William Archer (Bill) Gunn (1914–2003), later Sir William Gunn, was an Australian grazier and wool industry leader. Among other industry roles, he was a long serving chairman of the Australian Wool Board. He is associated with the Australian Wool Reserve Price Scheme, an eventually disastrous market intervention in the global wool market that he championed, which operated between 1970 and 1991. He was also associated with the successful international marketing of wool and Woolmark logo.
Early years and family context
Gunn was born on 25 February 1914, at Goondiwindi, Queensland. He was the son of Walter Gunn, a grazier, and his wife, Doris Isabel née Brown. His grandfather was Donald Gunn, grazier and Queensland politician, and his great-grandfather Donald Gunn was an immigrant from Scotland who became a squatter.
He was a student at The Kings School, in Sydney, where he excelled at sport—playing rugby union football, rowing, and settling a high jump record—rather than academically. He played for the GPS 2nd Combined XV in 1932.
He was an imposing figure, 1.88 m tall and weighing around 120 kg. His trademark hair style was a centre-line part, perhaps fashionable in the early 1930s, but which he maintained for the rest of his long life. He was a notoriously dishevelled dresser, who could appear to be untidy, even when wearing the finest of wool suits. He usually wore a woollen double-breasted suit; Sir Hardy Amies once remarked that Gunn was "a problem" at fittings.
Early career
Leaving school in 1932, he returned to Queensland and by 1933 was managing one of his family's sheep stations, Kildonan, carrying 14,000 sheep. After returning to Queensland, he played rugby league; in 1936, he played for the Newtown team in Toowoomba, driving the 175 miles from Goondiwindi for games.
He recognized that brigalow country, hitherto considered wasteland, could be productive land if cleared, and he was an early successful pioneer of unlocking its potential.
In 1936, he fell through a glass window, severing veins and tendons in his left wrist. He was left with a permanently disabled left hand. No longer able to do physical work, while he maintained ownership and management of grazing properties, he began to concentrate his efforts on rural industry associations and lobbying on their behalf. The accident also ended his sporting career, and it probably explains why he did not serve in the Second World War.
Industry leader and political involvement During the long years of coalition government from 1949 to 1972, Gunn had ready access to the highest levels of Australian government. He was closely associated with and admired by long-serving politician, later leader of the Country Party, and Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, John 'Black Jack' McEwan (1900–1980), who was briefly the Prime Minister in 1968–1969.
McEwen pursued—leveraging his minority party's essential role in keeping the larger Liberal Party of Australia in power, as a coalition government—what became known as 'McEwenism'. It was a policy of high tariff protection for the manufacturing industry, intended to ensure that industry and trade unions would not oppose government support for primary industries, particularly grazing and agriculture. It was a part of what was known as the "Australian settlement" which promoted high wages, industrial development, government intervention in industry, and decentralisation. McEwan's views closely aligned with those of Gunn, who was both a life-long advocate for and a practitioner of government intervention in support of rural industries.
In 1951, Gunn became chairman of both the United Graziers of Queensland and the Australian Graziers Federation. From 1955 to 1958, he chaired the Australian Woolgrowers' Council. These were years of great prosperity as wool prices climbed during the Korean War and its aftermath. John McEwan's personal triumph of the signing of the Japan–Australia Commerce Agreement, in 1957, promised further prosperity for Australian rural industries. In 1961, Gunn became chairman of the International Wool Secretariat and, in 1963, chairman of the Australian Wool Board. He was then in a position to guide implementation of his long-term policy objectives, increased marketing of the wool clip and introducing a reserve price scheme for wool.
He took on other roles in government-owned or government-sponsored organisations, joining the board of the Commonwealth Bank in 1952 and the Reserve Bank of Australia in 1959. He also served on the boards of the Australian Meat Council, the Australian Wool Testing Authority, and the Australian Export Development Council.
Gunn later said of his career, "I had to fight the woolgrowers, the selling agents, the buyers and at times my own board." His view usually prevailed, and he dominated the rural industry organisation boards on which he served, but, as Doug Anthony observed, "He tended to make enemies by being a bit too strong in his proposals."
John McEwan favoured Gunn as his successor to lead the Country Party. However, Gunn had made enough enemies in rural circles to make it difficult to enter politics. In September 1965, Gunn stood for preselection, as a Country Party candidate for the federal seat of Maranoa, but was defeated in a party ballot by James Corbett. After John McEwen retired from politics, in 1971, Gunn continued to have a close association with the County Party's new leader and Deputy Prime Minister, Doug Anthony.
