Rupert and Bush, Herald Sun heavies and BHP old guard
July 22, 2008
Here are Stephen Mayne's three stories from the Crikey edition on Friday, 28 April, 2006.
14. Rupert and George – just how close are they?
By Stephen Mayne
When it comes to influencing world leaders, Rupert Murdoch has an unprecedented ability to get access and change outcomes. I told an audience at the St Kilda Writers Festival last night that Rupert alone could have stopped the Iraq War.
Imagine if the combined might of Fox News, Fox Television, BSkyB, The Sun, The Times and the papers that comprise News Ltd's all powerful 70% market share in Australia had come out and campaigned against the invasion in 2002 and 2003. Sure, the neo-cons might have wanted to proceed, but it would have been much harder to get Tony Blair and John Howard over the line if they knew it would have meant strong opposition from the mightiest media empire in Australia and the UK.
Alas, Rupert was in fact the keenest advocate of the war after the neo-cons and helped deliver his mate George W the other two members of the Coalition of the Willing. So is Rupert at all repentant about having blood on his hands and also failing to deliver his promised $US20 a barrel oil price after a successful invasion and occupation? Not a jot.
We've long come to expect Fox News to parrot the Bush agenda in what has become the greatest abrogation of American journalistic responsibility for balance that we've ever seen. However, now one of Rupert's minions, Tony Snow from Fox News, will replace Scott McClellan as the President's official spokesman.
Then there's the tale of what you can watch on Air Force One, as explained by Ken Herman on his entertaining blog overnight:
The controversy du jour aboard Air Force One today was one near and dear to the hearts of many otherwise happy couples: Command and control of the TV tuner.It seems the Bush White House is entering the delusionary phase of wanting to only hear the good news. And Rupert's empire, of course, is more than happy to deliver it – both officially as spokesman and pseudo-journalistically through Fox News.
“It's come to my attention that there's been requests – this is a serious question – to turn these TVs on to a station other than Fox, and that those have been denied,” Washington Post reporter Jim VandeHei told Press Secretary Scott McClellan. “My question would be, is there a White House policy that all government TVs have to be tuned to Fox?”
“Never heard of any such thing,” said McClellan, soon to be replaced by Tony Snow of Fox News, long viewed as an operation that enjoys most favoured network status in the Bush White House.
“My TVs are on all four different channels at all times,” McClellan said of the four-screen array across from his West Wing desk.
Despite McClellan's TV options, the record will show that – other than when the movie of reporters' choice is showing (and that frequently invites a gender-based battle over what to watch), Fox is showing on the screens in the press cabin of Air Force One.
As McClellan and VandeHei talked TV channels, Agence France Presse photographer Tim Sloan volunteered that he was the one who raised the issue.
“I was the Fox victim,” he said, “and I was told, the quote was, ‘No,' when I asked for CNN. … I was told, ‘We don't watch CNN here. You can only watch Fox.'”
Asked who told him that, Sloan said “the magic people at the other end of the phone” in the press cabin.
17. Getting on well with the Herald Sun heavies
By Stephen Mayne, former Herald Sun business editor
It's fair to say the relationship with my former employer of six years, the Herald Sun, isn't quite what it used to be. In fact, it seems the paper's senior columnist Andrew Bolt is not minded to rekindle the friendship that saw us spend five days under the same Rupert-funded roof together in Hong Kong for the 1997 handover. In 1999 and 2000 respectively, I had a nice time with Senator Stephen Conroy at Bolt's 40th birthday and Bolt came along to our wedding cocktails.
However, we've now fallen out and Bolt apparently can't think of anyone in the world more objectionable than yours truly.
Bolt is more than happy to front his critics and was at the Melbourne Press Club earlier this month debating Phillip Knightley. He even bullied management and stormed into the ABC studio last year to rebut some alleged slight when I was filling in for Jon Faine. However, Bolt's approach now seems to have gone full circle, if what an audience at the St Kilda Writers' Festival last night was told can be believed.
I've emailed my old mate this morning as follows:
Hi Andrew, the woman introducing me at the St Kilda Writers Festival last night said that you told her I was the only person in the world that you would not appear with. I just wanted to check you said that. Is there really no-one else?Surely someone like David Irving would be more objectionable. And what about Martin Bryant? We await the great man's reply who, with all the dramas about Jake Kovco, the Tasmanian miners, AWB and the like, today delivered one of the most off-the-pace columns of his career – a predictable spray against some left wing artist who had been plugged in The Age. Talk about a repetitive broken record!
Regards, Stephen
Then there was Terry McCrann's 6,000-word spray against Crikey in 2004 which began: "Stephen, you are what is known in polite circles as a complete f*ck."
