QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

A lifetime’s service to Queensland

Life “I was born in Eumundi but, when I was 11, mum and dad sent me away to get a better schooling at Maryborough where I lived with my grandfather. “This idea of wanting something better for one’s children would have been generated from the family’s Silesian start. Grandfather Hielscher didn’t want his children to be farmers like him, so he made them all tradesmen. My father was a blacksmith, but his brothers were plumbers, cabinet-makers, etcetera – but no farmers. “Then my dad said he didn’t want his children to be tradesmen, but wanted them educated and employed somewhere secure like the government. Security was very paramount in the thinking of those days of the Great Depression. I don’t know whether this is a German trait, or something that just came down through the family, but the idea of improving the quality of life for yourself and your family was very strong in our family. Another German inheritance was a disciplined and organised mind, and trying to make every post a winner.” Career Sir Leo Hielscher’s career began in 1942 when, after leaving school at 15, he worked for a short time as a clerk with the State Government Insurance Office before joining the State Auditor-General’s Office. This was during World War II and to help the war effort he became a runner for the ARP. When he turned 18 he joined the Royal Australian Air Force and spent 18 months in Borneo and then in Japan as part of the Allied Occupation Forces. After demobilisation and returning to Brisbane he rejoined the Auditor-General’s Office and studied at night, first for his matriculation to the University of Queensland and then for his Bachelor of Commerce. After serving as an accountant for the Education Department, he was seconded to Treasury, where he eventually served as Deputy Under-Treasurer for ten years from 1964 to 1974, and then Under- Treasurer for 14 years from 1974 until 1988. He was then appointed Chairman of the Queens land Treasury Corporation Advisory Board. In 1991, the Advisory Board became the Queensland Treasury Corporation Board and Sir Leo was ap pointed as its inaugural Chairman. He was also the inaugural Chairman of Austsafe Ltd (an industry superannuation fund), and the Queensland Health Reform Advisory Panel, and a Commissioner of the Local Government Reform Commission, later becoming the Chairman of the Independent Superannuation Preservation Fund 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.

Getting Queensland’s economy moving In 1964, when Leo Hielscher came to the Treasury, it is not stretching the truth to describe Queensland as almost a ‘third world state’ – the economy was moribund, and in one year the Treasury was forced to apply to the Common wealth for a short-term loan to pay the wages and current running expenses. Queensland was still enduring the debilitating effects of the 1930s depression followed by the complete focus on the war effort in the 1940s with Queensland as a front-line state (literally), and then the austerity that followed. Sir Leo resumes the story: “In the 1960s Queensland had no coal industry, no bauxite/aluminium industry, no tourist industry. Brisbane stopped at its tram termini, and the trains were steam-driven. There was just one major company – Mount Isa Mines (MIM) – and it was in trouble because the rail between Mount Isa and Townsville was clapped out. “The rest of the economy depended very much on our pioneer primary industries. Elsewhere it consisted of a string of cottage industries, stove foundries, a boot factory, small clothing establishments, a couple of woollen mills and sustenance-type personal endeavours. “We didn’t rely on service industries where people work for people as they do today. We painted our own houses, mowed our own lawns, grew our own vegetables in the back yard, had our own chooks, and our own rainwater tanks. “There were some important branch offices of banks, Dalgety’s, Thomas Brown, the oil companies and so on. “Both the State’s finances and the economy had to be put right more or less concurrently. As far as finances were concerned, it was control of expenditure that was the key, and that could only happen with a strong Treasury supported wholeheartedly by the political government. “On the economic side, Treasury had to cultivate a development culture: to seek out and accept globalisation, and facilitate the investment of foreign capital, particularly into our mineral industries.” Leo Hielscher and the Treasury team had to make this happen by working entrepreneurially, by thinking and working ‘outside the square’, by throwing away the ‘precedent’ book, by bending the rules a little, by being innovative, by bravely blazing new trails, creating new opportunities, and thus maximising the benefits that flowed from them.

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