From Australia’s Jewish past

Sir Peter Emil Herbert Abeles, AC  – entrepreneur,  businessman, transportation magnate, and benefactor  

Peter was born on 25 April 1924 in Vienna, Austria, to a Hungarian-Jewish family.  His father was an affluent metals dealer.  When Peter was a small boy, the family moved to Budapest to avoid the growing fascism, and he completed his secondary education there.

In 1944, when Nazi Germany invaded Hungary, Peter was sent to a death camp.  His family, however, managed to get to Romania.  Miraculously, they all survived and were reunited.  There was again more change, with the communists taking over in Hungary, and the family was again forced to flee back to Romania.  Peter became a cabaret entrepreneur.  In 1947, he met and married his first wife, Claire, who was also a cabaret performer. In 1949, when Peter was twenty-five, he and his wife emigrated to Sydney as refugees.  His first job was selling encyclopedias and clothing door-to-door.

Peter befriended another Hungarian immigrant, George Rockey, and together, they bought two second-hand trucks, which they named “Samson” and “Delilah” and set up a transport company known as Alltrans.  In 1967, Alltrans merged with Thomas Nationwide Transport, the combined companies trading as TNT-Alltrans. The two budding entrepreneurs sought transport contracts, with the first one being from the mining town of Broken Hill.   Peter had exceptional organisational and business skills, having learned from his father and been guided by his belief that, in a country where distance would be a high cost for all transport, there was a great opportunity for transport to succeed. By 1967, the company was operating about 500 lorries across Australia and by 1968. It became known as TNT with Peter at the helm as managing director.  During the 1970s, TNT expanded into the United States, Canada, Britain, Brazil, and New Zealand through many takeovers and mergers with other transport and shipping companies.  The company was termed “the second biggest transport, operating by road, rail, sea and air.’’

In 1979, Peter and media mogul Rupert Murdoch signed an agreement under which Peter would take over Ansett Transport Industries.  In 1989, the Australian airline industry was in chaos amid the pilots’ dispute, when domestic airline pilots, through their union, demanded an immediate 30% salary increase, which the government rejected. It was a prolonged, bitter dispute that the pilots lost as the air force and pilots from overseas were called in to keep the airlines operating.  Between 1982 and 1992, Peter juggled both Ansett and TNT as their chief executive officer and managing director.  In 1992, when TNT was struggling with debt-ridden investments in Europe, Peter retired in September but was later re-elected to its Board. He continued to focus his efforts on the ailing Ansett airline, but two months later resigned from it.

Peter was a major force in Australian industry, having influenced the careers of important business and political figures, including Kerry Packer (owner of Australian Consolidated Press and Australia’s richest man at the time) and Bob Hawke (Prime Minister of Australia, 1983-1991).  He supported Hawke’s Prices and Incomes Accord and participated in his 1983 National Economic Summit. He formed strong links with the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) regarding the two-airlines agreement of the 1980s and later became Chair of the Council.  Cameron James Coventry, a historian, has written that in 1974, Peter, together with Rupert Murdoch, supported Bob Hawke’s idea of forming a new centrist political party to seize power from the Whitlam Government.  However, this did not eventuate because of the events of 1975, when on 11 November 1975, Australia experienced its greatest constitutional crisis when Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismissed Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and his Labor government.

He was also caught up in allegations of corruption centred on then NSW Premier Sir Robert Askin, from whom journalist David Hickie accused him of buying his 1972 knighthood, giving Robert Askin a seat on the TNT Board, and acquiring 110,000 shares.  He was accused of being involved with drug trafficking with the Nugan Hand Bank.  At this time, he had become an associate of crime boss Abe Saffron, the original King of the Cross, who had built an empire through nightclubs, crooked police, drugs, gambling and lots more.  Peter admitted having common business interests with the US West Coast mafia but denied any knowledge of mafia involvement in his business.

Peter was knighted in 1972 for services to business and the arts.  Under his dynamic leadership, his transport business empire at its height spanned more than 60 countries and employed about 55,000 people.  On the recommendations of the NSW Government, led by Sir Robert Askin, Peter was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1991 and was named “Australian of the Year” by The Australian in 1987.   It was Bob Hawke’s recommendation, by the then Treasurer, Paul Keating, that Peter join the Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia, a position he held from 1984 to 1994.   At the same time, he was Chair of the Australian Opera Foundation.  Peter also took on the Chairmanship of the Australian Cancer Foundation, which was established in 1984.  Together with the late Lady Sonia McMahon, they established the Australian Cancer Research Foundation (ACRF) that year, with Peter serving as the inaugural chairman, a position he held until his passing in 1999.

Peter and Bob Hawke’s friendship had begun in the 1970s and, according to Bob’s biographer and later his second wife, Blanche D’Alpuget, Bob looked upon Peter as a “father figure”; he found the older man “subtle, sophisticated, cosmopolitan, and immensely fascinating”.  Peter’s rival transport magnate, Melbourne businessman Lindsay Fox, said Sir Peter was an “outstanding individual. His scope and vision were way ahead of anyone else in the industry.  He respected those who worked with him, negotiated countless agreements with unions and the ACTU, and not once broke his word.  He was very tough, but his vision for what he did was nothing more than incredible.”  Former ACTU secretary Bill Kelty said, “Sir Peter was a decent and humane person”, with a vision for Australia that “few people matched”.

In his spare time, his passion was cards: either intense bridge games or very high-stakes poker.  The then NSW Premier, Sir Robert Askin, was a regular at the table and spoke of him as “a warm, generous, erudite, and humorous gentleman by those who knew him, who built up and cultivated a network of friends that covered all sides of the political spectrum. Peter’s portrait by Joe Greeneberg hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra.

Peter and his first wife, Claire Dan, actress and philanthropist, adopted two daughters in the 1950s but divorced around 1970.   Peter died from cancer in Sydney on 25 June 1999 at the age of 75.  He was survived by his second wife, Kitty; his two adopted daughters with his first wife and a stepdaughter.  When delivering Peter’s eulogy at his funeral, the former Prime Minister Bob Hawke said, ‘‘Peter was truly a man of the world, fluent in half a dozen languages and had a profound interest in international affairs. He went on to say that “Of the 5.5 million immigrants and more than half a million refugees who have made Australia their home since World War II, none can match the breadth and magnitude of Sir Peter Abeles’’.

The AJHS acknowledges the following references in the preparation of this story:

Australian National University – Obituaries Australia – Attila Urmenyhazi; Wikipedia; Immigration Place Australia; Wikitree; JewAge

From Australia’s Jewish Past is edited by Ruth Lilian

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