Of course, Crikey has been banned by thin-skinned Herald Sun editor Peter Blunden ever since I criticised him in September 1999 for being too soft on Jeff Kennett. If you do a search of the News Ltd and Fairfax archives for "Stephen Mayne and Crikey" since September 9, 1999, you get the following tallies:
The Australian: 121
The Age: 68
The SMH: 34
The Daily Telegraph: 12
Herald Sun: 1
Therefore, you can imagine the shock this morning when only the Herald Sun covered some of the lively exchanges at yesterday's Alumina AGM and the following appeared in the paper:
Corporate agitator Stephen Mayne said it was "completely unacceptable" that the pay packets of Alumina executives were compared to other top-ranking miners given that the company's operations were managed by Alcoa. He also criticised the high number of board meetings the company held in 2005.I'm gravely concerned about the future of young Herald Sun business reporter Mandi Zonneveldt and business editor Mal Schmidtke this morning. Peter Blunden runs more iron-fisted bans than any other Australian editor and doesn't like it when they are breached by a subordinate. Our prayers are with them at this difficult time.
"It sounds to me like it's a fortnightly lunch club for a bunch of old mates in the resources game," he said to applause.
20. Clearing out the BHP old guard
By Stephen Mayne
The BHP-Billiton management and board shake-up driven by Queenslander Don Argus has sealed the departure of the last remnants of the old guard. Carbon steel boss Bob Kirbky, a BHP veteran since 1978, has bailed and we're also seeing the last of BHP Petroleum boss Phil Aiken, who will retire at the end of the year after nine years. Of the 16 top executives at BHP-Billiton, only one of them, Iron Ore boss Graeme Hunt, was with the old BHP before Paul Anderson was recruited from the US to clean up the mess in 1998.
Terry McCrann was fulminating this morning about BHP-Billiton clarifying whether Aiken's departure was connected to BHP Petroleum's dodgy $5 million gift-loan to Saddam's Iraq. McCrann is right, but unfortunately we're dealing with someone known as Don't Argue who still hasn't explained why former CEO Brian Gilbertson was sacked in 2002. The AFR's John Durie also mounted the high horse this morning, savaging BHP-Billiton for bringing Anderson onto the board as a non-executive director after a four-year hiatus.
The governance theorists are right to argue that old CEOs shouldn't hang around like a bad smell. The worst example is Eric Mayer who was ousted after seven years as CEO of National Mutual in 1990 when it was almost broke, but then only quit as a director in 2001. John Elliott did the same when he stepped down as Elders IXL CEO in 1990, but didn't finally leave the board until 1992. Stan Wallis did the same at Amcor, as did Ian Burgess at CSR.
QBE Insurance has gone from strength to strength under John Cloney, who was CEO for seven years until 1998 and has been chairman ever since. However, he is the exception to the rule, which explains why the likes of Durie are not happy. The circumstances are a bit different when you leave a board for four years and it should be noted that Anderson has not returned as chairman, although he would make a good replacement for Don Argus when the time comes.
BHP used to run a system whereby former CEOs automatically went on to become chairman. However, the club liked to have a gap, which explains why WMC chairman Sir Arvi Parbo was cosily borrowed by the Big Australian to be chairman in 1991 and 1992 whilst former CEO Brian Loton was groomed to step up from deputy chairman. The low point came in 1997 when Brian Loton stepped down as chairman and Jerry Ellis was promoted from BHP Minerals boss to non-executive chairman, above his great mate John Prescott, the CEO for seven long and unfortunate years after Loton.
This system was unscrambled in 1998 as billions were written off and Argus came across from National Australia Bank. He hired Paul Anderson who knocked the business into shape and then merged it with Billiton, allowing him to be "terminated" a year early and walk off with an $18 million pay-out and 3.1 million largely free shares which are today worth more than $100 million.
Whilst Anderson's appointment has merit, there is something wrong with inviting someone onto a board after giving them a $3.2 million "termination" payment – but the fact remains that he is a stand-out performer who fixed BHP and then turned Duke Energy around in the US.
The more concerning element of BHP board restructure is the recruitment of former Ford CEO Jac Nasser, because he and Argus have been mates for years and sit on the Brambles board together. Assuming that Anderson is still on cosy terms with Argus, the chairman does appear to be shoring up his numbers. Does this mean the longest serving BHP director, accountant and Argus mate David Crawford, is preparing to finally retire after 12 years? After all that other Argus supporter, Michael Chaney, retired from the BHP board last year to take the chair at NAB and Woodside Petroleum.
That left only CBA chairman John Schubert as a long-term Argus ally on the board because the rest of them have a strong international flavour and wouldn't be attuned to the archaic succession planning heritage of Club Melbourne.
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