ILWS - Institute of Land, Water and Society
Advisory Board 
Dr Wendy Craik (AM)
The words that the former Chief Executive Officer of the Murray Darling Basin Commission say as we begin to talk about her career provide a good insight into the personality of a woman who has held, what would have had to have be, one of the most important roles in natural resource management in Australia.
Dr Wendy Craik’s stint with the MDBC was at a time when the Murray Darling Basin experienced its most severe drought on record and tough decisions have had to be made. Of her career, Wendy, who has been on the Institute’s Advisory Board since its inception, says: “It’s really been more about ruling things out, than ruling things in.”
Wendy, who grew up in Canberra, started doing arts at ANU before switching to science (zoology) doing her Honours year on invertebrates in a local stream which is now in the middle of Canberra’s suburbs. “I decided I wanted to work on fish which were a bit more interesting and larger than invertebrates but as there weren’t many places which specialises in fish and fisheries in those days I went to North America to the University of British Columbia, in 1973, to do a PhD on fish biology,” says Wendy. In 1978 Wendy returned to Australia and the opportunity to work for the newly formed Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority for three months “but I ended up staying 17 years and really enjoyed it.”
Wendy, who was based in Townsville but did a lot of travelling up and down the reef, began in research on the reef’s fisheries which included monitoring recreational fishing, boat ramp surveys, diving surveys of the fish around the coral etc. She had learnt to scuba dive in Canada but says she is just as happy to snorkel. “It was really interesting and in some ways I’d like to go back and have a look at those areas now, 25 years later,” says Wendy who, after a few years of research, got into running research projects and then the management side of things. Towards the end of her time with the authority, Wendy was co-ordinating the development of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Strategic Plan- a 25 year plan. “By that time I was running the Townsville office with 150 people,” says Wendy. “When I started there were 10.”
Wendy met her husband, Grant Hawley, a geographer, when she first started working at the Authority. He left the Authority in 1980 to start a milk run which he did for a few years before setting up an import and export nursery specialising in palms and cycads. Looking for a step-up in her career path, Wendy took on the position of Executive Director of the National Farmers Federation from 1995 to 2000 which meant moving back to the cooler climes of Canberra. “It was a really interesting and challenging job,” says Wendy who then spent a year as CEO of Earth Sanctuaries Ltd. based in Adelaide. At the same time Wendy was chairing the Australian Fisheries Management Authority and on the National Competition Council. In 2002 she returned to Canberra where she worked as a consultant in natural resources with Acil Tasman Ltd and chaired the National Rural Advisory Council. In 2003 she became president of the National Competition Council. When she took on the role of CEO of the MDBC in 2004 she gave up most of her board appointments. Wendy continued in that role until the end of last year when the Commission became the Murray Darling Basin Authority and went from “working for six State governments to the Federal government.”
“I really enjoyed the job, it was very stimulating,” says Wendy of her four years with the MDBC. “I worked with a great bunch of people and we managed to achieve a few things but it was obviously a very difficult time for the people along the Murray and in the Lower Darling because of record low water availability.” When the MDBC was restructured to become the current Murray Darling Basin Authority, a new CEO was appointed. While she says she was disappointed as she had enjoyed the job and would have liked to continue in the modified organisation, she is very matter-of-fact about it all. “It’s just the way it is,” says Wendy adding that any new job has to be interesting, something in the general area that she has worked in before “or else something completely different and fascinating.”
Meanwhile her life is very different now compared to how it has been for the last 15 years or so. She’s been “having a bit of a holiday” with more time to spend on her and her husband’s 20ha property half an hour out of Canberra near Hall where they have planted grape vines, berries, and fig trees and provide a home to “more than a few rabbits.” She says her husband is the gardener. “I’m just the assistant,” she laughs. There’s also more time to take holidays to the coast, to Europe, take their boat up the Hawkesbury River near Sydney, and to walk.
Wendy still has a number of commitments. She is on the board of the Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal; the World Fish Centre (a United Nations research and development organisation based in Penang); Dairy Australia as well as being on the Institute’s Advisory Board. “Given that we only meet a couple of times a year, it’s a bit difficult to gauge the Board’s influence on the Institute,” says Wendy. “But one of the things the Board has really focussed on is integrated research which certainly seems to be a feature of what is happening. I get the feeling that, in a University, it’s a bit of challenge to find and engineer the precise focus or strategic research areas. In a way these have to partly reflect the research interests of the people who are there but at the same time you have to lead with areas which are topical, relevant and strategic. The danger is that the research could be spread too thin. The other challenge is lining up the incentives with what you want to achieve for researchers.”
Wendy says she has no desire to go back to research. “I decided a long time ago that there were a lot of people much better at it than me,” says Wendy. “I like running organisations. I like doing things and managing things.”
Editor’s note: In June 2009, Wendy took on a new full-time position as a Commissioner with the Productivity Commission, the Australian Government's independent research and advisory body on a range of economic, social and environmental issues affecting the welfare of Australians.