Although Gunn was closely allied to the Country Party (later National Country Party and then National Party), he was not adverse to working with their opponents, the Australian Labor Party, during the periods of Labor government. In April 1975, he was involved in a little-known, third, and last iteration of what became known as the 'loans affair'. After a telephone call with the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, Gunn attempted for raise $3.7 billion in loan funds from European-based petrodollar sources, bypassing Treasury. These attempts were ended, after the Treasurer, Bill Hayden, threatened to resign in protest. Hayden reportedly had referred to Gunn's efforts as "madness", during a discussion with Sir Frederick Wheeler, head of Treasury. This happened at a time when Gunn was still on the board of the Reserve Bank of Australia. He was not reappointed to that board in 1977.
Honours Gunn was given three honours; Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG), in 1955 for 'services to the pastoral industry'; Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE), in 1961 as 'chairman of the Australian Wool Bureau'; and Companion of the Order of Australia (AC), in 1990 for his 'continued service to primary industry'.
Wool marketing and reserve price scheme for wool
Gunn era Ideas about a reserve price scheme for wool, intended to stabilise the price of wool, predated Gunn's involvement. In Australia, those ideas go back, at the latest, to the later part of the Second World War. A large wool stockpile had accumulated during the war; wool production had boomed and enemy nations were no longer able to participate in the wool market. An arrangement called the Dominions-UK Wool Disposal Plan (also known as the 'Joint Organisation', or 'J.O.') was set up in 1945, specifically to dispose of the stockpile. As the stockpile decreased, woolgrowers began to advocate for a new 'Post-J.O.' scheme to market wool. However, the subsequent boom in wool prices, during the Korean War, appears to have put such plans on hold.
As early as 1951, Gunn had advocated a scheme for stabilising the price of wool, using a reserve price scheme. Essentially, such a scheme involved a floor price, below which any unsold wool would be bought and temporarily stockpiled by the industry; the aim being to sell it back into the market, later and at a more favourable price. He made no progress on this matter, during the years of high wool prices. In 1965, a referendum of wool growers overwhelmingly rejected a reserve price scheme. However, Gunn continued to lobby for a reserve price scheme.
Gunn also saw the need for marketing wool to maintain demand, as the fibre became more exposed to competition from cotton and synthetic fibres, and more subject to blending with other fibres. One of his first actions, after becoming chairman of the Australian Wool Board, in 1963, was to increase the levy on wool paid by growers on wool, which was used to broaden the market for wool. This was a far from a universally popular move, and he was pelted with fruit, eggs, and flour bombs, by aggrieved wool growers, at Hamilton, in July 1963.
An early success of Gunn's marketing efforts was the International Wool Secretariat's Woolmark logo, introduced in August 1964 and used to indicate that the product was 'pure new wool'. In 2011, British design magazine, Creative Review, declared the Woolmark logo to be number one of the top twenty logos of all time.
In 1970, falling wool prices finally caused the government to adopt Gunn's reserve price scheme, but now as a means of saving the declining wool industry. Much of the text of the legislation could be drawn from earlier work dating from two previous attempts to create such legislation, in 1951, and the updates made in 1964. The scheme would be operated by a new statutory authority, Australian Wool Commission, established in November 1970. It was independent of the Australian Wool Board, although its new chairman, William Vines, was a long term associate of Gunn. Gunn and Vines had selected the seven board members. It began to buy wool on 16 November 1970. Selection of the undisclosed 'floating' floor price would be critical, as would the underlying demand for wool and the response of wool buyers.
The new Australian Wool Commission was to have a working capital of $115 million annually, expected to come from trading banks. Its operating costs, forecast to be $18.7 million, was to be borne jointly by wool growers, via a levy on wool sales, and the government. Doug Anthony stated that an objective of the new commission was to stabilise wool prices, not increase those prices above those determined by the market.
Vines told the press that he believed that the scheme would result in stable wool prices, and that there was no expectation that a large stockpile would form. However, by early 1971, wool prices had fallen—to real price levels not seen since 1931, during the Great Depression—and by the end of June 1971—the end of the wool selling season— the corporation held 440,000 wool bales, valued at around $40 million. Worse was to come, because rumours that the commission had run out of money caused buyers to abstain from the market, more or less completely, for fear of over-paying if the scheme were to collapse. The commission bought 90% of the lots offered in August 1971, and the wool ended up in the now massive stockpile.
The commission had effectively run out of money in late 1971. The Liberal Party tried to end the scheme, in a Cabinet meeting in October 1971, but their Country Party colleagues threatened to withdraw from the coalition, and got their way. The result was an additional $30 million of government-guaranteed loans to keep the commission in operation, and the stockpile grew to 931,000 bales in December 1971.