18-07-2025
John Stone death: Former senator and Secretary of the Federal Treasury dies aged 96
John Stone, one of Australia's most influential public servants, died on Thursday, according to a family friend.
The exact cause was not immediately disclosed, but the 96-year-old had been diagnosed in recent years with leukaemia.
Secretary of the Federal Treasury from 1979 to 1984, Mr Stone was regarded as one of the most outspoken and controversial figures in Australian public life and a fierce advocate of free-market policies and smaller government.
He was so influential in the Fraser Coalition Government, and devised its unpopular 'fight inflation first' strategy, that journalist Paul Kelly described him as one of the two men who ran the nation. The other was Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser.
Labor treasurer Paul Keating refused to fire him when the Labor Party was elected in 1983, fearful it would damage the new government's credibility.
After famously opposing Mr Keating's decision to float the dollar that year, he left government and aligned himself with the Queensland National Party.
In 1987, he was elected as a Nationals Senator for Queensland, the first secretary of a federal department elected to Parliament.
'To his admirers he was a brilliant and responsible fiscal conservative, to his detractors a dogmatic and inflexible right-wing fundamentalist,' the Biographical Dictionary of the Australian Senate.
He is survived by five children. His wife of 70 years, Nancy Hardwick, died several years ago of pancreatic cancer.
