Graeme Samuel's links with the Liberal Party go back a long way. In 1975, at the age of 29, he put up his hand for the safe Melbourne seat of Higgins, missed preselection but remained active enough to become Victorian branch treasurer 14 years later.
No surprises, then, when the current member for Higgins and the then federal treasurer, Peter Costello, named him to head the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in 2002.
Perhaps just as predictably, four Labor states argued vociferously against the appointment, saying he was too close to the big businesses he would be regulating on behalf of consumers and small businesses. When the appointment was confirmed after a nine-month stoush, Labor's then treasury spokesman, Mark Latham, vowed to remove him "at the first available opportunity".
Now, a Labor government is in power in Canberra and Samuel has just been reappointed for three years.
He might have been expected to bow out gracefully. He is 62, wealthy from an early career in investment banking, and has made his mark as a reformer in the sporting, cultural and charitable sectors. "I could have stayed with Macquarie Bank," he says. "So I could have been earning $20 million or $30 million a year, I'm not saying as chief executive but certainly as a director."
Leaving public life would allow him to reverse some of the sacrifices he made in 2003, such as selling investments and resigning from the boards of 29 private and public companies, to ensure nothing in his affairs could cause embarrassment.
He also sold a Rolls-Royce and an Aston Martin when he moved to the ACCC. "With my increasing public role, it no longer seemed appropriate to drive a vehicle of that nature," he said at the time.
His openness extends to leaving in his Who's Who entry details of two board seats he would probably rather forget: FAI Insurances (he was a director from 1993 to 1996; it collapsed after its 1998 takeover by HIH) and music retailer Brashs (it went into administration in 1994; he had been on the board since 1989).
Returning to a less scrutinised existence might have its appeal, particularly as Samuel has recently been bemoaning the personal attacks his position as champion of fair trading and consumer rights attracts.
Another salvo was fired this week, when the Australian Jewish News published an editorial criticising the ACCC's decision to launch a criminal prosecution against the Melbourne businessman Richard Pratt, a former proprietor of the newspaper.
Samuel's Jewish background was immediately part of the story. "I am a strong and proud member of the Jewish community but I am not religious," says Samuel. "I am an atheist but I continue certain religious traditions, mainly out of respect for my long-since-passed father and mother and for my children." But he will not be drawn on his connections in the Jewish community, refusing to confirm or deny reports of close friendships with prominent Jewish business leaders. "It's very hard in this role to have very close friends because unfortunately everything you are doing in this area impacts on people one way or the other."
He has also felt the full force of being at the centre of political debate. Just as Labor leaders pilloried him in 2002 and 2003, the Coalition has now turned against him.
The biggest focus has been on the sensitive issue of petrol prices. He was grilled all day at a Senate estimates hearing on June 5 by Coalition senators curious at the commission's recent change of opinion on the Government's proposed Fuelwatch scheme.
From consistently and emphatically opposing "the philosophy of interfering in the market by limiting price variability within the [24-hour] cycle", said the Liberal, George Brandis, the criticism suddenly was "thrown out the window". Samuel says it was noteworthy the attack was made on the messenger, not the message.
"It's been very convenient over the past three or four months to use the prospect of my reappointment as a means of attacking issues that the ACCC is dealing with," he says.
He says the ACCC became a convert to Fuelwatch before the November election, and initially received a cool reception when it recommended the scheme to the new government. Samuel added to the controversy by lavishly praising the Government in recent months, particularly Chris Bowen who took the newly created portfolio of competition policy and consumer affairs.
At a lunch with company directors in Sydney in mid-June, he opened his speech with a warm commendation for Bowen. "For those of you who've had the privilege and perhaps the pleasure of meeting with Chris Bowen, you will well know, I think, that he is not only extraordinarily knowledgeable in this particular area, but he takes a very keen interest in competition policy," Samuel said.
Samuel is unapologetic. "I have just been stating what I genuinely believe," he says. "I won't resile from my description of him as very informed and very intelligent."
He says Costello was a supportive minister, especially when it came to staring down attacks on the ACCC's powers by the nation's largest company, Telstra. But as treasurer, Costello had many other priorities. The previous government also failed to introduce several reforms advocated by the ACCC. "You have to understand the commission's … enthusiasm for a government that's prepared to bring forward the criminalisation of cartels' legislation that we have been publicly seeking since 2004, 2005," he says.
He also nominates the Government's willingness to change Trade Practices Act provisions dealing with misuse of market power - suggested by the ACCC in 2003 - and to strengthen its investigative powers, as recommended since 2006.
