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“HE HATED GOVERNMENTS TELLING HIM WHAT TO DO”
The Bulletin closed for the year a week or so ago, but re-opened in the wake of owner Kerry Packer’s death. Some staff flew back to Sydney from holidays interstate; others cancelled planned trips. (Get this: nobody complained.) We had about 72 hours to produce a 96-page tribute edition. Any later and we’d have been beaten by the weekend newspapers.
And—mostly thanks to the incredible work of creative director Jeff Young and chief sub-editor Andrew Forbes—we did it. The magazine is on sale today. A few highlights:
It was not initially expected that he would do well in the realms of commerce, not simply because he was the third generation of the powerful Packer family to serve in the role. Kerry’s ascension, in May 1974, to the twin posts of chairman and managing director of Consolidated Press was noted by The Australian newspaper under the modest headline: “K. Packer takes reins”. The article was a mere 47 words in length ...
He hated governments telling him what to do and what to think.
“Tell you what should happen, son. These governments are always passing these new laws, right? Every day there’s some new law. Now I’ll tell you the law I’d like to see passed. Goes like this: every time the government passes a new law, it has to repeal an old law. Be good, wouldn’t it?”
Editor Garry Linnell quotes the boss:
“Tell me this, son. Out there [he gestures and you know he’s pointing to the suburbs] there are many of them earning – what’s the average wage? About 50k? They’re earning that, and some a lot less. How do they get by on that? How do you raise a family and pay a mortgage and just do what you have to do? Don’t forget ’em. You journos always do.”
The main course arrived and the meat wasn’t to his liking. He pushed the plate away arguing: “I own more cattle than anyone else in the world. I own more land than any man in Australia. Why can’t I get a decent ****** steak in my own house?”
As head of sport, David Hill remembers being on duty late one night during a nightmarish broadcast in which the satellite kept dropping out, spoiling coverage of a major British golf tournament. At 2.30am, a great hulk suddenly loomed up behind him in the gloom of studio control.
“Kerry, what are you doing here?” Hill asked in alarm.
“I think this might arguably be the greatest disaster in the history of television,” Packer chided. “I just wanted to watch it up close.”
We stepped on to the footpath with Packer casting an eye around for his driver, who was nowhere. Seeing Packer’s frustration and feeling faintly ridiculous, stranded in a darkened street with Australia’s richest man, I suggested we catch a cab. “OK,” Packer replied, feeling his empty pockets. “Have you got five bucks?”
Packer is in Bermuda at some joint where they teach you to stop smoking. His horse is running in the Derby at Randwick on Easter Monday. So he calls in and gets Darrell Eastlake, who wouldn’t know a horse from a cow.
“Kerry Packer here – how’d Easter go?”
“Oh, good thanks, Mr Packer. I had a surf and took the kids ...”
“Not that bloody Easter, you idiot, my horse Easter. The Derby.”
Big Dazza’s flying around the cottage searching for the results – Easter, sadly, flopped. Before hanging up, a gruff Packer says: “Who am I talking to?”
“Ian Maurice,” Eastlake says, and hangs up.
Jockey Greg Hall was feeling chipper. He’d just won the 1987 Sydney Cup on Major Drive, his first big win for owner Kerry Packer. That night he sat in Packer’s Sydney home, wide-eyed with delight – kids who left school at 13 don’t often grow up to dine in mansions. Packer led Hall to his office, which was littered with race trophies dating back decades. He told Hall how proud his deceased father, Sir Frank, would have been and Hall, warming to the flattery, started to relax. Then, seemingly as an afterthought, Packer said: “Even though I had $7m on the second horse, you little bastard.”
At one dinner, he asked the table what they thought about John Howard’s new gun laws. (A gun lover, Kerry didn’t approve.)
Treasurer Peter Costello, sitting at his side, remarked that after the horror of Port Arthur the government had to do “something”.
“Well, you know nothing,” said the media mogul to the man who would be prime minister.
“What about you, Mr Martin?”
I told him I thought the gun laws should be much tougher.
“Well, you’re also a dope.”
Kerry Packer was a great Australian. There’s much more in the print edition; also, check this picture gallery.
UPDATE. Tubs Grogan, Australia’s leading investigative drunk, recalls a bizarre meeting with Packer.
UPDATE II. An excellent article by Nick Cater.
UPDATE III. “When sportsmen play only for money, sport becomes meaningless,” whines Michael Henderson. Presumably he’d have preferred it when sportsmen earned money but weren’t given any:
In 1975, the ACB coffers were overflowing, they had banked a massive A$78,000 from the 1975 England tour and even bigger takings from the 1975/76 Windies tour of Oz. From this players earned something that amounted to between A$180 to $240 a week. Barely enough, in some cases, to cover expenses.
