Hi I’m Richard Goyder, CEO of Wesfarmers and I’m going back to school with Student Edge.
Tell me, what were you like as a student?
Oh ok, not great, I did enough to get me where I needed to go.
Just doing enough? The ok amount was working out for you?
Yeah a bit more, a bit more than that. Maybe not as much as I could‘ve.
I loved my football. I wasn’t that good at it but I loved my football.
and a few other things. I always kept busy and I did enough.
Well what were the subjects that you felt like “I actually enjoy this, I actually
enjoy putting the effort in.”
Yeah when I was at school the “bright kids”
were meant to do the maths and sciences and I didn’t really like them.
I liked the social, human thing. I enjoyed English but I wish I could have done
more modern history that my kids have done now.
I probably should have done economics which I didn’t do.
The few things like that which are far more interesting to me now than chemistry,
physics and maths that I sort of was made to do.
Well I understand you grew up on a farm but early on you felt like “this isn’t actually
what I want to keep doing.” I mean, things obviously change over time
but back then what was the feeling, what was the sort of sentiment that kept you away from
wanting to stay on the farm? Well my parents, and particularly dad, was
the best farmer in the world, you know, as a young person.
And I saw the challenges that mum and dad had through lack of rain and through poor
commodity prices. And our farm as it turns out was really never
big enough for, I'm one of four children. So mum and dad really struggled financially
and I thought it was unfair that the best farmer in the world could struggle because
of things outside his control so I thought I’d try take a bit more control of my life
and do something else What was your kind of career goal at that time?
Did you have one? Ah, well yeah I did.
My career goal then was probably to be Prime Minister.
So modest. Because I was ridiculously ambitious and thank
goodness that didn’t happen. Thank goodness for the country firstly and
secondly for me. So I guess I was always ambitious to do things.
I just didn’t know what it was So when did you kind of move away from…
I went to boarding school at the age of fourteen so second year high school.
But growing up on a farm is wonderful because there’s space, you are confronted with life
and death, you know there’s animal husbandry, there’s producing things so I was blessed
to grow up on a farm. And I think also it makes you more resilient.
We went through, I mean, my age now but in 1969 we had a terrible drought and I still
remember that well so I think it makes you more resilient and it made me a bit more
probably self-reliant. I’ve always been ok with my own company
and I’ve always been ok with putting my head down and getting on with things.
You said you weren’t maybe as interested in, say, commerce as you could have been during
high school but you ended up studying that at UWA is that correct?
Yeah I actually thought that I might want to do Law but in the days where I was at university
you had to do another course in the first year and then if you got decent marks
you could go into Law. So I kicked off with commerce, in many ways
because I thought it was going to be a good degree in terms of getting a job after university
and I probably didn’t get the marks required to get into law but decided I didn't want to
do law anyway. So yeah I enjoyed my commerce degree.
Did that ever stifle your ambition? I mean you said you were very ambitious but when
you were getting the marks that weren’t sort of pointing you in the direction of law
did you kind of have to reassess? Was there a moment where you felt “ok what am I doing?”
Not really. I’ve never been short on self-confidence.
Hopefully I’m not arrogant about that but I’ve got an inner confidence that I can
do some things. Between high school and university I took
a year off and was a rotory exchange student in the United States.
That probably did direct me more into a business, you know, the US, capitalist society,
all those sorts of thing. Some big contrasts
That was probably fairly significant for me as well, so it became clearer and clearer
to me through my time at university that I would go into some sort of business.
Now there’s a big focus at the moment about S.T.E.M subjects and how they’re important
for students for future careers because the fields of science and technology and mathematics,
it's essential going forward. You’ve referred to the need for food
with the growing populations as an "unstoppable trend"; as this thing that also needs to be
addressed and has a big future. Do you think there is enough focus on agriculture
and farming as a career option or even in the educational path?
Firstly, on S.T.E.M, I am a bit critical of high school education across Australia in
that I think we too easily - and there is a reason for this - I think we too easily divert
people away from hard subjects. So schools who want to look well on their
report cards, parents and students all say, “You know what, I’ll take the easier path
because I’m going to get a better university entrance or whatever score."
I think that’s wrong, I actually think universities should be saying “You know what, if you
do a hard maths or if you do a language or if you do this or that, we will make it much
easier for you to come into universities." Because we’re just dumbing it down.
You know, we’ve got really smart kids and we should be pushing them in high school not
trying to optimise some sort of false measure which frankly matters for about two weeks
and then doesn’t matter after that anyway. So, going to the other question, food, I mean
it’s a big deal because look where Australia is, look where we’re situated, we’ve got
probably the growth economies of the next century on our door and a middle class that’s gonna
grow and grow and grow. They’re gonna want good food products.
They're gonna want products that they can trust and we’re in a great position to be a supplier
but it’s not gonna come to us, it’s not going to be given to us we’re gonna have to work hard.
Looking back on your teenage days and your
years in school, do you have any regrets about how you, kind of, approached it?
I probably should have worked a bit harder at university because I ended up failing one subject
economics and social statistics, which, in my own defence, had about a 70 per cent failure rate.
Sure.
Such a horrible subject, they ended up giving me
a conceded pass second time around, I think they just wanted to get rid of me.
There’s probably a couple things I could have worked harder on but no I don’t have
a lot of regrets. I met my great friends, I met my wife.
In the environment I grew up in I had a life; a really fulfilling time because I was engaged in sport
I was engaged in social activities, university, it was a really great time.
I would go back to the farm and work pretty hard during holidays, so I’d go back and
do harvesting and sheep work and all those sorts of things so I didn’t have a lot in
the way of a holiday. Maybe that’s a regret then; more holidays
would have been nice. Oh well I wish some of that time at Rottnest
Sure. Some of my friends now talk about it, you know?
They talk about leavers and I’ve got one going off to leavers this year at Rottnest
I went straight home and jumped on a tractor and drove a header around.
You know, people probably would pay for that experience.
Yeah, these days anyway Just to wrap up, do you have one piece of advice?
Do the things you’re interested in, do the
things you’ve got a passion about, listen to others, listen to parents, listen to schools,
listen to people like you but make your own calls.
Someone born today in Australia has got an average life expectancy of 90+.
That says to me that young people today are going to be working for a long time and so whatever
they choose to do they need to do something they're really going to enjoy
and like me, get out of bed in the morning and say, "You know what? I'm really looking forward to going to work."
And work is fun, rather than work's a chore.
Richard, thanks so much for your time. Pleasure, thanks Simon.
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