Kerry Packer

Kerry Packer was born Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer on 17 December 1937 in Sydney. His father was Sir Frank Packer, an Australian media proprietor who controlled Australian Consolidated Press and the Nine Network. His mother, Gretel Bullmore, was the daughter of Herbert Bullmore, the Scottish rugby union player. He had an older brother, Clyde Packer. He took part in various sports at school, including boxing, cricket, and rugby; though he struggled academically, possibly due to undiagnosed dyslexia.[4] On his father's death in 1974, the family estate, valued at $100 million, passed directly to Packer. His father had fallen out with his elder son, Clyde, in 1972.[4]

Packer, through his family company Consolidated Press Holdings, was the major shareholder with a 37% holding in Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL). Until Packer's death PBL owned the Nine television network, and Australian Consolidated Press which produces many of Australia's top-selling magazines. He was involved in a number of other gambling and tourism ventures, notably Crown Casino in Melbourne. The Nine Network and Australian Consolidated Press businesses have since been divested to PBL Media.

Packer was widely respected in business circles, courted by politicians on both sides, and was widely regarded as one of the most astute businessmen of his time, despite having been a poor student.

Although Packer's reputation as an astute businessman was legendary and he made some good investments, he was by no means a self-made man—his grandfather, Robert Clyde Packer, and his father, Sir Frank Packer, had built up the media empire and its related holdings over many decades. As pointed out by internet news outlet Crikey, if $100 million had been invested in the Australian sharemarket in September 1974 through a balanced portfolio of the top 200 companies, that portfolio would be worth a lot more than $6.9 billion in December 2005, possibly as much as $11 billion.[5]

Packer controlled Nine Network and Nine's Wide World of Sports in the 1980s, and "famously sold the network to Alan Bond and then bought it back three years later for less than a quarter of the price." Writes the Sydney Morning Herald, "Packer's decision to sell Nine to Bond in 1987 for $1.2 billion - before buying back the network in 1990 for $250 million - is legendary in Australian television."[6]

Moreover, Packer was not the first choice to take over the running of the family's business empire—his father had intended that Kerry's elder brother, Clyde Packer, would take over the company, but Clyde fell out with his father in the early 1970s and left Australia permanently.

Kerry Packer's independent business life began after his father's death in 1974 when he inherited control of the family's controlling share in PBL, valued at A$100 million . Further, his principal Australian investments in television and casinos were highly protected from competition by government regulation which Packer and his employees worked very hard to have maintained.

The Packer family's business reputation suffered a blow following the 2001 collapse of One.Tel, a telephone company in which his son, James, had invested.

Kerry Packer was also one of Australia's largest landholders. In 2003, a deposit of rubies was discovered on one of his properties.

The Packer media empire included magazines, television networks, telecommunications, petrochemicals, heavy engineering, a 75% stake in the Perisher Blue ski resort, diamond exploration, coal mines and property, a share in the Foxtel cable TV network, and investments in the lucrative casino business in Australia and overseas.

Outside Australia, Packer was best known for founding World Series Cricket. In 1977 the Nine Network cricket rights deal led to a confrontation with the cricket authorities, as top players from several countries rushed to join him at the expense of their international sides.

One of the leaders of the "rebellion" was England captain Tony Greig, who remained a commentator on the Nine Network's payroll until his death in December 2012. Packer's aim was to secure broadcasting rights for Australian cricket, and he was largely successful. In the 1970s the global cricket establishment fiercely opposed Packer in the courts. To counter the establishment, Packer hired the ten best Senior Counsels in the UK and put them on retainers, stipulating that they were not to take on any additional work during the court case (the sole purpose of which was to deny the establishment the best legal minds to prosecute their case) . When he died he was mourned with a minute's silence at the MCG as one of the most influential figures in the history of the sport.

Packer was famously quoted from a 1976 meeting with the Australian Cricket Board, with whom he met to negotiate the rights to televise cricket. According to witnesses, he said: "There is a little bit of the whore in all of us, gentlemen. What is your price?"[9]

Packer funded the World Rugby Corporation (WRC), a company formed by lawyer Geoff Levy and former Wallaby player Ross Turnbull. Both wanted a professional worldwide rugby union competition in 1995. A majority of the All Blacks and Wallaby teams signed up to the WRC. In response, the Australian, New Zealand and South African rugby unions formed SANZAR, who partnered with News Limited to launch two professional competitions, the Super 12 and Tri Nations Series. The South African Rugby Union told the Springboks players that they would never play for their country again if they committed to the WRC, and they remained with the SARU. Most of the All Blacks then followed them, and finally the Wallabies did too, so the WRC project was abandoned.[10]

