Pat Rowley steps down as Dairy Australia chairman

From his earliest involvements in his then local milk factory at Dayboro, Queensland, to guiding the industry through the troubled waters of deregulation, Pat has shown all the qualities of a great leader. People talk of his vision, humility, integrity, passion and sacrifice.

Former Minister for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, now the Minister for Trade, Warren Truss, describes Pat as "the outstanding primary industry leader of the past quarter of a century".

"There has just been no one of his standard. He has been held in very high regard by successive governments and was able to achieve things for his industry because of his balance, vision and good sense," he said.

A quick flick through Pat's curriculum vitae (CV) reveals the extent of his involvement in the industry. Among many positions, he was chairman of the Australian Dairy Industry Council (ADIC), president of the Australian Dairy Farmers Federation (ADFF) and chairman of the Australian Dairy Herd Improvement Scheme (ADHIS) from 1985 to 2003, president of the Australian National Committee of the International Dairy Federation (ANCIDF) from 1989 to 2003, and president of the Queensland Dairyfarmers' Organisation (QDO) from 1977 to 2003.

He became the inaugural chairman of Dairy Australia in 2003. He will step down from this position at its annual general meeting later this month, marking the end of his long and distinguished involvement.

But Pat's CV does not reveal the personal qualities that have made him so special. "Pat is a very ordinary bloke, one that you might bump into in the street, but with very extraordinary qualities that are not always obvious on a CV - even one with as many credentials as Pat's," Dairy Australia managing director Mike Ginnivan said.

"A unique quality that is obvious when you meet Pat is his ability to bring the country to the city and vice versa. He does this through his humility and ability to make everyone feel comfortable, but also through his breadth of experience in both worlds and his understanding of rural, urban, farming and corporate worlds."

QDO president Wes Judd said Pat was unselfish and completed dedicated to the dairy industry. "He has a passion and love for it," he said.

That passion for the industry was critical as Pat confronted the restructuring of the dairy industry during the 1980s and 1990s that culminated in full deregulation in 2000. He had the vision to see that once Closer Economic Relations (CER) were established with New Zealand in 1983, that deregulation of the dairy industry was inevitable.

Pat's philosophy was to manage the change - to buy time to allow dairyfarmers to adjust. Initially he worked with then Minister for Primary Industries, John Kerin, to establish the Kerin Plan that saw a levy paid to dairy exporters to stabilise prices so that the export price did not drag down domestic prices. This was replaced by the Crean Plan that saw the levy gradually phased out through to 2000. "We bought 14 years of long steady change before we confronted what was inevitable in 1983," he said. "We managed to keep the peace and get it right through to the year 2000."

At the same time, national economic policy from both political parties determined that the Australian economy in all sectors needed to be deregulated. Pat said at a national level the ADFF came up with eight different options for what could be put in place after various state market milk systems were removed. Six of these were illegal or impractical or both.

"We got down to two options. One was let it rip and let the devil take the Hindmost and let commercial pressures of milk moving around absolutely knock the hell out of market milk prices ... or get a scheme of events, which we did, which involved getting $2 billion into the hands of farmers," he said.

Pat is at pains to point out that what was achieved during this time was not down to him alone - it was a team effort with a great many people involved in working for the industry.

One of those was Australian Dairy Farmers chief executive officer John McQueen, who joined ADFF in 1983, becoming CEO in 1987. He said the keys to Pat's success throughout this time were his ability to bring people together and then to have the strength of character to present the arguments to support the decisions that had been made.

"He was inclusive of everybody, he would always strive to get a consensus outcome that would still deliver the best outcome," John McQueen said. "But he also had the strength of character and the good intellect so once he had got the messages right with the industry ... he could then carry those through strength of argument with anybody, from the Prime Minister down and with any part of the bureaucracy."

Wes Judd concurs. "Today he still has huge credibility with government. His ability to deal with all sectors and bring the common view is verified by the fact that both sides of politics respect him tremendously." he said.

Warren Truss said it was extraordinary that a dairyfarmer from one of the smallest dairying states was able to provide such committed and far-sighted leadership for the national industry for so many years. "Pat was an exceptionally level-headed and visionary leader. He realised that the industry had little choice but to deregulate and therefore set about endeavouring to develop a plan to make the adjustment process for the industry as pain-free as possible," he said.

"That was enormously difficult, and, of course, it wasn't without pain but it would have been a catastrophe without Pat's work in persuading the Australian Government to (support the) $1.94 billion adjustment plan.

"When Pat first spoke to me about a plan of that magnitude when I wasn't even Agriculture Minister yet at that stage, I thought the prospects of getting a package of that size, funded by a levy on milk, was just fantasy land stuff, but Pat worked at it. It still remains to this day the biggest adjustment package that has ever been provided to any industry in the country and it's still running."

