Rotary Club of Gosford City welcomes Emeritus Professor in Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, Rodney Tiffen

The Rotary Club of Gosford City was pleased to welcome Emeritus Professor in Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, Rodney Tiffen this morning.  Professor Tiffen is a prolific author and commentator. He has authored numerous articles on mass media and Australian politics, and his latest book (with Anika Gauja, Brendon O’Connor, Ross Gittins and David Smith) is How America Compares, published in 2019 by Springer.

Professor Tiffen spoke about the rise and fall of the Packer dynasty. 

Professor Tiffen said “Like many dynasties, the Packer family owes its fortune as much to luck as to skill.”

Robert Clyde Packer (known as R.C.) got his break in 1921 running a small paper called the Smith’s Weekly which became profitable. Wealthy Sydney identity and hotelier James Joynton Smith who owned the paper, generously gave Packer one-third ownership. The Packer wealth was off and running. 

R.C. died in 1934. His son Frank Packer took over the empire and shortly before his father’s death launched the Australian Women’s Weekly in 1933. It quickly became the biggest-selling and most profitable magazine in the country. 

Frank, aged just twenty-nine took over the Daily Telegraph in 1935 when the Sydney Morning Herald’s circulation was almost two and a half times the Telegraph’s. 

“Packer spent large sums of money on his new venture, employed some of the best journalists, subscribed to an international news agency and bought more modern printing equipment. Within a few years the two morning papers were level-pegging, and during the second world war the Telegraph overtook the Herald — a lead it has maintained ever since” Professor Tiffen said. 

“Frank’s reputation and indeed his main satisfaction came from the Telegraph and the way he could play politics with it. He had been involved in the machinations that saw John Gorton replaced as Liberal prime minister by Packer’s long-time friend, William McMahon. However, ultimately he had to watch all but helpless as Gough Whitlam and the Labor Party swept McMahon and his colleagues aside” Professor Tiffen said. 

By all accounts Frank Packer was a destructive and authoritarian father figure to his two sons Clyde and Kerry. Clyde had emigrated to America to get away from his father and in 1974 Kerry inherited an empire that was probably worth around $100 million.

Professor Tiffen said, “just as importantly, it included almost unassailable strategic assets: the most successful commercial TV network and the biggest and most profitable magazine stable.” 

Kerry Packer continued to build the empire and more from the very rich to the mega-rich on the back of favourable government policy. Hawke Labor government, led by Treasurer Keating, rewrote the media ownership laws in 1987–88. The new laws banned cross-media ownership between television and newspapers. This advantaged Packer. 

“Packer was now at the zenith of his power. The other two TV networks were deeply in debt, but he was all cashed up. From then until his death, Packer had many business opportunities but managed few business achievements.” 

“When Kerry died in 2005, he was said to be the richest man in Australia. According to the business magazine BRW, his son James inherited $6.5 billion. In contrast to Kerry’s inheritance, however, James received assets whose value had already peaked” Professor Tiffen said. 

James was determined to move the empire out of the media and into casinos.  He purchased Crown casinos.  James Packer’s Crown empire rose and fell relatively quickly. In less than two decades the business was hit by two overlapping crises. In 2016 Packer came under scrutiny in Israel due to a series of very generous gifts he had given to the then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and nineteen Crown employees were arrested in China. 

Professor Tiffen said “In August 2019, an investigation led by the Age’s Nick McKenzie, which had obtained tens of thousands of leaked documents and interviews with key informants, identified how Crown sought to attract high rollers from China, described Crown’s relationships with the junkets that arranged the trips, and revealed that some of the junkets had links with triad criminal gangs. McKenzie and his colleagues reported that Crown had turned a blind eye to money laundering; had provided sex workers and drugs for high rollers; and had connived in circumventing Chinese gambling laws. A former senior Australian public servant revealed that two government ministers had lobbied him to relax controls over private jets bringing Crown’s high rollers into Australia, where their distasteful behaviour included shooting wombats on rural properties.” 

Ultimately Packer has been found unfit to run his Crown Barangaroo casino and is being forced by the Victorian State government to sell his majority share in Melbourne’s Crown casino. 

Professor Tiffen left us with these salient words “In a sense, Packer’s downfall is the apotheosis of a corporate culture that has been building over four generations. R.C., Frank and Kerry would probably have made the same decisions as James in the same situations. They all thought that rules only applied to other people; that a law only matters if it can be enforced; and that connections and backroom deals matter more than rational public debate. And now it has all come crashing down.” 

The Rotary Club of Gosford City (RCGC) meets weekly for a breakfast meeting at Top Point Café at the Gosford Regional Gallery. Visitors are welcome. For more information visit https://www.gosfordcityrotary.org.au/ 

This article draws from Professor Tiffen’s speech to RCGC and his recent essay to Inside Story “The rise and fall of an Australian dynasty.”