Making Headlines

Murdoch.

Prologue

AFTER A QUARTER of a century as a daily newspaper editor, I decided in mid-2015 to pull the plug. When it became clear that Tony Abbott was almost certain to lose his prime ministership, I decided, in September 2015, it was time for me to go too. A quarter of a century was enough for anyone. I had become an editor when Bob Hawke was prime minister. The revolving door of leadership change after the 2007 election loss by John Howard was disheartening. I have always believed in the role of the national daily newspaper in the great Australian nation-building project. As a creature of politics from early childhood with a father who worked in Canberra, I had tried to make my paper, The Australian, instrumental in the policy debates of the nation. But politics had become a farce, and I had grown cynical about modern political leaders, as well as the effects of modern media trends on politics.

I decided to write a book about my time as an editor to give people interested in the way the nation works politically a chance to see how the relationship between government and the media operates. I wanted to share my thoughts on being an editor and the future of journalism. After seven thousand front pages and twenty-four years editing daily papers, no memoir could track all the big stories I have been involved in. To keep this book to a manageable length, I decided that it should have two strands: prime ministers and journalism, since I had known all the prime ministers well during that time and was the country’s longest serving editor. Niki Savva’s wonderful chronicle of the downfall of Tony Abbott, The Road to Ruin, attracted criticism because Niki did not seek comment from her central characters: Abbott and his chief of staff, Peta Credlin. I have not sought comment from others for this book either. The book is not a political history in any way. It is my memoir of my time at the helm of two large daily newspapers and as editor-in-chief of all the papers under the Queensland Newspapers umbrella. It is a book about an editor’s life rather than a political history.

In the book I have betrayed some confidences of all the prime ministers I have dealt with. This is fair enough since I have retired and they have all left politics, apart from Abbott, who probably should have left before I did. I have also tried to give these national leaders due credit for their strengths. I have focused on prime ministers because a book that included treasurers, Opposition leaders and state premiers would be too cumbersome, and boring. And why not leaders in business, the arts and sport? In truth, like all editors of major newspapers, I have had extensive contacts with all of the above for many decades, but they might not make interesting reading. I think my contacts with prime ministers and thoughts on the media will, however, be interesting to many readers.

I believe sharing stories about a daily newspaper editor’s interactions with national leaders will give readers an unusual perspective on the sometimes bizarre relationship between politics and media. The truth is that newspaper editors still drive the national media agenda. Their ideas are followed by news directors in the electronic media and on social media. The newspaper editors I have known and worked with have been very serious and thoughtful about how they wield their power. I hope I have been too, and I trust that my stories are both amusing and instructive. I hope my thoughts about journalism, its future and the stories I have counted as my most important will shed some light on how editors think and work. I hope my reflections on the Murdoch family and News Corporation will bring some much-needed balance to an often hysterical discussion about this media empire.

This book is a record of my memories of my life as an editor. Although I have not checked my memories against those of the prime ministers concerned, most of the events outlined can be verified by third parties who were present, or the contemporaneous accounts of witnesses who heard my tales at the time.

1

JOURNALISM?

Why, when and how

PEOPLE HAVE FOR decades asked me about life as a daily newspaper editor, which is not surprising after twenty-four years as an editor and forty-two as a journalist. I usually refuse to go into detail. Suffice to say, ‘Well, a newspaper is a very demanding mistress. As they used to say on Fleet Street, The editor never sleeps.’ In the time since I was appointed editor of The Australian by the then editor-in-chief Paul Kelly in April 1992, the job has only become more demanding. Once, an editor-in-chief’s Saturdays were their own apart from four or five hours of newspaper reading. Now your first job, even before unwrapping the four papers on your front lawn, is to go online every morning—Saturday and Sunday included—and check your newspaper’s website. Then your tablet and mobile apps. Often things will not be in the order envisaged the night before, so a series of emails and phone calls becomes essential. If there has been a big news event the night before, it will usually require a call to the digital team if you decide the story is big enough to throw out everything you had planned.

