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Home , Clyde Packer, Frank Packer, James Packer, Kerry Packer, Packer family

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TheHouseofPacker:TheMakingofaMediaEmpire(1999) PartyGames:AustralianPoliticiansandtheMediafromWartoDismissal(2003) ChangingStations:TheStoryofAustralianCommercialRadio(2009) +2 2#/, #%,'2

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Copyright © Bridget Griffen-Foley 2000 Copyright © Bridget Griffen-Foley 2014 First published in Australia in 2000 by HarperCollins Publishers

Reproduction and Communication for other purposes Except as permitted under the Act, no part of this edition may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or communicated in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All requests for reproduction or communication should be made to University Press at the address below:

Sydney University Press

Fisher Library F03 University of Sydney NSW 2006 AUSTRALIA Email: [email protected]

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Author: Griffen-Foley, Bridget, 1970- author. Title: Sir : a biography / Bridget Griffen-Foley. ISBN: 9781743323823 (paperback) ISBN: 9781743323830 (ebook : epub) ISBN: 9781743323847 (ebook : kindle) Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Subjects: Packer, Frank, Sir, 1906-1974. Consolidated Press--History. Publishers and publishing--Australia--Biography. Mass media--Australia--Biography. Businessmen--Australia--Biography. Dewey Number: 070.092

Cover image Providence Journal Photos Cover design by Miguel Yamin In loving memory of my uncle, Brian Jackson

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Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Abbreviations xvi Introduction xvii

1 Napoleon’s Debut 1 2 His Father’s Footsteps 14 3 Little Frankie’s Wanderings 31 4 El Dorado 48 5 The Young Master 65 6 Mansions and Mêlées 80 7 ‘Political Harlots of Mammon’ 102 8 Jekyll and Hyde 120 9 Powerbroking 137 10 Treading on Corns 154 11 Rumours 170 12 Setting Sail 187 13 Toasting Victory 214 14 The Sound of One Man Clapping 233 15 The King is Dead 251

