Speaker 1: From Schwortz Media. I'm Ashlin McGee. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: Peter Costello's legacy was set the longest serving treasurer in
Speaker 1: Australian history, and under John Howard, he transformed the Australian
Speaker 1: economy into what it is today. That was until he
Speaker 1: pushed into a journalist asking pesky questions at Canberra Airport,
Speaker 1: all of it caught on camera. Three days later, he
Speaker 1: resigned as chair of Nine and made a storm of
Speaker 1: scrutiny about its workplace culture. Today, National correspondent for The
Speaker 1: Saturday Paper Mike's second on Peter Costello's reign at Nine
Speaker 1: and the enemies he made along the way. It's Tuesday,
Speaker 1: June eighteenth, Mike. Peter Costello resigned last week as the
Speaker 1: chair of Australia's biggest media company. Is it going to
Speaker 1: be me?
Speaker 2: Frankly, I don't think so, not very much. I mean
Speaker 2: to be honest. You know, he's sixty six, So on
Speaker 2: his way out he reckoned that he was planning to
Speaker 2: go anyway. And I don't think he was planning to
Speaker 2: go anywhere here as quickly as he did. But you know,
Speaker 2: his time was pretty much up, Frankly, and even if
Speaker 2: it hadn't been. It was after the events of a
Speaker 2: week or so back, where he appeared to shoulder judge
Speaker 2: a pesky reporter who was asking him questions about the
Speaker 2: goings on at Channel nine. Mister Cassello, my name is
Speaker 2: Liam Mendez from the Australian. Do you support He was
Speaker 2: walking through Canberra Airport. A reporter from the Australian approached him.
Speaker 2: Were you aware of the allegations against mister Whipp Before
Speaker 2: he left? He followed him more or less from the
Speaker 2: gate to the car, which is a little more aggressive
Speaker 2: than even is done by most journalists at the airport.
Speaker 2: You know, sometimes the scrum develops out in the public
Speaker 2: section of the airport, but he pursued him along the
Speaker 2: entire concourse. Well, you've got to answer the questions, mister Castillo.
Speaker 2: Don't know the next thing. We know the reporters on
Speaker 2: his back on the ground. You've just assaulted me, You've
Speaker 2: just pushed me. It's all on. Come.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: One interesting thing about this is that even Costello's political
Speaker 2: opponents kind of sympathized with his agitation at this Australian reporter.
Speaker 2: Liam Mendez, I have to say he's widely disliked by
Speaker 2: politicians of all stripes, and a number that I've spoken
Speaker 2: to said, well, it was a really bad look for Costello,
Speaker 2: but geez, it was nice to see that guy hit
Speaker 2: the deck. That video was published in The Australian while
Speaker 2: Costello was in the car from the Port to Parliament
Speaker 2: House to attend a nine News function. By the time
Speaker 2: he gets to the function, he's faced with the ignominy
Speaker 2: of being questioned by his own journalists, that is nine journalists,
Speaker 2: not just news court ones, about whether he would now
Speaker 2: survive as chair. It's already speculation that this could put
Speaker 2: your chairmanship at risk. What is your response to that? Roch?
Speaker 2: He tried to laugh it off, tried to say that
Speaker 2: the reporter had just fallen down. Gee, that was bad luck.
Speaker 2: I walk past him. He walked back into an advertising
Speaker 2: plat card and he fell over. I did not strike him.
Speaker 2: If he's upset about that, I'm sorry. You know. By
Speaker 2: Friday morning, he was attending an emergency board meeting explaining
Speaker 2: himself to the other directors. Then we had a couple
Speaker 2: of days of silence while speculation mounted, and then on
Speaker 2: Sunday afternoon, in the sort of dead spot at the
Speaker 2: end of the news week. Three days after the incident
Speaker 2: at the airport, Nine announced that Costello was gone and
Speaker 2: his departure, I might say, wasn't much mourned at nine.
Speaker 2: The Sydney Morning Herald on Monday ran an editorial under
Speaker 2: the headline Peter Costello had to go, and thank goodness
Speaker 2: he has and it said. His presence on the nine
Speaker 2: board was also a source of concern for loyal subscribers,
Speaker 2: suspicious of the influence of a former liberal treasurer over
Speaker 2: the company's master heads, and a source of frustration for
Speaker 2: editorial staff, who had to frequently reassure readers and stakeholders
Speaker 2: that our independence remained a guiding principle of how we operate.
Speaker 2: So in other words, they thought he was always a
Speaker 2: bit of an impediment to their reputation for being independent.
