Mr Fix-it's toughest case

This week,the Iemma Government stripped away the debt-aversion of the Carr years,committing itself to borrow $21 billion over the next four years to help fund infrastructure spending of more than $57 billion. Morris Iemma knows any prospect of political resurrection depends as much on improving state infrastructure as convincing voters that his Government,and its personnel,are focused more on public good than partisan or self-interest.

That's why so much weight rests on the shoulders of David Thomas Richmond,the backroom Mr Fix-it of NSW politics. A mechanic in a sea of consiglieres,he exercises more influence than any political master on the future shape of NSW.

With tens of billions of dollars of private-sector infrastructure proposals already in the logjam,Iemma's hopes of digging himself out of the electoral mire will fall flat should Richmond flop,or be too tardy.

But what do we know of the man who bears the august title of NSW Co-ordinator General? His job,expressed in bureaucratic gobbledegook,is ensuring"alignment between planning,investment and delivery for strategic public and private projects through a co-ordinated,whole-of-government focus".

The astute will recall Richmond,who'll be 64 next Saturday,as the ambidextrous maestro who got the 2000 Olympics building program knocked into shape,on time and on budget,and then took a key role in running the Games.

As the head of the Olympic Co-ordination Authority from 1995,Richmond's authority expanded as Sandy Hollway,the chief executive of the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games,was humiliatingly sidelined by Richmond's mate,confidant and political patron,the Olympics minister,Michael Knight. Richmond was also the chairman of the Olympic Roads and Transport Authority and director-general of Sydney 2000,established by the Carr government to extend what we now know to have been the exaggerated benefits of Sydney having hosted the Games .

From the points of view of Knight and Richmond,at least,it was a marriage made in heaven. After the trials and tribulations of such a work burden,Richmond said after the Games,"I'm still smiling because I work for Michael Knight."

Years earlier Knight had come off second best in a tussle with Richmond when Knight was but a ministerial staffer in housing and Richmond was a senior officer in the Housing Commission."Richmond was smarter than me[in those days] and he probably still is,"Knight said before the Games. Praise indeed from one so humility-deprived.

Bluster and show is the politician's realm,not Richmond's.

He would prefer recognition as a quiet achiever,a loyal and diligent public servant trusted with weighing the costs and benefits of public and public-private projects,and testing how each piece best fits the jigsaw.

The Government's Mr Atlas might also be dubbed the Invisible Man. He refused to be interviewed for this article,while others agreed to be interviewed on condition of anonymity,suggesting a perception that disparagement of David Richmond might be seen as sullying the Government as a whole. And that bears its own risks in NSW.

That is not to say,however,that a generally warm and enthusiastic picture of the man did not emerge. Richmond's sometimes bumpy ride in the shadows of public life was dismissed mostly as the consequence of others'agendas,rather than flaws in Richmond's make-up. More on the roller-coaster later.

The test,of course,is not just whether Richmond is a good bloke,whether his instincts are noble and honourable,whether he is smart and hard-working. It goes to the issue of whether he can crack through the casing of inertia and timidity that characterises NSW politics.

Here,opinion is divided.

"I don't know whether he can match the same Olympics magic,"says one businessman well acquainted with Richmond. While commendable in his Olympic roles,Richmond was blessed with a rare confluence of undiverted political will from a government whose electoral fortunes rode on Games success,and the financial wherewithal to get the job done.

"There was a whatever-it-takes determination,and while Morris relies on David for mature,cool-headed advice,I'm not sure what David can deliver in the daily scrum of politics,where sectional interests are pushing and pulling in every direction,"the businessman says.

Apart from the North West Metro rail project,the businessman says,"a year after the election,there should be a perception of government getting on with things,but there's no sense of it happening here".

The man recalls meeting Richmond soon after his appointment in April last year as Co-ordinator-General.

"I came away thinking he couldn't articulate what the role was. There's no evidence he's brought any great momentum to the volume of projects - partnerships with the private sector - that the private sector should be aware of."

An example,the businessman says,was Richmond's promise to release plans within months for the M4 East extension to the city and Port Botany. That was 12 months ago,"and there's no certainty about it",he says. There was nothing in this week's budget for the M4 extension project.

"Will Richmond end his days as little more than window dressing? It may not be his fault,but it may be his fate."

Ron Mulock is far more upbeat about Richmond's prospects. A one-time Labor deputy premier,he says NSW is crying out for an infrastructure tsar,and that Richmond is the man for the job. Mulock met Richmond in early 1977,just after the former's appointment as housing minister.

"I wanted someone who could advise me on the economics of housing[Richmond has a masters in economics from the University of Sydney],"he says."I formed a very high opinion of David. He impressed me with his intellect and his strategic planning ability."