Chronology 265 Endnotes 266 Bibliography 314 Index 324

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Pamela Williams (a Fairfax journalist) and HarperCollins (a Murdoch company) scored a coup when the scions of the Packer and Murdoch dynasties agreed to pose for the cover of her book, Killing Fairfax: Packer, Murdoch and the Ultimate Revenge, about the decline of the once mighty group. and share not only a birthday, but the pressures of dynastic succession and the searing experience of the collapse of One.Tel. Fairfax, Packer, Murdoch — all sharing the spotlight at the launch of Killing Fairfax on 23 July 2013. For a century, these three families have dominated media. But as the ‘old’ media struggles to adapt to the new, with declining audiences, converging techno- logies and changing business models, traditional notions of the family media dynasty are also under threat. Since the 1980s, the Fairfax empire has been lost to the family, classified advertising has collapsed and, in 2012, 1900 job losses were announced. Fairfax is now the prism through which the Australia print media will be evaluated. Since Kerry’s death in 2005, the has all but vacated its print and free-to-air television assets and transformed itself into a gaming and entertainment business. The Murdoch family business, which began spreading offshore in the 1960s, is struggling to deal with both corporate and personal scandals, while the complex issue of succession has media watchers eagerly following every breathless Tweet from the octogenarian Rupert Mur- doch. In June 2013 the New launched as a ‘Global Media and Information Services Company’, cut adrift from the profitable 21st Century Fox. As my biography of Sir Frank Packer documented in 2000, the issue of succession at Consolidated Press had been resolved, somewhat poignantly, before Sir Frank’s death in 1974. The elder son and heir, Clyde, infuriated by yet another act of paternal interference and censorship, had resigned his management positions within the group in 1972. When Clyde’s younger brother Kerry assumed the reins two years later, the Canberra Times remarked that Sir Frank ‘was too much the individualist for any suc- cessor to truly emulate’. By 2000, I was aware of a rumour that Sir Frank’s father, Robert , had sired another son. Ernestine Hemmings, who had been working as a sub-editor at Smith’s Weekly, where R. C. Packer was manager, had given birth to a son, Robert, on 30 October 1924 in Hobart, where Packer had spent his early life. Unmarried, Ernestine had assumed the surname Hill. There were no official records to prove the paternity of Robert Hill, whose birth was unregistered. However, Hill believed that Packer was his father, and there is mounting circumstantial evidence that this was the )00!-*!#*%0 case.ThefullstoryofjournalistandtravelwriterErnestineHillandhersonRobert, who died in 2003, awaits her biographer. Meanwhile, chapters 2 and 3 of Sir Frank Packer: A Biography must now be read in the context of a likely relationship between R. C. Packer and Ernestine Hill. During the 1990s, R. C. Packer’s daughter Kathleen (Lady Stening) had proved to be a valuable source for my biography, agreeing to be interviewed on several occa- sions, and carefully selecting family letters and photographs from a trunk to which I was never given access. She died shortly before the first edition was published in 2000. Sir Frank’s son Clyde had been another source, by telephone, usually very early in the morning, from his home in California. He died in 2001. died in Sydney on Boxing Day, 2005. The frenzy of media coverage proved the Canberra Times’ prediction wrong. When Sir Frank died, his flagship magazines the Australian Women’s Weekly and the Bulletin betweenthemmanaged only three pages and a cover. For Kerry, there were commemorative editions of both magazines, followed by a state memorial service — a federal government initiative and an unprecedented honour for a businessman. In the last half-century at least, the death of no Australian, other than , has attracted such saturation coverage. In 2005, perhaps not even Consolidated Press could have predicted the level of in- terest in Kerry, with extensive coverage also in the pages of the Murdoch and Fairfax presses. It was as though Kerry Packer had finally taken over the Sydney Morning Her- ald by stealth. A new edition of ’s 1994 biography was published as The Rise and Rise of Kerry Packer Uncut in 2006, with the inclusion of material previously con- sidered too risky from a legal perspective. In December 2006, on the centenary of Sir Frank Packer’s birth, his family donated Judy Cassab’s portrait of him to the National Portrait Gallery. His widow, Lady (Florence) Packer, and Kerry’s widow, Ros, were on hand, together with the Prime Minister’s wife, Janette Howard, for the unveiling. Lady Packer’s death in Monaco in 2012 at of 97 saw the curtain fall on the old media moguls of Sir Frank’s gener- ation. The buccaneers and ideologues who made up the Australian media’s first families are largely gone. In their place are private equity players and other unsentimental fin- anciers. Even James Packer (the somewhat premature subject of another Paul Barry biography in 2009) is now lean and mean, having lost a good part of his body weight following gastric bypass surgery in 2011. He is a shadow of his literally ‘larger-than- life’ father and grandfather. The Packers and the Murdochs, together with their wives, girlfriends and offspring, are often now portrayed as simply rich and glamorous. They have become celebrities – usually (but not invariably) reluctant products of the media their families helped to create and control for most of the twentieth-century. James Packer along with Elisabeth, Lachlan and James Murdoch now operate in an era of MBAs, of capital markets and shareholder value. Old-fashioned, sleeves-up media proprietors have largely gone, along with their ruthless and feudal management styles, indifference to chains of command, intuitive sense of the market and fingertip feel for numbers.

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Since Kerry Packer’s death, his family, and that of the Murdochs, have been ripe for nostalgic embrace. Three dramatic mini-series have focused on the Packer empire: Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo (airing on the ABC in 2011), Howzat! The Kerry Packer War (Nine, 2012) and Paper Giants: Magazine Wars (ABC, 2013). Sir Frank, played by Tony Barry, appeared in the wings of the first Paper Giants.Now,inPower Games: The Packer-Murdoch War, the two dynasties go head-to-head. Power Games aired on Nine, the network Sir Frank himself established, and his grandson James sold. The mini- series focuses on 1960 to 1975, based in part on the second half of my Frank Packer biography. (who played Kerry Packer in Howzat!) delivers a compelling, uncanny performance as Kerry’s father. Sir Frank can also be seen on stage, in David Williamson’s new play, Rupert. What would Sir Frank think of Power Games? Find out on Twitter, for he has made a comeback there, too: @Sir_FrankPacker.

