West Australia business helps state Government into gear

Press, 3 July 1985, Page 34

West Australia business helps state Government into gear

By

NEVIN TOPP

Western Australia has introduced an asset-manage-ment programme using private enterprise to help run its state Government more efficiently, according to a top Western Australian businessman, Mr John Horgan. Mr Horgan, who is in New Zealand to give advice to the Focus New Zealand metals and engineering group on exporting to the state, is chairman of the Western Australian Development Corporation (WADC), which introduced the asset-management programme a year ago. Using the WADC, a Gov-ernment-sponsored organisation with business people on its board, it brought private-sector skills into the management of Government — “and governments are the biggest asset managers in the world.” The WADC made a list of all the real estate that the state Government owned, and gave urgency to redeveloping properties not being properly used. The state Government discovered property it did not know it owned, found it was taking rent from property it did not own, and found tenants paying rent to other landlords when they should have been paying the state, he said. The taxpayer benefited from turning a “dead, lazy asset” into an income-earn-ing one. Cash flow was another area of asset management by the WADC. It got four of the top financiers in the Australian money market to help invest the state’s liquid funds, which were about sAustsooM. The Perth Mint is another area that the WADC is studying. It is planned to mint gold coins that will have the same international reputation as South Africa’s Kruger rands and the maple leaf coin from Canada. The coins would be made from gold mined in Kalgoorlie, Mr Horgan said. John Horgan’s philosophy has been to link Western Australia with South-East Asia, and he believes that two of his goals have been achieved. The first is the industrial line, with 23 per cent of Western Australia’s exports going to Japan, and the second is the finance link,

with the Industrial Bank of Japan, about the sixteenth largest bank in the world, setting up its Australian headquarters in Perth. “The third link we are going for is the tourism link,” he said. Tourism had the multiplier effect — it had been estimated that every $20,000 spent by tourists created one new job. Western Australia was hoping to encourage tourists from Japan, and also have a shuttle service between Singapore and Perth, attracting European tourists. There was no reason why these tourists should not come on to New Zealand, which, like Western Australia, depended on small business as the “wealth creator,” Mr Horgan said. Western Australia had called 1986 the year of the visitor, but 1987 was also important because of the challenge for the America’s Cup, the yachting series.

“The yachting event is expected to attract one million visitors to Western Australia, and the good thing about it is that, unlike the Olympics, the yachting series will last six months.” (So far, eight challengers have entered for the right to race in the finals of the America’s Cup, and this is the reason for the length of

the series). Besides being chairman of the WADC, with its emphasis on finance and merchant banking, Mr Horgan is chairman of the Western Australia EXIM Corporation, another state Govern-ment-sponsored organisation, which uses privatesector people to promote trade between private

enterprise in the state and customers in South-East Asia and the Middle East. It has been running for only about .three months. Until recently, Mr Horgan was the managing director of Metro Industries, Ltd, a listed Perth-based steel fabricator and heavy-engin-eering firm, which had sales of sAust79.6M in 1983.