Richmond,Paul Bartels and Michael Eyers,who would later pop up as deputy chief executive of the Games organising committee,were forged into a ministerial office policy triumvirate of former senior housing bureaucrats.

One project was to undo a scheme allowing more prosperous tenants to buy their Housing Commission homes. Says Mulock:"Even then,there were long waiting lists and I was concerned that Housing Commission stock would be eroded. We urged a scheme to help tenants into their own homes by assisting them financially in the first few years. Treasury didn't like that.

"This group provided me with a number of policy options but,as so often is the case,any that involved expenditure was buried by Treasury."

Mulock says he did not discuss politics with Richmond,"but I believed him to have a Labor approach".

In early 1984,Mulock became Neville Wran's health minister,replacing Laurie Brereton,who had commissioned Richmond to examine de-institutionalisation of the disabled and mentally ill. Eventually,Richmond became Mulock's director-general of health.

Recommendations of the Richmond report would become controversial because critics would blame them for widespread homelessness,and occasional lawlessness,among the mentally ill released from large institutions.

It is a characterisation unfairly directed at Richmond,who has labelled the criticism"a convenient myth". Indeed,his report emphasised the need for state-provided networks of care for the relatively few long-term patients reintroduced to general society. It was hardly his fault that future governments would renege on the resourcing side of the equation.

On replacing Mulock as health minister in early 1986,Barrie Unsworth's first task was to remove Richmond as head of the department."As I was being sworn in,Wran instructed me to change the director-general,"Unsworth told theHerald this week."It was not for me to question."

Unsworth says he had not previously met Richmond,but"I've dealt with Mr Richmond on countless issues since". Both served on the Government's advisory committee on electricity privatisation,chaired by Unsworth.

"He's very competent and quite forthright,"says Unsworth,who endorses centralisation of infrastructure co-ordination."If every government department went off on its frolics,there'd be no priorities."

So what caused Richmond's fall from grace at health? One suggestion is that he fell foul of the then public sector overlord,Gerry Gleeson,who headed the Premier's Department and was Wran's most trusted adviser. Confronted with a shortage of nurses and a cranky nursing union,Gleeson wanted nursing education returned to hospital training. Richmond was determined to retain the new emphasis on tertiary training.

Whatever the cause,the effect was personally devastating for Richmond."Of course I was disappointed,"he would say later. Sources say it gutted him.

By September 1987,however,with Peter Anderson as health minister,Unsworth as premier and Richmond a director at the Public Service Board,his star was again on the rise,with Richmond appointed to head a ministerial taskforce implementing the Richmond report.

Richmond - who inWho's Who lists his work ethic as"providing community value through public service"- left the public service in 1989,after the election of the Greiner government. For five years he ran the Benevolent Society of NSW.

But public administration was in his blood,and the lure of the Olympics was too strong for him to resist. He asked Mulock for a reference and threw his hat in the ring for the construction co-ordination role.

Sources say the then premier Bob Carr was unacquainted with Richmond,that the appointment was Knight's recommendation. Given Richmond's very public sacking from health nearly a decade earlier,the appointment certainly surprised many.

Richmond's Games triumphs,however,converted many doubters.

"Certainly he was given a free rein and freed from the sort of distractions that confront other heads of agencies on a daily basis,but he did a superb job,"says one.

Then came the second kick in the guts. Knight had wanted his Olympics team perpetuated as an infrastructure super ministry - a sort of postwar reconstruction vision. That it was promptly disbanded probably had more to do with blunting the ambitions of Knight,who had blemished the government's afterglow with acts of bastardry against Hollway,as it did with public sector management.

Whatever the cause,Richmond was again devastated by the actions of political masters.

But this time he was not hung out to dry. Michael Egan,the"Dr No"treasurer and sworn adversary of the Knight camp,surprised just about everyone by appointing Richmond as chairman of the Sydney Olympic Park Authority,with responsibility for steering the Homebush Bay precinct through the risks of white elephantism. Egan simply considered Richmond the best man for the job.

Richmond's Homebush role was made tougher,say planning critics,by the precinct's lacklustre design.

"The great windswept desert of concrete isn't altogether his fault,but he did get in the way of better design to ensure timetables were met,"says one."He's more interested in getting the job done."

Therein sits a persistent criticism of Richmond."He's an intelligent but traditional NSW public servant trying to be a modern-day Gerry Gleeson,"says one associate.

"Looking back,he muted our criticism of public housing policy,our objections to the demolition of terraces and the construction of high-rise accommodation.

"He was the resident young intellectual among all those grey bureaucrats. He understood the criticisms,absorbed them,but there is little sign he acted on them."

David Richmond has an entire state looking to whether he can repeat the Olympics magic. The deadline again is tight,and the electoral consequences of failure no less dire for government.