On a normal work day at The Australian, once the digital products have been checked, it is time to listen to the abbreviated 7.10 AM program and take a look at ABC morning breakfast television. Then ABC local radio news at 7.45, the full version of AM at 8.00, Alan Jones 8.30 to 9.00, Ray Hadley and a forty-minute walk before work at 9.05. In the hours before 9.00, I would have read hard copies of The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, The Sydney Morning Herald and Fin Review and checked The Courier-Mail, Adelaide Advertiser, The Age and Herald Sun online. I would have checked all my main Twitter feeds half-hourly from 7.00.

I always tried to be in the office by 10.30 for forty minutes of emails, phone calls to bureaus and checking the local and foreign wires and picture services. Then it was a late arrival at the morning news conference, having let my editor oversee proceedings for the early briefings from the Arts, Higher Education, IT and other sections. I would always try to keep conference as horizontal as possible, encouraging people to throw around ideas and asking for their own suggestions. I always used my morning walk before work to think about the coming day’s news agenda and process ideas so I could have a couple of big news and picture story possibilities in case the chiefs of staff and bureau chiefs produced pedestrian news lists. No offence meant.

It was my firm belief that The Australian needed to focus on things its competitors would not be publishing, and that, because we had the entire nation to play with, we could promote an issue from the regions that a metro paper would not be able to develop as a splash or page 1 picture story. Editors who control their own diaries and leave themselves time and space for thinking can usually predict what each of their rivals will do most days, so The Australian’s leadership group became good at covering everyone else’s main issues but then going further by picking issues the other newspapers would not have thought of. I believed most newspaper buyers who took The Australian also bought their own local capital city paper, so for those loyal readers it was important to offer challenging stories not in the city-based papers while at the same time doing a good or better job with the comparable state stories in our own core areas of interest. So we would steer away from local crime and traffic stories but try to be very competitive on state political issues, education issues, the environment, important court cases, industrial disputes, university education and the development of local terrorism cells, which I had begun to assign reporters to chase at The Courier-Mail after the World Trade Center bombing in 2001.

After news conference came editorial conference around noon. I would always try to have a couple of good editorial ideas up my sleeve. Research shows that readers of The Australian scan the newspaper’s editorials very closely, especially readers involved professionally in politics and the bureaucracy. Strong, well-argued editorials would often be prominent in discussion in federal and state parliaments. Chief leader writers good at their jobs would tend to do likewise, coming into editorial conference with strong, long and well-thought-out editorials in mind. Those journalists not destined for long stints in the job as chief leader writer would base their ideas on reflexive comments about stories in that morning’s news list—always a sign that they had given the day’s proceedings no thought at all until they received their copy of the morning news list half an hour earlier. Another giveaway for an editor is a writer who suggests three small editorials. These are easy to write and require little research because they are not long enough for developing complex arguments. The best editorials were always full length.

Most editors then go out to lunch. Too often they do not know why. I was only ever keen on lunches that were important to the paper and to me editorially. If I knew I would get story ideas from lunch with a particular source or contact, I would always say yes. If it was just another boardroom boredom session, I would decline wherever possible. In parliamentary sitting weeks, I would always watch Question Time, and if I did have to attend a lunch, I would make sure I was back for the 2pm parliamentary start. I remain amazed by how many editorial executives fail to watch Question Time, or even the main TV nightly news bulletins at 5.00, 6.00 and 7.00 and the ABC’s 7.30. It was a source of frustration to me for many decades that so many editorial executives spent their days in the bubble of news lists without a clue about what was happening in the real world at any given time. This was despite the banks of televisions above and around all the main news desks, and my regular wisecracks at the backbench and news desk as I walked past an interview with a prime minister, during 7.30 for example, that no one was watching.

