From shop floor to chairman of the board
By Mike Sabey
JAMES GORDON MAXWELL MOFFATT AM February 12, 1931-July 27, 2023
Known as Gordon, James Gordon Maxwell Moffatt began his career as humble stockbroking script clerk and rose through the ranks to chair several public companies. In his latter years, he was an influential chair of several health research and community organisations and was generous philanthropist.
He served two terms from 1974 as a City of Melbourne councillor, where he chaired several vital committees over several years as his major contribution to the community.
After the Victoria premier of the day Sir Rupert Hamer had dismissed the council, in December 1982 Gordon was re-elected to council telling colleagues having never been sacked in his life, he set about to make amends becoming so in 1984 the city’s first deputy lord mayor.
After leaving council he served for many years on the board of the Lord Mayor’s Fund and was its chair between 1989 and 2000 helping to build the fund to more than $200 million.
Born in London in 1931 at the height of the Depression, Gordon was the eldest child of the influential GJ Coles London-based buying director, Max Moffatt and his wife Charlotte. Then when Gordon was four months old his father Max (and family) were recalled back from London to Melbourne.
During World War II, Gordon was enrolled at Melbourne Grammar, then after US’s General Douglas MacArthur took over the school to use it as their headquarters, he transferred briefly to St Kevin’s and later boarded in Manifold House at Geelong Grammar. At Corio, he turned into a first XVIII footballer and first XI cricketer and made friends with Rupert Murdoch and the future world mile record-holder, the late John Landy.
During his war school days, Gordon recalls: “I sensed there was some local social disquiet that my mother was German despite the fact she had left the country 14 years before. When mother gave me a watch with the word ‘Berlin’ on the dial for my birthday, I was so worried about what the other boys at school might think, I flushed it down the toilet!”
During school holidays he played tennis with Rupert at the Murdoch Toorak family residence and was amazed when told to address Sir Keith Murdoch as simply as Sir Keith.
Gordon Moffatt.
After matriculating from Geelong Grammar in 1948 he started out as an Ian Potter & Co share broker’s script clerk. Over the next 10 years, he rose through the ranks with GJ Coles and McKinley Wilson to become a member of the Melbourne Stock Exchange.
He later pursued a career as a director of a variety of companies including Sir Ron Brierley’s high-flying Sydney-based corporate raider, Industrial Equity Limited, before becoming chairman of the union fidelity Trust Company of Australia.
After suffering a mild stroke in 1988 he paid a lot more attention to his health and took up honorary board positions of the National Stroke Foundation and the Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital. He also gave his services to the Australian Bionic Ear Institute and the Epworth Medical Foundation and was a life governor of the Alfred, Freemasons and St Vincent hospitals as well as the Victorian School for Deaf Children and the YMCA National Council.
He has also served on the boards of Royal Lifesaving Society, David Syme Business School Advisory Board, Melbourne Metropolitan Fire Brigades, Royal Historical Society of Victoria and as trustee of Victorian Tennis Association and the Tennis Foundation of Australia.
He was awarded an Order of Australia (AM) in May 2000 for services to the community particularly medical research and charitable organisations and local government as a financial adviser and administrator.
Gordon Moffatt held a lifelong, deep love of the arts and especially for the prominent Heidelberg School painter J A Turner, who depicted bush life of the early settlers. By the late 1970s, Gordon had acquired Australia’s largest Turner collection of the day. In 2002, his family donated $1 million to the National Gallery of Victoria to set up the Maxwell and Charlotte Moffatt Family Gallery to house furniture and costumes.
He met his late wife Jacqueline at a friend’s 21st birthday party when he was a student, and they married in 1954. In the ensuing 60 years they raised five children, Tim, Heather, Julie, Scott and Craig and had eight grand and five great-grandchildren.
Mike Sabey is an old Moffatt family friend.