Bridget Griffen-Foley, February 2014

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My principal debt in researching and writing this book is to Lady (Kathleen) Stening. In the course of many interviews, meetings and telephone conversations, Lady Stening shared with me memories of her brother Sir Frank Packer and their father R. C. Packer, and gave me access to family papers and photographs. I am aware that there will be parts of this book that Lady Stening will not like, but I hope she will feel that I have set out to provide a balanced account of her brother’s life. Lady (Florence) Packer also kindly agreed to be interviewed for my work on her late husband. Noni E. Fitzmaurice kindly clarified a number of details about the Pack- er ancestry, and allowed me to reproduce the photograph of Arthur Howard Packer from the family photograph collection compiled by his niece, Marie Frieda Packer (1893-1975). E. G. Theodore’s daughter Myra Rowbotham has been a generous source of information and enthusiasm over many years. My colleagues in the Department of History at the University of Sydney, particu- larly Professor Stephen Garton, Associate Professor Richard Waterhouse and Richard White invariably provided encouragement and sound advice. The ‘Writing Lives’ workshops initiated by the Research Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences in 1998 at the University of Sydney facilitated a lively exchange of ideas. I am grateful to Professor Geoffrey Bolton, , Professor Clem Lloyd and Professor Duncan B. Waterson for their helpful and incisive comments on drafts of this manuscript. Some of my interest in Packer undoubtedly stems from the fact that my late father John Griffen-Foley worked for him on the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs formorethan twenty years. I am indebted to my mother Helen for cheerfully putting up with anoth- er family member’s obsession with Sir Frank. In Australia, many other individuals enabled me to complete this project: Pat Bancks; Paul Barry; Alex Baz; Anna Binnie; Dr Margriet Bonnin; Arthur Boothroyd; Joyce Bowden; Associate Professor Patrick Buckridge; ; Sally Baker; Mary Elizabeth Calwell; Robert Campbell; Pauline Curby; the late Adrian Deamer; Nigel Dick; the late Dorothy Drain; Rita Dunstan; David Evans, federal director of the Aus- tralian–American Association; Ken Ewing; Dr Peter Gifford; Harry Gordon; Gideon Haigh; Ian Hancock; Heather Henderson; Robert Hill; Emeritus Professor ; Dick Hughes; Alfred James; Joyce James; Stephen Keir; David S. Kent; Dr Rod Kirkpatrick; Peter Lucas of the Hutchins School Archives; Terri McCormack; the late Frank McNulty; Veronica McNulty; Barry McRae; Professor Meaghan Morris; Dr Craig Munro; Dr Maree Murray; Dame Elisabeth Murdoch; Dr Melanie Oppen- )00!-*!#*%0 heimer; Dr Jim Packer; Jack Patterson; Paddy Pearl; Major-General John Hemsley Pearn; Neville Petersen; the late Elizabeth Riddell; Graham Robertson, honorary arch- ivist of the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron; Jim Russell; Colin Sanders, chief executive officer of the Royal Agricultural Society of ; Professor Geoffrey Sher- ington; Noel Slarke; Gavin Souter; Tom Uren; Bruce Wakeling and Jack Ryan of the Boy Scout Memorabilia Centre; Eleanor Watson; Dr Anne-Maree Whitaker; Sheila Wood; and John Wynne-Lewis. I also thank the staffs of the Archives Office of New South Wales, the Australian Dictionary of Biography, the Australian Stock Exchange, the Australian War Memorial, the Archives, Fisher Library at the University of Sydney, the History Research Section of the Central Army Records Office of the Australian Army, the Mitchell Library at the State Library of New South Wales, Moore Theological College, the National Archives of Australia, the National Library of Australia, the Noel Butlin Archives Centre, the Royal Agricultural Society of New South Wales Archives, the State Library of Victoria, and the University of Sydney Archives. In Britain, I was assisted by Katharine Bligh, archivist (modern collections) of the House of Lords Record Office; David M. Bowcock, assistant county archivist (Carlisle) of the Cumbria Record Office; the Newspaper Library at the British Library; Robin Burgess, chief executive of the CN Group Limited; David Cliffe and Alan Hanhin of the County Reference Library, Berkshire; John G. Entwisle, manager of the Reuters Archive; Wilma Grant, county librarian of the Royal County of Berkshire; Suzanne M. Eward, librarian and keeper of the muniments at Salisbury Cathedral; Robert Hale and Katie Willis, archivists at the Berkshire Record Office; Ian Mortimer, curatorial of- ficer of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts; Bridget Palmer of the Royal Academy of Music; Lindsay Ross, secretary of the Commonwealth Press Union; David Ward, archivist at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London; and Rachel Wells of the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood. In the United States, I was assisted by Howard B. Gotlieb, director of the Depart- ment of Special Collections at Boston University; Donna Halper; Tom Johnson; Rus- sell Koonts and Claire M. Locke of the Special Collections Library, Duke University; John H. Livingstone, state librarian of the New Jersey State Library; Donald Matheson; and Charles St Vil, manager of the NewYorkTimesArchives. Lars Forsberg, secretary, his predecessor, Peter M. Ward, Richard A. von Doenhoff, archivist and protocol of- ficer, and Joseph Jackson, librarian, helped locate relevant records preserved by the NewYorkYachtClub.MyAmericanresearchassistant,JenniferE.Kelley,ablyworked on the club’s records. In France, Meg Sordello kindly gave me access to the papers of her late uncle, Ge- orge Warnecke. I am indebted to the following individuals and organisations for their assistance with photographs: Richard Ackland; the British Library; Jennifer Broomhead of the State Library of New South Wales; Vic Cohen; A. H. Faircloth; the Fairfax Photo Library; Mitzi Finey; Noni E. Fitzmaurice; Guy Hansen; Tony Henningham of the Herald & Weekly Times Corporate Photo Sales; Kirstie McRobert of the State Library of Victoria; Sarah McSkimming of the Australian Picture Library; the National Library