Pat stands by those decisions today. "If I had my time all over again and despite the fact that I have some heavy critics on some of these things, the policy settings that we had on the main issues like CER with New Zealand, Kerin Plan, Crean Plan, National Competition Policy and finally deregulation management, I would do all the same again," he said.

Pat's commitment to collective action saw him lead the decision to merge the Dairy Research and Development Corporation and Australian Dairy Corporation to create a new services body Dairy Australia in 2003. Pat had wanted to retire at that time but agreed to be inaugural chairman of that organisation to ensure it was on a stable footing.

"The task of being the inaugural chair was difficult and would have been a challenge for many," Mike Ginnivan said. "Pat had to turn the vision for a new industry organisation into reality. Pat's skilful chairmanship and diplomacy enabled him to achieve this."

Pat is happy with what has been achieved in the past three years. Bringing together two organisations with two different cultures was an enormous challenge, he said.

None of any of this could have been achieved without the significant support of Pat's family, especially his wife, Mary. Mary, like Pat, grew up on a dairy farm, and when the couple married they took over her family farm at Dayboro, which the Rospigaroffs had settled in 1878.

Mary and their children were left running the farm for long periods of time while Pat was away in Canberra, Melbourne or on the other side of the world. "Mary and I have taken these decisions together all the way through. I have been fortunate to have my wife who was born on a dairy farm, who is a farm person, who is very supportive of what I've done," Pat said.

"Mary did a lot of the management day to day on the run at home. She'll tell you she rang me in Geneva one night with the irrigation not working because we had taps wrong somewhere and I was sitting there watching the snow falling and we had a heatwave at home.

"Every day on a dairy farm there's a crisis, a pipe busted somewhere or a heifer calving. Mary's taken the brunt of all that, with a lot of labour, which came at a cost that did not allow us to expand when we should have been expanding at the rate the rest of the industry was."

Mary said she was intensely proud of Pat's achievements and the accolades he had received. The secret to that success had been that "we were a complete team".

"All decisions that were taken either about our farm business or his agropolitical life we talked it all through, we decided together," she said.

Pat's achievements have come at times at a cost both personally and to the family business. "It's a personal toll that is unseen by the outside world," Mary said.

"Pat, for instance, wasn't here to see Catherine's graduation, he couldn't be here for every birthday. It was always a scramble to be in the right place at the right time family wise.

"The kids made many sacrifices with dad not being there or dad not being able to be involved, and I am very grateful to them all and they are very supportive."

Wes Judd said the Rowley family had made a huge personal sacrifice. "And not only a personal sacrifice, a business sacrifice as well because there were probably opportunities that they didn't take for fear the industry may well read things out of those decisions he made at home and for that reason they abstained from some decisions that would have enhanced their own personal outcome," he said.

Warren Truss said he remembered a time when he called Pat to talk to him about some complicated issues to do with dairy deregulation. "I found out the next day that at the time he was in the car being driven to hospital. He'd had a heat attack and by the next morning he's had heart surgery. During the whole conversation he didn't let on to me that he had suffered a serious health set back and was in pain. That just shows how committed he was to the dairy industry," he said.

Pat Rowley will leave the dairy industry in a very different state to when he became involved. He said when he first became a Queensland representative on ADFF, there was little co-operation between the various state representatives. Some policies were decided on the basis of an 8-7 vote. "And an 8-7 vote never gets you a national policy because the people who are in the seven don't sit around and let that happen. You've got to find a different way," he said.

"I don't think the Australian dairy industry is an easy industry from this point of view. We have one very dominant state ... and the other states are relatively small. The small states can't develop policy in their own right and Victoria can't either. And I argued that we had to have a national policy if we are going to go to Canberra ... about any issues."

Mike Ginnivan has seen Pat work at Dairy Australia to achieve that consensus approach. "While Pat will take a personal stand, even if it is unpopular, he will not accept an industry position until there is consensus - and he does not stop until consensus has been reached," he said.

John McQueen sees this co-operative approach and collective action as Pat's lasting legacy to the industry. "The legacy he has built up where farmers and manufacturers work together to solve problems collectively ... is there not only in the structures that are there but in the knowledge of those who are leading the industry now," he said

"That culture is embedded in the dairy industry now more than ever. If you ask people in other industries, they wonder how the dairy industry does things. It is about that working together and that culture. The industry is pretty much the envy of a lot of others because we have that long-term culture of working together."

Pat and Mary are now looking forward to a quieter life back on the farm that is now a beef and heifer-raising operation. "The thing that leaves me saddest of all as a look at stepping down on November 24 ... is that we are walking into a drought that may be worst than the last one," he said.

The Rowleys plan to spend time doing things around the farm, travelling and with their grand children.

Mary's ambition is to "turn Rowley into a gardener".

*Carlene Dowie is associate editor of The Australian Dairyfarmer. This article appears in the November-December edition of that magazine.