Australian Dictionary of Biography

Murray Fraser Sime (1944–2000), banker, lawyer, arts patron, and larrikin, was born at Camperdown, Sydney, on 11 August 1944, son of Scottish-born David Sime, electrical engineer, and his wife, New South Wales-born Bessie Madge, née Roberts. Neither parent’s health was robust and the family was impecunious, surviving on sickness benefits. Murray enrolled at the selective North Sydney Boys’ High School, and friends he made there became part of a lifelong network dedicated to conviviality and partying. The so-called North Shore Fencing Club he helped to establish was largely a pretext for consuming large quantities of alcohol. Despite his ungainly appearance, with a bulky body but thin arms and legs, he excelled at cricket and squash.

Sime studied at the University of Sydney (LLB, 1967; BA, 1969), concurrently joining the Commonwealth Deputy Crown Solicitor’s Office, Sydney, part of the Attorney-General’s Department, as a legal officer and ultimately a barrister. He achieved notoriety when in February 1969, using his official work phone number as a point of contact, he organised one of Sydney’s first anti-conscription rallies of the Vietnam War period. Under the Public Service Act he was charged with improper conduct for convening the march, and with publicly criticising the administration of a government department. The secretary of his department reduced Simes’s salary and proscribed his promotion for ten years. The issue became a public brouhaha, a subject of debate in the Federal parliament where Bill Hayden accused the attorney-general (Sir) Nigel Bowen of abrogating responsibility for the heavy-handed and unjust handling of a trivial infraction. Rather than appealing, Sime resigned, reasoning that this left him free to convene further anti-conscription rallies. He became vice-chairman of the Committee in Defiance of the National Service Act. After being arrested during an anti-Vietnam war march, he gave his name as Richard Milhous Nixon.

Also active in the anti-apartheid movement, Sime was one of the first of the 1960s bohemian wave to reside in Balmain where he was involved in Australian Labor Party politics. Internecine disputes and branch stacking were then de rigueur, and he encouraged ALP branch members to attend meetings at his house by supplying a keg of beer. On 20 January 1968 he married his long-term girlfriend, Adelaide-born trainee teacher Meredith Byrne, at St John’s Church, Mona Vale. They named their son after the legendary American labour activist and martyr, Joe Hill. Their house in Balmain became the site of regular gatherings characterised by Rabelaisian excess. Up to one thousand guests would attend his ‘Chairman Mao birthday parties’ (Wynhausen 1995, 22) celebrated each Boxing Day.

In 1969 Sime was hired by Frank Close, a buccaneer businessman and chairman of a company with interests in mining, VAM Limited, who admired the young man’s style. Together they travelled extensively in outback Australia inspecting, sometimes purchasing, mineral prospects, until Close left the ailing company in the early 1970s. In the late 1970s Sime joined the staff of the banking giant Citicorp Australia Holdings Ltd (Citibank Ltd from December 1985) as a tax lawyer and spent much of the rest of his working life there. In 1981 he was made a vice-president, and in February 1985 Citibank was one of sixteen foreign banks to obtain a licence to operate in Australia, and the only one not required to take a local partner.

Sime’s role at Citibank reflected the major contradiction of his life. Though committed to left-wing and progressive causes, he was also a highly effective agent of the foreign-owned ‘money power.’ In June 1988 Australian Taxation Office auditors raided Citibank’s premises seeking documents concerning an alleged tax evasion scheme. The ATO suspected Citibank of promoting a strategy involving companies buying redeemable preference shares in offshore-based, tax-exempt subsidiaries. Audits alleged that, using the Citibank scheme, four Australian public companies had accumulated large income tax liabilities.

The raid confirmed Sime’s understanding of himself as an independent spirit, thumbing his nose at the Establishment and big government. He met the tax officials head on as they entered the bank’s premises, ordered that the filing cabinets be locked, and called in the bank’s lawyers. It became one of his most fulfilling moments: ‘Three things I’m very proud of, fighting conscription, fighting apartheid and fighting the tax raid’ (Wynhausen 1995, 25). The matter was contested vigorously in the Federal Court of Australia, which ruled that legal professional privilege should have applied.

As well as being well paid, Simes adroitly handled various real estate deals. With the publican Susie Carlton he bought the run-down Riverview Hotel, Birchgrove, in 1984 for about $240,000, built the business up and in short time reputedly sold it for two million dollars. He profited from other lucrative property investments in the Blue Mountains, Balmain, and in Bowral where he maintained a country retreat. Though he claimed not to be interested in money, he did not disavow it: ‘If it’s there and you can earn it, you’re a mug if you don’t take advantage of it’ (Wynhausen 1995, 25).

Sime enjoyed spending his money on his mates and was a generous supporter of the arts. The writer Frank Moorhouse was a particular beneficiary, and was one of several writers who stayed from time to time in the boathouse below Sime’s home in Balmain. Sime represented, and sold manuscripts for, Peter Carey and David Williamson, joined the board of the Copyright Agency Limited in 1984, serving as chair in 1989. He also provided impecunious locals with pro bono legal advice.

Untidy and sometimes dishevelled, even in wearing an expensive suit, exuberant, and increasingly corpulent and red-faced, Sime never fitted the stereotype of a high-flying corporate lawyer. His red BMW was invariably littered with old newspapers and used betting slips; his office was messy. He lived life at a frenetic pace.

In early 1995 Sime joined the board of the Sydney Tigers, the erstwhile Balmain Rugby League Football Club, part of the revamped and struggling club’s attempt to engage with the business community. Soon afterwards the game was enmeshed in a civil war precipitated by Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited which sought to take over the code and establish a Super League. Sime became a central figure in a ‘Stop Murdoch Now’ organisation that held packed town hall rallies.

Shortly afterwards, Sime’s health began to decline after a bad fall at home. He died on 9 March 2000 at Darlinghurst of a cerebrovascular accident and metastatic malignant melanoma. A funeral service was held at St Augustine’s Catholic Church, Balmain—the only church in the suburb large enough to accommodate the mourners. Survived by Meredith and their son Joseph, he was buried in Macquarie Park cemetery, North Ryde. A Murray Sime prize for excellence in painting was instituted through the National Art School in 2001.