Vale Percy Allan AM

Obit for friend and fellow-traveller ... Prolific writer on economics and politics ... Public finance guru ... Technocrat with humanity and broad interests ... Theatre ... Animals ... Art

Percy Allan: public finance and more ... 

Percy Allan AM, a great friend and supporter of Justinian and its editorial team, died on Tuesday (Oct. 22) after a battle with lymphoma.

He was one of the country's leading macro-economists and public finance authorities with a public service career capped as Secretary to the NSW Treasury. A fraction of his offerings can be found on John Menadue's website, Pearls and Irritations. 

Yet Percy was much more than a policy wonk, even though he was a mighty fine wonk. There was another Percy, devilishly funny, risqué, theatrical, with a fine artistic eye. 

After a Master of Economics from the University of Sydney, he joined the Bank of New South Wales in London, commuting from his digs in Sevenoaks, Kent, on Grocer Heath's trains packed to the gills due to the "three-day week" austerity program. 

He returned to Australia in 1976 and took up leading economic advisory and research roles in the NSW Treasury before becoming head of the Treasury and chairman of the NSW Treasury Corporation, the state's central borrowing and investing authority.  

He also met fellow economist and life-long partner Philippa (Pip) Smith who at that time was working at the Australian Council of Social Service.

Percy was keen to seize opportunities for reform and to change sluggish state institutions, to make them more transparent and functional, for the ultimate benefit of taxpayers and the community.

To this end he, and his Treasury colleagues, drove the agenda for corporatisation of government trading enterprises, which he said led to the tripling of labour productivity and increased revenue for the operation of schools, hospitals, community services and policing. 

Les Bury: Menzies era ministerHe was admired across the political divide, respected by Labor and Liberals alike - serving as head of Treasury during the Wran, Greiner and Carr premierships. 

In 1972 he stood as the Labor Party candidate for Wentworth against the Liberals (Lugubrious) Les Bury. 

His campaign manager was Neville Wran and he ran under the informal campaign slogan "Point Percy at Parliament", which resulted in a swing to Labor. 

Possibly his proudest achievement after leaving the Treasury was the implementation of his Evidence Based Research Project which resulted in the Upper House of NSW passing an order that all government Bills should answer a public interest questionnaire. This project will be continued through the Susan McKinnon Foundation. 

After the public service, he joined the large building supply company Boral Ltd as its finance director - a world of bricks and cement. Understandably another career beckoned and he soon found himself in demand as a private consultant - giving advice on financial management to government authorities in Kazakhstan, Mongolia, India, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Pacific.

On home soil he advised scores of local councils on streamlining their finances and their functions. 

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Percy was born in London in 1946, the first child of Emil Vogelhut and Bodil Kirsten Bach Hansen. Emil was a Vienna-born glove salesman. Bodil worked as a mannequin in Denmark's top fur-house where she was spotted by a smitten Emil. 

The Vogelhuts arrived in Melbourne in 1953 on the Oceania, eventually settling in Sydney. Emil's property development enterprises were, for a while, financially successful, affording a comfortable life on the top of the hill at Vaucluse. Ultimately, he was caught in the credit squeeze of the early 1960s, courtesy of Menzies and Holt. 

This was an early economics lesson for the young Percy - never get in deep with the money lenders. 

From his secondary education at Cranbrook, he headed to the economics faculty at the R. C. Mills building at the University of Sydney in his Fiat 500. It was a faculty he loved and in which he flourished. He became president of the university SRC during the height of the anti-Vietnam war and anti-apartheid protests.  

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Behind the man in the grey flannel suit, and the rational economist's mind there was another more bohemian Percy Allan. 

He was a man of film, theatre, art, love of animals, travel, humour, and ceramic painting. He often gave his wonderful hand painted plates or bowls as birthday presents to friends. 

Following his death it's inevitable these objets d'art will be fetching fabulous prices on the private market. 

From a young age Bodil took her children to the theatre, particularly the New Theatre in Newtown, aka The Workers' Art Club, which specialised in dramas of working-class struggle. 

This is where Percy got his love of politics and of greasepaint, playing Julius Caesar in his school's Shakespearean production. This writer played Cassius in the same sellout show, while Anthony Abrahams, later a Wallaby front-rower, was Brutus.

Percy's role was finished by Scene One of Act Three, after he uttered the famous line "Et tu, Brute". Various others, who are now captains of industry and plutocrats, played slaves or spear-carriers.  

This was followed by his cross-dressing performance as Miss Hardcastle in Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer, a play with a line that has entranced the imagination of theatre goers for generations: "The assiduities of these good people tease me beyond bearing." 

After retiring from the public service, the Fahey government  appointed Percy as independent chair of Greyhound Racing NSW, a challenging task because numerous of the racing clubs were going broke. 

The author with Rex Jackson at Wentworth Park dogsPercy was told by trainers and owners that some dogs preferred to race on straight tracks rather than oval tracks, so it would be unfair to abolish the uneconomic clubs that only provided linear facilities. 

He found a hollow log and a way to ensure the viability of both, while introducing stronger welfare and adoption programs. At the annual Golden Easter Egg event at Wentworth Park, the chairman was driven around the track in an open-air BMW, waving to a crowd of Rex Jackson lookalikes. 

Percy loved to chew over the great political and societal issues of the moment, whether at the Reform Club lunches he established or at semi-regular Pundits Lunches with three close friends at Fish On The Rocks, Millers Point.

His beloved cats, Abby and Harry, will miss their evening stroll with Percy in Balmain's harbourside park, as will Patches the pooch shared with a neighbour. 

They are not the only animals who will miss this funny, generous, polymath. 

Percy is survived by Pip Smith AM, a former Commonwealth Ombudsman, his loving wife and partner of 50-years, and his sister Monika. 

Richard Ackland