My daily news consumption went from 7am until 11.30pm. I watched Sky News all day and every night from 8.00 after 7.30. News consumption continued at home every night until after Lateline and Lateline Business. This process of monitoring news and checking all the Fairfax and News Corp websites a couple of times an hour served me well at afternoon conference and—together with my editors of the time (Clive Mathieson 2011–15, Paul Whittaker 2006–11 and Michael Stutchbury 2002–06)—with page 1 layouts at 6.15 nightly. In my earlier years until 2008, I used to leave about 10pm but brought that back to 9pm for my last seven years, giving the editor and night editor more control over later editions. Mathieson, Whittaker and I would still monitor Lateline from home, and there was a constant flow of emails between us and with the backbench (i.e. the part of the paper where news pages are compiled at night) about updating stories that were developing during Lateline interviews. Unfortunately for ABC viewers and news consumers in general, the slower, more magazine-style pace of the program when it was remodelled in early 2015 almost removed the nightly ABC political interview and therefore the need for close monitoring for news stories.

The thing I have least missed about editing since my retirement is the ritual of overseeing the paper from home every Sunday. It usually started with email exchanges about editorials and Cut and Paste (the paper’s popular column at the bottom of the letters page) during Australian Agenda, Insiders and The Bolt Report, all of which were compulsory viewing every Sunday morning. It culminated in the weekly wrestle to get online to the paper from home via my encrypted VPN linked to the work editorial computer at about 4.30pm. While better than operating by fax, as I did throughout the 1990s, the VPN system was very unreliable, and I often wasted more than an hour online with the editorial help desk before getting into that night’s paper. It takes a special kind of patience from an editor’s wife to put up with that every Sunday, year in, year out, during what is supposed to be family time. But editors have to do it. They are responsible for what is published every day and cannot simply say to Rupert or the prime minister if there is a drama about the paper on Monday morning, ‘Sorry, I was off yesterday.’

And of course not only is editing a seven-day-a-week job but it can also follow you on holidays. I have been called back to work from expensive rented beach houses for a big story or because Rupert or Lachlan ‘want to see you unexpectedly’. In both 1996 and 1997, while editor-in-chief of Queensland Newspapers, I was called to the office from Byron Bay during Christmas week. The first time I was out at Tallow Beach with my son Jake on our surfboards when my partner Deborah picked up a mobile phone call from Lachlan’s PA. Lachlan was flying to Brisbane unexpectedly and asked whether I could head up to see him. And could it be right now? Today? In those days the road to Byron was not the coastal freeway it is now. I had to pack up the kids and car and head back to the rented house, shower, then drive alone three hours to the office to talk to my proprietor’s son. One year I was booked for speeding twice on the return trip to Brisbane on a New South Wales double demerits day.

The most entertaining case of holiday workload I can remember came during the 2011 Queensland floods. Daily editor Paul Whittaker was on holidays, and weekend editor Nick Cater was editing. He was doing a fantastic job assisted by the then night editor Clive Mathieson. The Brisbane bureau was firing under the likes of Jamie Walker, Hedley Thomas and Tony Koch. But Cater wanted some advice so I went online via my trusty VPN and laptop every afternoon about 4pm to help monitor the coverage and be in a position to discuss the front page each night. This was hilarious as my wife’s beach house at the time looked like an electricity substation. In truth Cater was doing all the heavy lifting, but it was just another case of a daily newspaper editor never being off duty.

My life was never meant to be this way. My career in journalism came about by accident, and my impossible workload these past decades was all my mother’s fault. And that is said in the nicest possible way. I learned to work hard because of her, and I got into journalism because of her. I had planned on dentistry. Having lost my father early, in December 1964, and given that he and my mother were not legally married and his will needed to go through probate, financial security had always seemed to me to be the main reason to work. And with a widowed Lutheran German refugee mother and a little sister, work I did—from a very early age.

Mum’s German school qualifications were not sufficient for her to enter teaching, so in 1965 she did her year 12 exams at night while working for the Department of Labour and National Service, where my father had worked before moving to Sydney. It must have been gruelling for her—a newly widowed 34-year-old 12 000 miles from home. The following year she entered teachers’ college, enrolling in university at night, and managed to obtain a loan to build maisonettes—all this still years before the probate was settled. The idea was that we would live in one of the two-bedroom flats and rent out the second to help us pay for it all. It was a resourceful but no doubt stressful solution to her financial problems. The flats, on the rocky hillside of a then new outer northern Brisbane suburb, were the road to financial independence for Mum, and teaching was a job that would allow her to be there for my sister and me before and after our own schooling.