Packer was often the centre of controversy. One of the earliest incidents occurred on 7 June 1960, when his father was trying to take over the Anglican Press, a small publisher run by Francis James. According to author Richard Neville, Frank Packer was angered by James' refusal to sell the Anglican Press, so he sent Kerry and some burly friends to pressure him into selling. They forced their way in and reportedly began vandalising the premises, but James was able to barricade himself in his office and call Rupert Murdoch, Packer's most powerful rival. Murdoch quickly dispatched his own team of 'heavies', who threw Kerry and friends out. Not surprisingly, the Murdoch press had a field day with the news that the son of Australia's biggest media tycoon had been caught brawling in the street.[11][12]

Like Murdoch, Packer's critics saw his ever-expanding cross-media holdings as a potential threat to media diversity and freedom of speech. He also repeatedly came under fire for his companies' alleged involvement in tax evasion schemes and for the extremely low amounts of company tax that his corporations are reported to have paid over the years. He fought repeated battles with the Australian Taxation Office over his corporate taxes.

His most severe legal challenge came in 1984 with the Costigan Commission alleging (using the codename of "the squirrel", renamed "the Goanna" in media reports[13]) that he was involved in tax evasion and organised crime, including drug trafficking. He successfully counter-attacked the commission with the assistance of his counsel Malcolm Turnbull. In 1987, the charges were formally dismissed by Attorney-General Lionel Bowen. Mystery surrounded Packer's receipt of a "loan" of A$225,000 in cash from Brian Ray, a bankrupt Queensland businessman.[14] When questioned about this transaction at the Costigan Royal Commission Packer said "...I like cash. I have a squirrel mentality. I like to keep money in cash. It is by no means the most cash I ever had in my life."[15]

Notwithstanding the significant efforts made to preserve his security and privacy, Packer suffered two mysterious break-ins at his companies' headquarters in Park Street, Sydney:

• In 1995, 25 gold bars, weighing a total of 285 kilograms (628 lb), and a Vegemite jar full of gold nuggets were stolen from Packer's personal safe;[16]
• In 2003, a licensed Glock 9-millimetre (0.35 in) semi-automatic pistol was stolen from a desk drawer on the executive level. Packer was not charged with failing to "keep safe" the weapon but he did subsequently surrender his firearms licence.[17]

Packer broke the sports boycott of apartheid South Africa which prevented South African sportsmen from representing their country when he recruited a number of South African cricketers to play on his World Series Cricket Team. His timing was criticised, coming just months after the Soweto riots and the death of Steve Biko, murdered by the members of the South African security forces.

Packer's primary schooling suffered greatly when he was stricken with a severe bout of poliomyelitis at age eight, and he was confined to an iron lung for nine months. His father apparently thought little of his son's abilities, once cruelly describing him as "the family idiot", although Kerry subsequently steered PBL to heights far beyond anything his father or brother achieved. The nickname his father gave Kerry made him strive to new heights in schooling, trying to achieve "A" grades. His end of year report said he was one of the most notable students. In an interview, former employee Trevor Sykes stated that "He didn't read much on the printed page. If you didn't want Kerry to read something, you wrote more than a one-page memo."[18]

Packer's grandfather Herbert Bullmore represented the Scotland national rugby union team in an international match against Ireland in Dublin in 1902 and worked as a doctor in Sydney for many years.[19]

Kerry Packer and his wife of 42 years, Roslyn Packer AC (nee Weedon), had two children: a daughter, Gretel, and a son, James. At the time of Packer's death, he and Ros had two grandchildren: Francesca then 10, and Ben, then 7, from Gretel's first marriage to British financier Nick Barham,[20] and Gretel and her husband Shane Murray were expecting their first child together, William (born 2006).[21] Gretel and Shane married just before Packer's death.[22]

Packer conducted extra-marital affairs with a number of women including the model Carol Lopes—who reportedly committed suicide after being shunned by Packer—publisher and former ConPress employee Ita Buttrose, and Julie Trethowan, his long-time mistress and manager (from 1983) of the Packer-owned Sydney city health and fitness club, the Hyde Park Club. After his death, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that from about 1995, Packer transferred control of multimillion-dollar Sydney real estate holdings to Trethowan.[23][24][25]

In June 2009, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that former federal opposition leader, and subsequently an Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull – a former legal adviser and business associate of Packer – revealed to journalist Annabel Crabb that Packer had threatened to have him killed when they fell out over their 1991 attempt to take over the Fairfax newspaper group through their Tourang consortium. Packer reportedly made the threat after Turnbull told Packer he was going to have him thrown out of the consortium by revealing Packer's intention to play an interventionist role in the newspaper group.

