Fred Gruen - Retirement and Legacy

Retirement and Legacy

At Gruen's testimonial dinner in 1986 former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam joked about Gruen's retirement, about the improved stature of economics in response to recent economic difficulties and about the resignation of John Stone from his position as Secretary to the Federal Treasury to become a politician with the right of centre National Party. "When I first entered public life in Australia no one particularly noticed if economists retired and still less, no one particularly cared how they spent their retirement. Now of course, everybody notices and everybody cares."

Gruen remained at the ANU in an emeritus position and continued working at his usual pace writing many articles, and helping others with their work.

In 1996 he was diagnosed with bladder cancer. His doctor asked if he had ever worked with aniline dyes. Though his time in England had saved him from the Nazis, his brief stint at the printers was probably responsible for the cancer. Despite surgery and chemotherapy he died at the age of 76 in room 76 of the John James Hospital in Canberra.

A a memorial to celebrate his life, his son Nicholas pointed to the following passage. In describing Gruen's fellow Austrian – composer Joseph Haydn – it uncannily summarised Gruen's qualities and even his two minor physical ailments.

(H)e must have been a very nice man to know. A person of singularly sweet, kind disposition, he made virtually no enemies. . . . He was even-tempered, industrious, generous, had a good sense of humour . . . enjoyed good health except for some eye trouble and rheumatism . . .. He good common sense. He had integrity and intellectual honesty - the kind of honesty that could allow him to say, when Mozart's name came up 'My friends often flatter me about my talent, but he was far above me'. He liked to dress well.

Gruen's final legacy to Australian economics is probably his two sons. Dr David Gruen has forged a successful career as a professional economist at the Reserve Bank of Australia and then as a senior official at the Federal Treasury, where he now heads the Macroeconomic Group. Dr Nicholas Gruen was an architect in the 1980s of the widely admired Button Car Plan - a plan for transition Australia's car industry to a regime of lower tariffs and higher export orientation - and has since advised the Business Council of Australia and the Productivity Commission as well as authoring reports for the Committee for Economic Development of Australia.