Australian Dictionary of Biography

Don Craik, as Commonwealth attorney-general, 1973

National Archives of Australia, A6180, 8/6/73/23

Duncan (Don) Robert Steele Craik (1916–1999), public servant and Commonwealth auditor-general, was born on 17 February 1916 in Auckland, New Zealand, second of three children of the Scottish-born Rev. Henry Steele Craik, Congregational minister, and his English-born wife Lilian Kate, née Ellis. Both parents were university graduates, with Don’s mother having graduated from Royal Holloway College, University of London, in 1908. The following year they married in Sydney and moved to Auckland, where Henry was a minister and later served as a chaplain with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in World War I. Christian principles and the importance of education underpinned Don’s upbringing. In 1919 the family returned to Sydney, where Don attended Fort Street Boys’ High School (1928–32). After gaining his Leaving certificate (1931), he joined the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in 1933 and began part-time studies at the University of Sydney (BEc, 1939).

In about 1940 Craik moved to Canberra to join the taxation branch of the Commonwealth Treasury. He subsequently moved to Melbourne where he met Audrey Mavis Ion, a Tasmanian-born teacher, commerce graduate, and assistant section officer in the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force. They married on 17 February 1943 at Canterbury, Victoria. The couple later relocated to Canberra, and in 1953 Don was appointed director of the revenue and research division of Treasury’s taxation branch. Settling in Griffith in the city’s south, the Craiks had four daughters: Margaret (1947), Wendy (1949), Jennifer (1952), and Barbara (1958).

Craik rose steadily within the Treasury. He was appointed assistant secretary of the general financial and economic policy branch (1960–66), first assistant secretary (1966–69) in the social services branch, and rising to deputy secretary (1969–73). In these roles, he developed a particular interest in working on the revenue side of Treasury’s taxation regimes and worked closely with Secretaries Sir Richard Randall and Sir Frederick Wheeler, and among a small group of senior officials in coordinating the annual budget. He also became a close confidant of (Sir) William McMahon, who served as treasurer (1966–69).

 In May 1973 Craik was appointed by the Whitlam government to the office of Commonwealth auditor-general, with responsibilities for overseeing the financial performance of Commonwealth administration. The following year he made a decisive submission to the royal Ccmmission on Australian government administration, which called for an enlarged role for the audit authority beyond traditional compliance audits. His views were influenced by international developments, particularly in the United States of America, Canada, and New Zealand. Over the next few years, especially with the support of the Fraser government, he modernised the government’s public accountability framework by introducing efficiency audits as an essential and credible part of the auditor-general’s office. He later explained that ‘although I have been described from time to time as an officer of the Parliament, I regard myself as an officer of the Crown […] I stress the pursuit of improvements in the quality of public administration as the aim of my office’ (Craik, quoted in Aust. HOR 1981, 1915). Between 1978 and 1980, he began six efficiency audits, two of which he completed before his retirement. During his term, Australia was appointed to the board of the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (1977) and joined the Asian Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (1980). For his contribution to the public service, he was appointed OBE (1971) and CB (1979), and in 1980 he became the first non-British auditor-general to give evidence before the public accounts committee of the House of Commons.

Alongside his career in Canberra, Craik continued his close involvement with the Congregational National Memorial Church (later City Uniting Church). In the mid-1960s he was appointed a member of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust and the Canberra Theatre Trust.

Following his retirement in February 1981, Craik was appointed to the council of the Australian National University (1981–84) and became a part-time non-presidential member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (1981–86). Having already served as president of the national council (1977) and ACT group (1975–76) of the (Royal) Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA), he was elected as the first president (1980-82) of the newly autonomous national body and also served as both president (1977–78) and councillor (1978–82) of the ACT division of the Australian Society of Accountants. He was subsequently made a fellow of the IPAA (1983). In his later years, he enjoyed gardening and reading. He died on 22 August 1999 at Horton House Nursing Home, Yass, and his remains were interred in the Yass lawn cemetery. His wife and daughters survived him.

Described as a man of ‘reserved if forceful temperament’ (Nethercote 1999, 17), Craik was a meticulous and efficient administrator, who had a dry sense of humour that was sometimes mistaken as stern. He was prepared to listen to closely those he disagreed with and his parsimonious habits, inherited from his father’s family, informed his cautious and careful approach to the use of public money. His daughter Wendy, who trained in zoology, was appointed executive director of the National Farmers’ Federation (1995–2000); Jennifer was a professor in cultural studies at the University of Canberra and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.