It was tough on a young boy, and I learned very quickly how back-breaking physical work could be. I maintained the yard, such as it was in that rocky place. I spread topsoil each spring, mowed the stony, barren yard, and soon mowed the yards of all our surrounding neighbours and washed all their cars to make money. As a young teen I did not trouble Mum for the latest Adidas shoes that were then the rage or for Levi 501 jeans. I could always afford to buy them myself. At fifteen, I got a job on Friday nights, Saturdays and Sundays cutting chicken at what was then Brisbane’s busiest KFC. By 1972 I was taking home what was then serious money—as a year 11 school student. It was dangerous work, and the store’s management was happy to pay me and my friend Patrick to bowl it over quickly rather than have the middle-aged full-time staff take all week to do it at a slower but safer pace. It was backbreaking, and several of the younger cutters at the time lost fingers. Patrick cut his right wrist so badly that he lost all movement in the little finger of that hand. I would catch the last bus into town from Kelvin Grove in Brisbane’s inner north-west every Friday and Saturday night covered in a perfect red line of blood and guts up my sandshoes, jeans, shirt and hair. I would have to wait at City Hall for the connecting 144 bus to Stafford and invariably received comments and criticism for my ghoulish, horror movie appearance. I gave the job up the day I received a cadetship in journalism.

I had never thought of journalism. A dentistry scholarship came after I developed a strong relationship with my local dentist. On Easter Thursday 1967, while waiting for Mum to pick me up from school on a hot sticky Brisbane afternoon, tempers were fraying, and two of my close mates, John Buckby and John Ryan, got into a fight. They were swinging hard-framed 1960s-style school ports loaded with books for the holiday break at each other’s heads. Being the sort of person who never imagines there is a problem I can’t solve, I stepped between them to break up the fight and copped a fully laden, hard school case in the mouth. It smashed my right front tooth in half and destroyed the left tooth at the roots. I had the right tooth steel-capped while the left required a full root canal filling. Both were eventually covered in porcelain after the original metal cap was replaced by gold. So a couple of years of hard dental surgery gave me the opportunity to assess the life of young Dr Robinson at close quarters. He was convinced that his career path towards orthodontistry would provide all the security his family needed and thought I should follow his example. I applied for a dentistry scholarship in year 12 and achieved the maths and science marks required.

But the interview with the serious, white-coated grandees of the dental board did not go well. They were looking for signs of a long-held, passionate vocation. My response to the question, ‘How long have you wanted to fix people’s teeth?’ was met with, ‘Since my own dentist persuaded me it is the easiest way to make a living and it is easier than the horrible things doctors have to do.’ The professors were unimpressed, to say the least. So I regaled them with the tale of my Maundy Thursday dental disaster at the hands of my schoolmates. They were a little happier after that. But I disappointed them again later in the interview when I said that, if I received the scholarship, I would like to delay it for a year because my mates and I wanted to spend a year labouring in the cane fields of North Queensland before we all started uni. Gap years were unheard of in Brisbane at the time. I came home disillusioned, wondering whether I had made entirely the wrong career choice. That was the moment I first heard the J word—journalism.

‘I never knew why you wanted to look into people’s mouths all day anyway,’ my ever-wise mother said. ‘You read so much and are so good at English I think you should try journalism.’

