Sir Frank Packer: a Biography
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/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 )00!-*!#*%0 drank several whiskies in an effort to steady his nerves before he himself had to get to his feet. Sweating in his tuxedo, the tall, burly Packer clutched his notes nervously as he spoke in a voice husky from years of smoking cigarettes and cigars. His address, in which he conceded that his yacht Gretel was the underdog, appeared disjointed after the polished presentations of Beale and Kennedy. Adrian Quist, the former Dav- is Cup tennis champion who had gone to Newport to see the America’s Cup match, would later recall that his friend’s speech had not been his ‘finest hour’. Quist had to agree when Packer asked him, ‘Didn’t go so well, did I?’ Packer ensured that reports about the glittering dinner appeared in his publications the Australian Women’s Weekly and the Sunday Telegraph. But only the president’s speech was broadcast on Packer’s Sydney television station TCN–9.5 Packer’s appearance at the banquet illuminated many of the elements — a desire tomixwiththerichandthepowerful,acuriousshyness,apropensitytocourt controversy, a willingness to interfere with his media outlets — that were constants throughout his tempestuous life. His relationship with the social, political and business establishment was always ambivalent. He and his father Robert Clyde Packer had made their fortunes through some controversial business transactions in the 1920s and the 1930s, and they were always regarded as ‘new money’. Frank Packer both cocked a snook at, and longed to be considered part of, the establishment. He was unapologetically brash and brazen in his business pursuits and his robust sense of hu- mour was often inappropriate to the occasion. But as a young man he took up the hobbies of Sydney’s élite, such as yachting and polo, and established a grand home in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs; as he grew older he emerged as a powerbroker in the Liberal Party and introduced his countrymen to the exclusive ranks of twelve-metre yachting. OnlythoseclosesttoPackerprobablyeverrealisedthathissenseofhumourand blustering manner hid his shyness. He performed poorly at school and was self-con- scious about his hulking size; in his late teens, it became apparent that he lacked the literary flair and journalistic creativity of the father he so revered. Packer’s remark- able energy and vigour, and his dogged determination to win at whatever game he was playing, seem to have stemmed from an innate inferiority complex.6 He was a man of many contradictions: he cheated on his beautiful first wife Gretel and then named his America’s Cup yachts after her; he was a deeply compassionate and sentimental son and brother but a tyrannical father; he exasperated trade unions in the newspaper in- dustry but bestowed largesse on individual employees; he gave generously to charities and other good causes but counted the paper clips at work; he supported Australian artists and scientific research, but his own interests were philistine and he refused to allow his elder son to go to university; he fought for the freedom of the press in the Second World War but crudely manipulated his own media outlets. Sir Frank Packer dominated the Australian media landscape for forty years and most who crossed his path found him an endless source of puzzlement and interest. Journalists and printers still dine out on stories about Packer and their memoirs are littered with colourful anecdotes about him. The fact that his younger son Kerry has emerged as the richest person in Australia has only compounded the fascination with the Packer family. And yet the story of Robert Clyde Packer’s pioneering journalistic 64))) -20.$3#2).- pursuits in the first half of this century and Frank’s own diverse activities in the media, the civil service and the political and sporting arenas has never been adequately told. It is a story that takes us first to Berkshire and then to Hobart in the 1850s. 6)6.