"He told me he'd kill me, yeah. I didn't think he was completely serious, but I didn't think he was entirely joking either. Look, he could be pretty scary. He did threaten to kill me and I said to him: 'Well, you'd better make sure that your assassin gets me first because, if he misses, you better know I won't miss you.' He could be a complete pig, you know. He could charm the birds out of the trees, but he could be a brute."

— Malcolm Turnbull, 4 June 2009, as reported in The Sydney Morning Herald[26]

Packer was a supporter of South Sydney Rabbitohs in the National Rugby League competition.[27]

He was an advocate of the Australian Republic Movement.[28]

Packer suffered as many as four heart attacks. In 1990, while playing polo at Warwick Farm, Sydney, he suffered from a heart attack that left him clinically dead for seven minutes. Packer was revived by paramedics and then airlifted to St Vincent's Private Hospital Sydney, and received bypass surgery from Dr Victor Chang, a pioneering cardiac surgeon. It was not common for an ambulance to have a defibrillator at the time – it was purely by chance that the ambulance which responded to the call had one fitted.

After recovering, Packer donated a large sum to the Ambulance Service of New South Wales to pay for equipping all NSW ambulances with a portable defibrillator (colloquially known as "Packer Whackers"). He told Nick Greiner "I'll go you 50/50", and the NSW State government paid the other half of the cost. He is reported to have said, "Son, I've been to the other side, and let me tell you, there's nothing there."[32] And in a press conference, "...there's no one waiting there for you, there's no one to judge you, so you can do what you bloody well like".[33]

He also suffered from a chronic kidney condition for many years, and in 2000, he made headlines when his long-serving helicopter pilot, Nick Ross, donated one of his own kidneys to Packer for transplantation. The story of the transplant was covered in detail by the Australian TV documentary program Australian Story, a rare occasion on which Packer granted a media interview (and, to the surprise of many, not to his own network; Australian Story is produced by the public network, ABC). After recovering from the operation, Packer launched an organ transplant association in memory of cricketer David Hookes.

Kerry Packer died of kidney failure on 26 December 2005, nine days after his 68th birthday, at home in Sydney, Australia, with his family by his bedside.[7] Knowing that his health was failing, he instructed his doctors not to treat him with curative intent or by artificially prolonging his life with dialysis. He told his cardiologist earlier in the week that he was "running out of petrol" and wanted to "die with dignity". His private funeral service was held on 30 December 2005, at the family's country retreat, Ellerston, near Scone in the Hunter Region.[21] Having obtained council permission, he was buried on the Ellerston property near the polo field.[34]

In 2007, the Chaser's Andrew Hansen made passing mention of Packer's death in The Eulogy Song.

The Kerry Packer Civic Gallery within the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre of the University of South Australia was endowed by the Packer family.[36]

• Kerry Packer Foundation
• Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo
• Howzat! Kerry Packer's War
• Paper Giants: Magazine Wars
• Power Games: The Packer-Murdoch War
• Super League war

• Barry, Paul (1993). The Rise and Rise of Kerry Packer. Sydney: Bantam/ABC Books. ISBN 1-86359-075-7.
• Stone, Gerald (2000). Compulsive Viewing: the inside story of Packer's Nine Network. Ringwood, Victoria: Viking. ISBN 0-670-88690-4.
• Stone, Gerald (2007). Who Killed Channel 9?. Sydney: Pan Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4050-3815-7.
• Westfield, Mark (2000). The Gatekeepers. Sydney/London: Pluto Press/Comerford and Miller. ISBN 1-86403-102-6.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Kerry Packer

• KerryPacker.com.au is for Sale
• Photo of Kerry Packer
• Kerry Packer media profile
• Shaw, John (27 December 2005). "Kerry Packer, 68, Australia's Media Magnate, Is Dead". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 May 2010.
• 1970s interview on Packer's childhood
• "Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer, tycoon and transformer of cricket, died on 26 December, aged 68: Obituary". The Economist. 5 January 2006. Retrieved 13 January 2012.
• Kerry Packer at Find a Grave