Please wait. Contacting image service... loading

Article text

Top Treasury job is
offered, rejected
By VERONA BURGESS,
Public Service Reporter
The job of Secretary to the Treasury
has been turned down by Ted Evans, a
former Deputy Secretary to the Treasury
who is now Australia's representative on
the International Monetary Fund.
A spokesman for Mr. Keating con-
firmed yesterday that Mr. Evans had been
offered the job and had refused it.
No-one else had been offered it so far,
he said, but an appointment would be
made within about a week.
It was "no secret" who was on the short
list for the job, the spokesman said.
Mr. Keating is said to favour the ap-
pointment of the chairman of the Indus-
tries Commission, Tony Cole. Other
front-runners include the Secretary of the
Department of Finance, Mike Keating,
and the Secretary of the Department of
Employment, Education and Training,
Greg Taylor.
The position fell vacant when the Se-
cretary, Dr. Chris Higgins, died suddenly
late last year, leaving a vacuum at the top
of Treasury. Mr. Keating's spokesman
said a report in The Australian Financial
Review that Mr. Keating was "at odds"
with the Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, .
about the appointment was "not true, to
the best of our knowledge".
Sources say that Dr. Taylor, a former
deputy secretary of the Department of the
Prime Minister and Cabinet, is more like-
ly to be favoured by Mr. Hawke than by
Mr. Keating.
Mr. Cole is a former Treasury officer
who became Mr. Keating's adviser and
then Deputy Secretary of PM&C before
moving to the Industries Commission.
Dr. Keating is thought not to be overly
enthusiastic about taking on the job.
A previous Deputy Secretary (Fi-
nance), Dr David Morgan, who is now a
top executive with Westpac, had not been
offered the job, the spokesman said. Dr.
Morgan had made it "fairly clear" at the
time of Dr Higgins's death that he would
not be a candidate.
$