Top Public Servant releases memoir

Sir Leo Hielscher: Queensland Made
ISBN: 978-0-7022-4950-1
RRP: $35 (Hardcover)

From bust to boom, Sir Leo Hielscher has been at the table with sixteen state treasurers, ten premiers and countless major players from the international economics realm over the past seven decades.

In Sir Leo Hielscher: Queensland Made, to be published in June, his unique perspective as the impartial ‘numbers man’ at the centre of Queensland’s economic growth and reform for more than 30 years is carefully documented via anecdotes, interviews and commentary from a veritable who’s who of our state.

Sir Leo joined the Treasury Department in 1963, at a time when the government had to borrow money to pay the public service wages. Under his stewardship the department went on to achieve a negative net debt – where the government’s cash reserves exceeded their net debt.

Over the years, Sir Leo was also instrumental in some of Queensland’s biggest infrastructure and events, including the 1982 Commonwealth Games, the 1988 World Expo, the construction of the Cultural Centre and the Gateway Bridge (which was re-named in his honour in 2010), and he paved the way for the establishment of the Queensland Treasury Corporation, becoming its inaugural chairman, and the Queensland Investment Corporation.

Sir Leo says this book is the product of persuasive insistence from his family and close friends to preserve the stories with which he has charmed all those who have come into his world over many decades.

“There are a great many people whose actions or words have made the final pages of this book,”Sir Leo says, “people I worked with and worked for, who all contributed to stamping Queensland's name firmly and proudly on the world map.”

“We balanced the state’s fiscal position and developed innovative funding solutions that introduced entire industries and attracted investment to Queensland at virtually no cost to the taxpayer – we also raised a few eyebrows along the way and pushed more than a few envelopes, but I’m immensely proud of how we turned this state’s finances around.”

The ins and outs of those funding solutions and the births of the industries – coal, aluminium, tourism – that pointed our economy in a skyward direction are told in a very personable and entertaining narrative by Brisbane-based writer and editor Joanne Holliman.

In the months she spent researching and writing Sir Leo’s story, she discovered just how strong his reputation in Queensland really is.

“Everyone who worked with Sir Leo speaks highly of his integrity and ethics,” Holliman says.

“And he is known much more widely by the public than I realised he was. People I spoke to – my family, my neighbours, those I randomly encountered who asked me what I did for a living – all had a story to tell me about Sir Leo. 

“There are so many tales about Queensland politics and public service. So many, in fact, that it is hard to consider that most of the people working for the public do a good job in sometimes difficult circumstances. We're a cynical mob, preferring to feel ill of those in power, but Sir Leo's career shows that that is not always the story".

“While Queenslanders may remember the buildings, the events, the politicians who signposted the state’s climb out of a moribund and essentially third-world economic status, it’s only an entrepreneurial spirit that will keep our economy pointing skywards,” Sir Leo says.

“If there’s one economics lesson that sums up my whole approach to the state’s budgets it’s this: Think of it like a household budget. You don’t borrow to buy the groceries. Don’t spend what you don’t have. If expenditure is more than revenue, you need to re-prioritise.”Sir Leo Hielscher: Queensland Made is a book that not only lets us in on the private life of a public career, it tells the ‘inside story’ of how a struggling region grew under the careful watch of those who faithfully served the state. It is how Queensland was made.

Sir Leo Hielscher: Queensland Made is a custom publication by University of Queensland Press. It is available to purchase from the State Library of Queensland Bookshop, and other independent bookstores in Queensland 

AUTHOR EVENT:

6.15pm Thursday, July 24

Mary Ryan’s Bookstore, Milton QLD

FREE EVENT with refreshments

RSVP to the bookshop on 3510 5000 

About Sir Leo Hielscher AC

BComm, D Univ Griffith (Hon), FAIM, FCPA, FFTP (Hon)

Sir Leo Hielscher AC has over 50 years’ experience in the areas of Government, the banking and finance industry, domestic and global financial markets, the superannuation industry, and as an independent company director.

He was the Under Treasurer of Queensland for 14 years (1974-1988) before his appointment as Chairman of the Queensland Treasury Corporation (Advisory Board) in 1988. In 1991, the Advisory Board became the Queensland Treasury Corporation Board and Sir Leo was appointed as its inaugural Chairman, stepping down in June 2010.

In July 2010, Sir Leo was appointed Foundation Chairman in perpetuity and Special Advisor to the QTC Board.

Sir Leo is also Chairman of the Independent Superannuation Preservation Fund (ISPF) and a Director of the American Australian Association Ltd. As a company director, Sir Leo has considerable experience at board level and has been associated with a number of public and private sector boards.

Sir Leo was awarded an Eisenhower Fellowship in 1973, a Knight Bachelor in 1987, an Honorary Doctorate of Griffith University in 1993, and a Companion in the Order of Australia (AC) in the General Division in 2004. He was honoured as a ‘Queensland Great’ by the Queensland Government in 2007.

About Joanne Holliman

Joanne Holliman holds an honours degree in literature and has worked in the publishing industry as an editor and author for over twenty years. She has been employed by major publishing companies, including Allen & Unwin, Hachette and Penguin, and is presently working on her own writing and freelancing as an editor. She is also a sessional academic at QUT, tutoring in non-fiction creative writing and lecturing in the author/editor relationship.