Slater and Gordon, which specialises in industrial law, personal injury cases and class actions, is one of the three biggest players in that space.

MacKenzie echoes the opinion of the company’s chief executive John Somerville, who in February last year declared that the firm did not belong on the ASX, after confirming it was working with private equity firm Allegro Funds on a $150 million buyout to end a tumultuous time on the local bourse. Its shares were delisted that April.

The firm’s problems were deep: MacKenzie attributes it to being listed on the stock exchange, having poor governance and making bad strategic decisions. He is confident the organisation has turned things around and learned lessons from that period.

“Law firms shouldn’t be listed, law firms shouldn’t make international acquisitions unless you can demonstrate to yourself that you have an understanding of where the acquisition fits strategically to what you’re doing, and you’ve got the capability to be able to run the business that you’re acquiring,” he says.

MacKenzie has always been busy. He turned around Victoria’s Transport Accident Commission in the 90s, worked in Hong Kong, sat on the board of James Packer’s Macau casino joint-venture company Melco Crown, and chaired Pacific Brands, as well as Gloucester.

Have his views on Australia’s relationship with China, our largest trading partner, changed in the past decade?

“I am in the Paul Keating camp because we need to engage, and we had first-mover advantage in China [because] Gough Whitlam went to China before Richard Nixon,” MacKenzie says. “[The former Morrison government’s comments] were so naive in the overall scheme of the importance of China as an export partner for Australia.”

These days, alongside his key role at Slater and Gordon, he is on the board of government agencies WorkSafe Victoria, the Victorian Funds Management Corp., Development Victoria, and the Suburban Rail Loop Authority.

On the day we meet, news has broken that the cost of building and running the controversial rail project for five decades has blown out to $216 billion, according to an analysis by the Victorian Parliamentary Budget Office. When then-Premier Daniel Andrews announced it in 2018, the suburban rail loop had a price tag of $50 billion.

MacKenzie is unperturbed.

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A conversation he had with businessman Sir Rod Eddington and retired public servant Terry Moran in the business-class galley of a Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong in 2015 spurred the idea for the rail loop project that has been roundly criticised for not stacking up. It was also condemned by the Victorian Ombudsman for the way it was created, with “excessive secrecy”, in her report lambasting the politicisation of the Victorian public service.

“The case for the suburban rail loop is well laid out in the business case ... What happens if [it] isn’t built? What does that mean to Melbourne? So, you’ve got Jakarta levels of traffic jams?” MacKenzie says.

“The ombudsman distinguished herself in her process by not seeking to interview me … I don’t know how much the ombudsman’s report cost, but it would be at least hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I can’t see any value to the Victorian taxpayer that has come from that process.”

Unusually for a high-profile member of the chairmen’s club, MacKenzie has been a member of the Labor Party since the 70s. I ask him whether, as has been widely noted, there is an incongruence between his CV and his political affiliations.

He points to a book he read over Christmas, The Right to Rule, by Ben Riley-Smith, chronicling the past dozen years of Tory rule in the United Kingdom. He believes a passage from the book sums up the difference between the Australian Labor Party and the conservative side of politics. In the book, Riley-Smith notes UK’s Labour has a vision to bring about democratic socialism, while the Tories have never been anchored to an ideology, seeking only to win power.

“The policies that the Labor Party had formulated were far more aligned to having a contemporary, relevant society with contemporary, relevant views and adjusted for contemporary, relevant values,” MacKenzie says. “I found a natural home there.”

Mark Mentha, one of Australia’s leading restructuring experts, has known MacKenzie for four decades, and describes him as “very personable, got a wicked sense of humour, very likeable and has country boy values”.

“There is this richness [in MacKenzie’s life] that comes from a tapestry that he’s woven over the years, the connections. The knowledge and expertise that he’s been able to impart on others has had a huge impact in terms of peoples’ lives, profitability of companies and the strategy of companies,” Mentha says.

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