6)4 #*-.5+%$',%-21 of Australia; News Ltd; the NewYorkTimesPicture Desk; Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd; Susan Son of Condé Nast Publications; Lady Stening; Peter Viska; Vogue Australia; and Christopher Warren, general secretary of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Al- liance. I thank Angelo Loukakis, formerly of HarperCollins, for buoyantly embracing this project, and Helen Littleton and Jesse Fink for seeing it through. Jacqueline Kent was a thorough, at times demanding, but always encouraging editor.

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AAP Australian Associated Press ABC Australian Broadcasting Commission ABCB Australian Broadcasting Control Board ACP Australian Consolidated Press AIF Australian Imperial Force AJA Australian Journalists’ Association AJC Australian Jockey Club ALP ANC Australian Newspapers Conference ANPA Australian Newspaper Proprietors’ Association A&R Angus & Robertson Ltd AWC Allied Works Council AWU Australian Workers’ Union CCC Civil Constructional Corps DLP Democratic Labor Party FP Frank Packer HWT Herald & Weekly Times MLA Member of the Legislative Assembly MLC Member of the Legislative Council MP Member of Parliament NYYC NewYorkYachtClub PIEUA Printing Industry Employees’ Union of Australia PKIU Printing and Kindred Industries Union RSYS Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron UAP United Australia Party /420&5%4+0/

In the sprawling Newport mansion built by the Vanderbilt family, 300 guests gathered on 14 September 1962, the eve of Australia’s first challenge for the America’s Cup. The great hall of ‘The Breakers’, built to resemble an Italian Renaissance palace, was decor- ated with Australian wildflowers flown in by Qantas. An eight-piece orchestra played ‘Waltzing Matilda’, ‘Botany Bay’, ‘Click Go the Shears’ and ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport’.1 Guests dined on Australian produce: West Australian crayfish tails thermidor, roast Riverina lamb, ice cream with Hawkesbury Valley passionfruit, Murwillumbah crystallised pineapple, and wine supplied by Lindemans and Penfolds.2 The banquet brought together the cream of society, politics, diplomacy, industry and sport from Australia and the United States. At the head table sat the American president John F. Kennedy and his glamorous wife Jacqueline. They were joined by the Australian treasurer Harold Holt, his American counterpart, Douglas Dillon, the Aus- tralian minister for external affairs Sir Garfield Barwick and the American secretary of defence Robert McNamara. The host was Sir Howard Beale, Australia’s ambassador to the United States, but everyone knew the dinner would not have been possible without the efforts of Sir Frank Packer. The Australian media proprietor, who had spent three years and hundreds of thousands of pounds preparing Australia’s challenge for the coveted America’s Cup, was seated between the president and the first lady.3 Adrenalin was the only thing keeping Sir Frank going. His decision to mount a challenge for the America’s Cup through the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron had pro- pelled him into a world of imperial jealousies and political intrigue. The Australians’ righttochallengeforthecuphadbeencontestedbytheRoyalThamesYachtClub;the Menzies government had questioned the value of being associated with the challenge; when the government had finally lent some support to the bid, Labor politicians had erupted in protest; American newspapers were reporting that morale in the Australi- an team was low because of Packer’s constant meddling. Even the banquet, which had been suggested by Packer, attracted controversy. An Australian Labor politician, Eddie Ward, declared that some people would ‘always avail themselves of the opportunity to have a guzzle at public expense’ and lambasted the Liberal government for allocating US$8100 for a dinner for ‘the snobbocracy of America’.4 Sir Frank was not just tired, he was nervous. Never an accomplished speaker, he became increasingly edgy as Beale and then Kennedy proposed toasts and delivered speeches. With an eye on fostering American–Australian relations, President Kennedy declared that Australia had proved herself a great leader in sport, was one of the world’s freest nations and was closely tied to the United States in war and peace. Packer