"You would have to be excused for expressing enthusiasm for a government and a minister who's very receptive to advice we gave him," says Samuel. For a man renowned as a consummate negotiator and dealmaker - whose crowning achievement as a corporate adviser was the successful thwarting of the late Robert Holmes a Court's 1980s attempts to swallow BHP - the noise around his reappointment has all been a bit clunky.
Samuel brings an unusual mix of personality traits to public life. He wants big jobs and devotes considerable energy to doing them, but says he is uncomfortable being a household name. Asked at a recent company directors' lunch about any negative aspects of being commission chairman, he nominated the habit of journalists to "personalise institutions".
It has been a mantra of his for years. As AFL commissioner in 1996, he complained that his public profile focused too much attention on him, and not enough on the football code. "The way we do things in football is to debate issues, not personalities."
Despite the thin skin, he keeps coming back for more. His CV includes chairing Victorian health agencies, the Australian Opera, two Jewish community bodies, Melbourne's Playbox Theatre Company, the Melbourne and Olympic Parks Trust, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and several medical research institutes.
He is not motivated by money, having long ago abandoned a successful commercial career. Before taking the ACCC job, he headed the National Competition Council, charged with bringing market forces to previously sheltered sectors. "There have to be easier ways of earning a living than running the NCC when every vested interest group didn't want to see competition applied to them," he says.
In 2005, he credited his father Ralph, a self-made fashion entrepreneur and property developer who had died 15 years earlier, with instilling in him the idea of public service.
"I was meaning to go and see him the afternoon he died, and I didn't," Samuel said at the time. "I will never forget this. From that moment forward I said: 'That's it, I am no longer interested in making money, I have made enough … Now I want to get on and devote my life to public service.' "
He does not rest on his laurels when appointed to high office, but typically sets about changing the established order. A union campaign against his initial appointment as ACCC chairman accused him of "a fetish for mergers".
When the Kennett government appointed him head of Melbourne's inner healthcare network in 1995, he controversially expanded it by taking over the neighbouring eastern healthcare network.
When he was chair of the Australian Opera, it merged with the Victorian State Opera in 1996, a move which some in Melbourne art circles still want reversed.
At the AFL, he championed club rationalisation, encountering vigorous opposition.
He says he is proud of the "revolution" in football, saying that on his watch the sport went from bankruptcy to "the most financially stable and solvent and successful sporting competition in this country".
As he runs through how he did it, he says: "You'll notice these things are all to do with the financial and structural side. I have never, ever claimed to know anything about football."
(When it comes to opera, though, he nominates it as a form of relaxation, along with reading and going to films like Casino Royale , Indiana Jones and The Crystal Skull. )
He relishes a fight and will have a few more on his hands during his second, shorter, term of three years - enough to get him to 65.
The Pratt prosecution will be heavily scrutinised. It follows the biggest coup of Samuel's first term - November's settlement in which Pratt's Visy Industries admitted to long-running collusion with its rival Amcor to fix cardboard box prices.
Visy paid a $36 million fine.
On June 20 the ACCC laid four criminal charges against Pratt, alleging he knowingly gave false or misleading evidence during its investigation into the box cartel. Pratt denies the charges.
And with food and petrol prices dominating political debate, there will also be plenty of attention given to the results of ACCC inquiries into the grocery and petrol sectors.
The regulator must decide in coming months whether to intervene in two large proposed mergers: BHP Billiton's bid for Rio Tinto, and Westpac's tilt at St George Bank.
And Telstra, the company that loves to hate the ACCC, will maintain its noisy campaign. Apart from the regular media attacks on the "rogue regulator" for the way it oversees the fostering of competition in the telecommunications industry, Telstra has 47 court cases running against the ACCC.
In three years, Samuel will be disappointed if he has not been noticed. "If there's a legacy that I would like to leave to my children, it will be that they can turn around and say dad was relevant." Rising to the top The many lives of Graeme Samuel P Partner, Phillips Fox and Masel solicitors
P Executive director: Hill Samuel and Macquarie Bank, principal Grant Samuel merchant bank
P Chairman: Playbox Theatre, Opera Australia
P Commissioner: AFL
P Chairman: Melbourne and Olympic Parks Trust, trustee Melbourne Cricket Ground, director Docklands Authority
P Chairman: Wesley College Foundation
P Director: Brashs, NatWest Australia Bank, Thakral Holdings
P FAI Insurances, Regent Management, Portfolio Partners
P Treasurer: Liberal Party Victoria
P Chairman: Commission for the Future; Jewish Community, Victoria; Jewish Communal Planning and Development Board
P Chairman: Alfred Foundation, Inner and Eastern Health Care Network, Baker Medical Research Institute
P President: Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry; National Competition Council