The personal and administrative career of Sir Laurence Hartnett, and his contributions to Australian industry and government

This thesis is presented on 29 November 1973 - the Silver Anniversary of an important event in Australia's industrial history. On 29 November 1948, a new symbol of national progress was offered to theAustralian people. It was a symbol of motion, enterprise and independence. Chief among the dignitaries who smiled upon the new creation was the Prime Minister, the Right Honourable J B Chifley, as he congratulated all who had made the dream of an Australian car come true. Holden has been a name firmly embedded into the Australian consciousness ever since.

More than any other man, Larry Hartnett was the creator of the Holden car, but he was absent and for-gotten when the first Holden was ceremonially driven off the production line at Fishermen's Bend twenty-five years ago.

Hartnett anticipated some of the actions of the Australian government in 1973 by about thirty-five years. Before the Second World War, he urged the General Motors Corporation of the United States to grant greater Australian participation in the owner-ship of General Motors-Holden's Limited. In 1936 he visualised an Australian 'people's car'. In 1944 he resolved that if General Motors in New York refused his submission for the car he would relinquish his position as Managing Director of General Motors-Holden's Limited and report to Chifley, then Minister for Post-War Reconstruction, offering himself as chief executive of a government-owned corporation which would be set up to manufacture motor cars. As it transpired, General Motors accepted the Hartnett submission (but with no American capital appropriation, as Hartnett discovered soon afterwards). In 1973 the Whitlam Government has been contemplating schemes of joint Australian ownership of multi-national corporations and Commonwealth government competition in car production as Hartnett recommended to Chifley a generation ago.

Early in 1947, Hartnett resigned from General Motors and, within a few months, plans for the Hartnett Motor Company were outlined to the federal government. The French-designed Hartnett car progressed well until it was doomed by the consequences of the federal election of 1949. The Menzies Government moved quickly to prevent Hartnett from becoming a competing manufacturer in the Australian car industry. Big business, using power politics, was able to destroy the Hartnett car without destroying Hartnett.

In 1935 L J Hartnett advised the Australian government to build aircraft as an essential defence measure. Although others have been given the credit, research shows conclusively that it was Hartnett's efforts which led to the formation of the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation Pty Ltd. Hartnett is still almost fanatical about the need for an Australian aircraft manufacturing industry. From 1940 to 1945, he served the Australian government with great energy and distinction as Director of Ordnance Production under Essington Lewis, Director-General of Munitions.

For fifty years Hartnett has had close associations with Singapore. In August 1973 it was announced that, in recognition of his services to the Singapore government on industrial and defence matters, Sir Laurence Hartnett had been awarded the Singapore Public Service Star for his "dedication and most valuable contribution to the republic".

The only son of an Irish medical practitioner, Larry Hartnett began his industrial career as a cadet in the engineering works of Vickers Limited. During the First World War he served as a British Naval air-pilot, flying flimsy aeroplanes demonstrating qualities of verve, daring and rebellion which have persisted throughout his life.

Hartnett has the charisma of leadership which, but for twists of fate, could have found expression in one, or more, of the great offices of British, Australian or even American public life. Instead, he worked vigorously in the bureaucracies of private business. He has never been a public servant in the sense of being a government career-officer. But, in the sense of being a loyalist, nationalist, and upholder of free institutions, Hartnett has served the public well. He excels in the art of citizenship and, without question, he could have excelled in the arts of public administration and politics. Today, at the age of seventy-five, Hartnett continues to be a persuasive and influential leader.