UPDATE IV. Packer was a friend of the rhino.
UPDATE V. Thoughtful analysis from the Currency Lad.
UPDATE VI. Packer was also a friend of the shoeless.
UPDATE VII. Rural folk loved him.
Here’s a story with both Kerry and James.
A mate of mine was playing rugby for his school against a Cranbrook side with James Packer in it, circa early 1980s.
Halfway through the game my mate and James get in a blue. On the the field strides Kerry, cigarette in hand, to separate them.
My mate accused James of eye-gouging him. Packer turns to James and says “Did you?” James denies it, says it must have been someone else in the maul.
Recently my mate bumped into James on Bondi beach. Even after two decades, James recognised him and again protested his innocence.
Says rather a lot about the Packers and Australia.
Posted by The Mongrel on 2005 12 30 at 12:55 AM • permalinkThe first time I met the bloke I was in a lift coming down from the by then notorious seventh floor, home of People and The Picture. I was dressed, if that’s the word, as Tubs Grogan. In one arm I held a stuffed goat. Over my shoulder was an enormous squid’s tentacle and next to me was the model, a diminutive stripper with surgically enhanced breasts, denim shorts that looked like they’d been cut from her bikie boyfriend’s change pocket and undergoing severe amphetamine withdrawal.
The last thing you wanted to happen when you were in the lift under such circumstances was to have anyone get in from the intervening floors. The women’s mags on levels five and six detested us. Even worse was the lift stopping at level three. Mahogany Row. Kerry’s Lair.
That day we got past the sheilas’ floors but were stopped at three. Kerry got in. He looked at me. I looked at him. He looked at the girl, then looked at me. “Who are you?” he asked.
“Tubs Grogan, Mr Packer. Picture magazine.”
There was a short pause. “Carry on,” he said.
ROTFLMAO! That is damned funny.
=^D
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2005 12 30 at 02:09 AM • permalink#4 Nic, was this the “idiot” reference you heard on the ABC?
MARK DAY: He was dyslexic. He called himself a dolt and a dill at school. His father called him a boofhead, introduced him to people as his idiot son. But Kerry - he said later, this forged his character. He couldn’t work academically, he just couldn’t! And so he found a life through sport. (7.30 Report, 27/12).
The guy spitting out the chestnut, Mark Day, works for Murdoch, not the ABC. It was a good quote, and the ABC can hardly be blamed for using it. Does Packer’s death have to become another excuse for an ABC bash?
I heard on the radio that he asked not to be resuscitated, which would strike me as strange in a functioning 68 year old. If the report is true (and I haven’t heard mention of it since), maybe he had troubles other than the dodgy ticker.
Kerry Packer: yet another example of how much a MBA is really worth.
I’m surprised the “I’ll toss you for it” anecdote (probably apocryphal I suppose) hasn’t had more of a run.
Ah ... the legend and wordsmith “Tubs Grogan” ... a Google search a few minutes ago only comes up with three items, all referencing the above article ... I’ve read him ... “read” being used very loosely ... but he was funny IMO. If one “read” Playboy back then, you said so for the articles, there was little pretence for “The Picture” magazine ... I’m referring to the late 1980’s here OK ... my favourite columnist was “Ignatius Jones”, the sex doctor that unfortunately changed career from singer to sex doctor to dancer and then showman.
Re: UPDATE above, I’ve heard a similar story about Packer and his Picture magazine before ... good one ... BTW ... who’s Tubs?#6 damned generous of Packer to up and die so we could bash the ABC, but, really, he didn’t have to go to such lengths. I would be happy to kick that pack of pretentious, progressivist ponces anytime. That’s the least a taxpayer is entitled to in return for their 8c a day (and the rest) being used to fund the loathsome propaganda it broadcasts under the guise of reputable national broadcaster.
And how about non-govenrment, non-observers of law (let alone International Law, that holy grail of vexatious litigants) telling the UN what not to do.
#7 Craig Mc:
Packer had other health problems too ... Re: MBA, Kerry only had a BA ... Bugger All academically ... so what ... but you’ve made me think ... several of my colleagues have got their MBA and few have prospered the way they think they should’ve ... I think there’s a big industry in MBAs but they aren’t proving to be the leg up they’re being promoted as ... maybe another post ...Some good articles. I like it that no-one is painting him as a saint (or for that matter some embodiment of evil). He was undoubtedly larger than life though as i guess you can be when you are richer than everyone else.
