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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-05-14 Daily Xml
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Ministerial Statement

Schwarz, Mr R.G.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (14:15): I seek leave to make a ministerial statement on the subject of Mr Robert Schwarz.

Leave granted.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: This is unusual, and I think it is the first time I have ever done it as a minister, but I wanted to make a ministerial statement today to pay tribute to an outstanding public servant who sadly passed away earlier this week, Mr Robert Schwarz. Due to the unusual circumstances we are living in with COVID-19, it will be impossible for many of us who would like to pay tribute to him either at his funeral or memorial service to acknowledge his outstanding contribution, so I have sought leave to make this statement to place on the public record a little of the history of Robert Schwarz.

Rob Schwarz was nominated in 2017 and awarded the Public Service Medal in the Australia Day Honours, reflecting his achievements in public finance. Part of the public attribution read as follows:

Mr Schwarz has been an outstanding public servant throughout his long career and he has consistently performed at the highest level. He has demonstrated leadership and innovation across a diverse range of public finance policy issues, both at the state level and in the national arena. He combines an in depth understanding of both technical and policy aspects of issues with a strong commitment and passion for sound policy development and implementation.

Of particular note is his work in relation to Horizontal Fiscal Equalisation (HFE). His depth of knowledge and intellectual capacity have earned him the respect of his colleagues which was evidenced through his selection to work on the GST Distribution Review nationally. He was also highly influential in the policy and financial modelling work which supported the national tax reforms of the early 2000s that were associated with the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax and the related reforms to Commonwealth-State financial relations which have endured.

The public nomination goes on but that is just a part of the public nomination in terms of the awarding of the Public Service Medal to Mr Schwarz.

Mr Schwarz was at the University of Adelaide at roughly the same time as I was. He graduated in 1973 with a Bachelor of Economics with Honours. I am told, although those of us who knew him in more recent days will find this hard to believe, he was a surfer at uni and remembered by his colleagues as a barefoot hippie during his uni days. He had a passion for most water activities—fishing, kayaking, sailing and surfing in the early days—philosophy, theatre, greyhounds, table tennis, and he was an avid Crows supporter.

His career commenced soon after 1973. He spent three years in the commonwealth Treasury, as many Treasury officers did. He spent a brief period of time in London with The Banker magazine and then back in Melbourne with the Commercial Bank. He joined the South Australian Public Service in 1979 as an economist and then had a long and illustrious career holding many positions, including as a manager of financial policy at SAFA and assistant under treasurer, with various responsibilities through a long period of the 1990s and early 2000s. It was during that period when I first became exposed to his significant work and policy contribution.

He worked through to 2014-15 in the Public Service. I recall, it might have been Tom Koutsantonis (the member for West Torrens and then treasurer) indicating to me that there were some farewell drinks for Mr Schwarz at the Kings Head in King William Street, a frequent watering hole for some members of the Public Service and the law. I attended briefly those farewell drinks.

Rob Schwarz then became—I am not sure I know anyone else who has done this—a volunteer policy adviser in the Department of the Premier and Cabinet to the Labor premier. I am told he was unpaid, except they did slip him a car park in the Gawler Place car park evidently, as he came in to do his volunteer policy work for the former government, I think in DPC and for the former premier for a couple of years until ill health in 2017 meant that he was unable to continue.

Rob Schwarz, in his long and illustrious career in Treasury and the Public Service, played a key role in the early nineties in the strategy for the recovery of the state's finances following the State Bank collapse in 1991. He was one of a handful of Treasury officers who helped set up the South Australian Government Financing Authority in the early 1980s under former premier and treasurer John Bannon. He was also responsible, I am told, for designing and assembling the state's inaugural submission to obtain an international credit rating for the state of South Australia.

My earliest knowledge of Rob Schwarz was when I was Treasurer from 1997 through to 2002. He, together with another outstanding public servant, John Hill, were the two intellectual giants within Treasury who helped drive the federal-state finance reforms of that particular era, in particular the introduction of the goods and services tax, which was agreed through the COAG, or COAG equivalent at the time, but also the very many state and federal funding arrangements that materialised as a result of the introduction of the goods and services tax.

In concluding my brief remarks, I want to say that too often we in public service and public office, and those of us in parliament, know and recognise those who rise to the very top of the tree—the chief executive officers, the under treasurers—but frankly, with great respect to the chief executive officers and the under treasurers and indeed the ministers, and I include myself in that, most of the hard work, the intellectual grunt, the achievements are driven by the people at the next level of management beneath those at the very top.

Rob Schwarz was an outstanding example of that. He, as I said, rose to the position of assistant under treasurer, the next level below the under treasurer. He was a manager of SAFA and various other divisions of Treasury through his long career, and he was an intellectual giant. He was an outstanding public servant and, too often, we do not recognise those outstanding public servants who in the end do not become chief executives or under treasurers.

I personally want to pass on my condolences to his wife, Maryanne; two children, Nerissa and Matthew; and grandson, Jack. I hope they recognise that Rob Schwarz was not only a good man but also an outstanding public servant.

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