence on me was Kim Santow [who went on to become a NSW Supreme Court judge]. He was my master solicitor and I used to sit in his office. One of the things he taught me, which I try to teach others, is what he called generosity of spirit. He was a man who strongly believed that you had to do good in the community as well as do good in your profession and he pushed very hard for me to think about things other than just the customers and clients that we had in our law firm. I credit him for a much broader approach to life than I perhaps would have had without him.
I remember the first difficult conversation I had. I was a paralegal on a big court case and I was given the job of selling the idea of a settlement to the family. Half the family loved the idea; the other half didn’t. Basically, I just told them the other half agreed and that’s that. That didn’t go down as well as one might expect. Today I would be much more careful and I would be more inclusive. I would bring all sides of the family along on the journey and I certainly wouldn’t mention what the other side of the family thought unless there was real interrogation on me. Often when you regard it as a difficult conversation, you forget your own humanity, that you’re dealing with people. You are so intent that you don’t see the humanity in bringing that person gently and with some dignity to the right decision.
My first “failure” was when I was a young lawyer. By that time, I was keen to get my own clients and to influence the heavyweights in the firm. One of the senior partners asked me if I played golf and if I did, I was off to play with some big dignitaries and a big client from the United States. Major failure. I didn’t play golf – or rather, I played it extremely badly. This troubled me enormously because I really wanted that client. I wanted to be somebody in law. So overnight – and remember, you couldn’t Google in those days – I looked up their problems and funnily enough, I came up with an idea. I rang the partner involved and said, “Look, I don’t play golf, I’m not coming over but I have this idea.” Being a decent person, he said, “Well, come and have a drink with them after the game.” There was a lot of talk about golf, which I didn’t understand, but then I said, “I have this idea.” They loved it and became one of my first clients. You think of the ability you have rather than dwelling on the ability you don’t.
The first time I learnt the best way to “network” was when I realised it meant caring about people. Networking is a much-maligned word. People discover very quickly whether you’re there just to do a business deal or whether you actually care about them. If you are able to feel for a person you can do wonderful things. And listening is a very underrated pursuit.
I’m not sure I’m a very triumphant person but there is something I would regard as my first triumph. There’s a property called Bundanon, near Nowra on the NSW South Coast, which was given to Australia by artist Arthur Boyd and his wife, and I was the chairman of the Bundanon Trust when I was young. I managed – with the help of a wonderful philanthropist called Fred Street – to put together the money to get architect Glenn Murcutt to create a new building [The Boyd Education Centre], which won all sorts of prizes, on the banks of the Shoalhaven River. The building is magnificent and it was a triumph of using philanthropic funds on a government piece of land. It has really stood the test of time.
My first big foray into philanthropy was working with [then prime minister] John Howard in 2001. I was strongly of the idea that Australians should be able to start private philanthropic funds, which are now called private ancillary funds [PAFs]. It was Howard who legislated to establish them, not me, but it was my suggestion that got his ear. Now there are billions of dollars in those PAFs and I’m proud of that. I facilitated, in my small way, a great deal of philanthropy in this country and that gives me joy.
Defining moment
At the age of 17, I plucked up the courage to tell my father, who was a brain surgeon, that I wasn’t going into the family business. I was not going to be a medical doctor and instead I was going to do law. He was very, very nice about it but I know it upset him. Every day of my life I’ve remembered his contribution. Trying to match the contribution of an active brain surgeon is quite difficult but it has occurred to me that that’s been the driving force behind wanting to do more than just make money and give advice. I want to try and make a difference, like he did.