She had remained in contact with an old Public Service friend of my father who had once worked at The Courier-Mail, Clive McGowan. She asked McGowan how to go about getting into journalism. By the end of the week I had fired off applications—with great references from my English and history teachers—to The Courier-Mail, The Australian and The Telegraph. I reasoned that I could try this cadetship thing for a few months, then head up to Cairns in the autumn. Being seventeen and foolish, I did nearly ruin my chances by failing to put my address and contact details at the tops of my three application letters. I did write the address on the back of each envelope but had no idea that busy chiefs of staff had secretaries to open their mail and pass on the contents of an envelope after ditching said envelope. Anyway, Beth Stokes—PA to the very laconic Telegraph chief of staff Frank Watkinson—proved the most resourceful of the PAs. When her boss asked to see me and she realised her wastepaper basket had already been emptied, she contacted my English master referee, who provided my address. She sent a telegram asking me to come in the next day for an interview.

I thought the interview was going well, when Mr Watkinson’s phone rang. He asked me to stay while he took the call, which seemed like a reader query. He could not pacify the caller and eventually opened his bottom drawer and put the whole phone and receiver in, caller still talking, and closed the drawer. He smiled at me and said he needed to duck in to see the editor about our interview. I was to wait at his desk. When he returned more than half an hour later, he seemed surprised that I was still there.

‘You’re still here?’ he observed or questioned. ‘Well, you had better have a job then.’

Journalism never lost that slightly oddball, Pythonesque quality in the following four decades. In subsequent days that week I was also tracked down, again via the school, by The Courier-Mail and The Australian and asked to come in for interviews there. I declined, figuring that life on an afternoon paper would leave me plenty of free time for other activities after work. So in 1973 I became a seventeen-year-old cadet on an afternoon daily and stayed in the business another forty-three years. All on a whim at my mother’s suggestion.

Who would have thought then that I would end up running the biggest and best newspaper in the country for more than twelve years? That two men who had both worked under me earlier in their lives—Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott—would end up being consecutive prime ministers of our country? That these men would become friends and confidants, and that they would visit me at home and invite me to dine with them at their official residence, Kirribilli House, as well as in the prime ministerial dining room at Parliament House? You never know your luck in a big city, as my dentist used to say. And of course who would have thought my career and my paper would become so controversial that long magazine profiles and, in one case, a 45 000-word Quarterly Essay, written by Robert Manne, an old left wing critic of mine, at the height of the Leveson inquiry in the UK, would be devoted to trying to tear me down and attempting to undermine the influence of my paper, a paper that only a decade earlier would never have been described as the most politically influential newspaper in the country?

2

JOHN HOWARD AND THE REPOSITIONING

OF THE NATIONAL PAPER

AUSTRALIA’S PRIME MINISTERS between John Howard and Malcolm Turnbull lacked the political and policy skills needed for the job. But John Howard—as a former treasurer in the Fraser government in the late 1970s and early 1980s—certainly had a strong grounding in the business of the career he had chosen before he became the nation’s leader. As an editor, I found Howard the consummate professional. He instinctively knew what his less able successors seemed not to understand: how to use the power of his office without abusing it or overusing it, especially in dealing with the media. It amazed me that prime ministers who would phone the Murdoch family or the Australian managing director to complain about every slight they perceived they had been given by my paper never took the next logical step: to reflect on what the proprietor did with those complaints. The answer is simple. Almost always, Rupert or the CEO would simply call the editor concerned and pass on the complaint verbatim. Kevin Rudd was shocked when I told him after he had lost the leadership that News’s Australian CEO John Hartigan and Rupert would simply phone me to pass on his complaints after each of his many calls demanding that the paper and I be brought into line. Howard, in contrast, always took aggressive coverage on the chin, especially if it was good, fair reporting such as that by Natalie O’Brien during the last week of the 2001 election campaign on the children overboard issue or by Caroline Overington during the paper’s long investigation of the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) ‘wheat for weapons’ scandal. Former foreign minister Alexander Downer’s press secretary Chris Kenny and I had some savage disagreements over our AWB coverage, but Downer himself never raised it with me, and to my knowledge the only minister to complain about it to management was former treasurer Peter Costello.

But Howard did have a crack at me personally over the AWB issue. At his Christmas drinks at Kirribilli House at the end of 2006, he was on the lawn drinking champagne with his guests when he saw me come