My Packer memory
I was lucky enough in the first year of Wolrd Series Cricket to be picked to go to a Packer WSC live-in cricket camp at cranbrook. These were like a forerunner to the Cricket Academy idea (although aimed at school age cricketers). Probably meant to groom that next generation of Packer cricketers.
Didn’t help my cricket career much and no-one i remember at the camp went on to cricket glory but we got to meet Tony Greig, Barry Richards, Majid Khan et al.
And i think Peter Roebuck was one of the coaches from memory.
Anyway thanks for that Kerry. It was a great experience and for a week or so I probably believed I’d be up there with Lillee, Chappell and Marshy.
#13 Francis H:
There were summer cricket camps being run at Cranbrook (Kerry’s old school) up to four years ago, and now run at Scots College opposite to the Packer family home ... did you go to this camp? The ACS do good camps with excellent sports people. Regardless, a good memory ...Stevo
I think the ACS camps are part of all these new summer programs run for school kids. When I went (January 78 I recall) the idea of going in your summer holidays to a camp for anything for a week was unheard of. We just bummed around at home (mostly playing cricket in the backyard).
The camp was fun and was one of those things Packer introduced which tried to imbue cricket with some sort of professional development mindset. Not sure how long they lasted but they probably morphed into the type of camps you linked to.
Some people at work the other day were mocking the Aussie cricketers for wearing black armbands for Packer. I think they had the best reason of anyone in Australia. I’m sure fully professional cricket would have happened anyway but Packer certainly brought it on that much faster and deserves the credit for it.
#10
That’s the least a taxpayer is entitled to in return for their 8c a day
Hate to break it to you, but according to the gratuitously emboldened open thread of yesterday, it’s gone up to ten cents a day. Personally I don’t see the value.
#15 Francis H:
Not everyone agreed with World Series Cricket when it was born … it seemed to be revolutionary rather than evolutionary … many thought it wasn’t “cricket” and was to be avoided …. but it is true that the players benefited ... it’s similar to when the Olympic sportsmen went from being amateur to professional … I think cricket owes a legacy to Kerry because of his interest … if not, we’d be saying, “What’s cricket?” …Slammer Mark Day is one of the most left wing media commenters (every Thurs in The Australian Media liftout, alongside the appropriately named Errol Simper -who uses third person and calls himself the scribe.)
breathes heavily…
I have often wondered how two such d#@$%$#@s kept jobs with Murdoch press and can only say that it speaks volumes for the editorial integrity of News.. same for Phat Phil Adams as well.
# 11 speaking of inappropriatness in “telling people what to do”, how bout the ABC news reader saying recently(about Hicks’Farrcical attempt to become British)“and Bob Brown has told the Federal Government to STAY OUT OF IT”......Cute that the Fairfax press and the ABC are mooing so affectionately now that Packer’s dead. They’ve spent the past 25 years at least slagging him and his works at every opportunity: he had far too much MONEY, he spent MONEY in ways of which one simply cannot approve, he once threatened to use his MONEY to buy (horrors!) the Sydney Morning Herald. And yes, he gave money away, but always SELFISHLY (a typical SMH story implied that he donated vast sums to St Vincent’s Hospital, equipped ambulances with defibrillators etc, ONLY because he thought he might need them one day). Obits tend to be kind, of course, but as a fuller picture takes shape of Packer’s oversized life and, er, inimitable personality, it’s going to be mighty hard even for the axis of media weasel to keep him inside that reliable old “rich, greedy, grasping, rich, selfish, nasty, rich capitalist enemy of the working class” frame.
#7 His only remaining kidney - a transplant - had failed. His brother died the same way - a failed transplanted kidney - a few years back. His only option was clinging to life on a dialysis machine. He decided to opt out after pulling off his last big deal (the AFL TV contract). A big step for someone who’s been there and seen nothing.
Especially in light of his comments during the sham investigation into his supposedly wicked ulterior motives in relation to Fairfax. In a “life’s too short”-style comment, he said something like “Well I was dead once. It was only for seven minutes, but it was long enough for me.”
And you gotta laugh at his main argument to support the fact he was not clandestinely controlling Fairfax via a puppet chairman. Something like “Do you really think I’d make that bloke CEO”, pointing at Fred Hillmer “if I was running the paper?”
And how apt that Big Kezza felt an empathy for the rhino. Certainly had a lot in common physically.
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Thanks Tim,you’re creating a beautiful,unsentimental ambience around a guy who was a living legend and whose bluntly imposing prescence will stay with us for the rest of our lives.
Who amongst us does not occasionally wish that someone would come out with the unvarnished truth (though not usually about ourselves).Vale Kerry.