Speaker 2: And of course, there was already speculation about Costello losing
Speaker 2: his job even before all of this, because Nine, and
Speaker 2: particularly the TV division of nine, had been engulfed in
Speaker 2: turmoil for a couple of weeks preceding that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it hasn't been a great time for Nine Entertainment,
Speaker 1: to say the least, tell me a bit more about
Speaker 1: what's happened over the past month or so.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, it all started with allegations about the
Speaker 2: behavior of Channel Line's former head of News and Current Affairs,
Speaker 2: a man named Darren Wick, and the first allegations came
Speaker 2: out in the news court press, alleging that he had
Speaker 2: made unwanted advances, groped, and harassed several women at nine.
Speaker 2: It included one anonymous on air person who spoke to
Speaker 2: News Corps Sherry markson tonight.
Speaker 3: The scandal surrounding Channel nine deepens with shocking allegations that
Speaker 3: the company betrayed the confidence of a high profile female
Speaker 3: presenter when she raised concerns about sacked newsboss Darren Wick.
Speaker 2: And footage was revealed of Wick allegedly making advances on
Speaker 2: the dance floor at a Logi's after party. And Wick
Speaker 2: had already resigned from nine, which is kind of interesting,
Speaker 2: but he went out with what was reportedly a million
Speaker 2: dollar payout and a warm sendoff.
Speaker 3: Vic was given a warm sendoff, and there was no
Speaker 3: public mention of any complaint against him. Nine's Director of Television,
Speaker 3: Michael Healey, praised Wick's enormous impact at nine, including his
Speaker 3: reason so.
Speaker 2: The scandal escalated anyway? And it kind of implicated the
Speaker 2: broader culture at nine because there were allegations that nine's
Speaker 2: own communications team had leaked against on air talent, that
Speaker 2: the on air presenter had told a director on the
Speaker 2: board about what she called the toxic culture at nine
Speaker 2: and had been assured that something would be done, but
Speaker 2: nothing was done, and a.
Speaker 3: Most damning remarks were for the board member who ignored
Speaker 3: her concerns about the toxic culture at nine. She said
Speaker 3: there was no assistance provided by the network to source
Speaker 3: the leaks, stamp out the toxic behavior, or change the culture.
Speaker 2: The question started being asked, you know who knew about
Speaker 2: all this stuff? How well was the bord across it,
Speaker 2: if they were across it, Why I had nothing been done?
Speaker 2: And why I was wik allowed to exit the premises
Speaker 2: with a million bucks in his.
Speaker 1: Kick And Zugostello's resignation follows all of this, but his
Speaker 1: resignation wasn't explicitly tied to it, so a lot of
Speaker 1: it's still unresolved. What state is he leaving nine in.
Speaker 2: Well, you're quite right, the situation at the TV you know,
Speaker 2: News and Current Affairs division would look pretty culturally precarious,
Speaker 2: I would say at the moment. But you know, that's
Speaker 2: not really his fault. That is not a matter specifically
Speaker 2: for the bord. I have to say, that's a mora
Speaker 2: an issue for management. But you know, like I said,
Speaker 2: how much did the board know? But what's interesting here
Speaker 2: is we have a cultural division here, right because we
Speaker 2: have what's clearly a very blokey culture at the nine
Speaker 2: TV part of the business. But the nine newspapers, the Mastheads,
Speaker 2: the Sydney Morning Herald and the finn Review have been
Speaker 2: very strong on pursuing the weak stuff and have gone
Speaker 2: in very hard on Costello. So there's an interesting cultural
Speaker 2: schism I think within nine as well. But measured otherwise,
Speaker 2: the Costello era at nine has been hugely significant, you know,
Speaker 2: not just for the company itself, but for the news
Speaker 2: business and the media landscape as a whole if you
Speaker 2: have a look back under him, Nine took over the
Speaker 2: form of Fairfax Newspapers and created the biggest locally owned
Speaker 2: media company in the country. And as I reported this
Speaker 2: story last week, it appeared that Costo I put quite
Speaker 2: a few noses out of joint along the way. You know,
Speaker 2: people have pointed to his relationships as a problem for
Speaker 2: the broader Nine culture, and many might have thought that
Speaker 2: his you know, his legacy. We was said as John
Speaker 2: Howard's former treasurer. But his time at nine and his
Speaker 2: downfall might start to loom now for how we think
Speaker 2: about Peter Costello, and I would suggest might well be
Speaker 2: the end of Costello's public life.
Speaker 1: Mike, help us understand a bit more about the Costello
Speaker 1: era and how Nine changed with him at the helm Well.
Speaker 2: By the time Costello became chair in early twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: he'd been on the board for a couple of years
Speaker 2: before that. Nine was a bit past, you know, the
Speaker 2: heyday of the Kerry Packer era, when the Packer family
Speaker 2: owned it. It was still a TV business. It was
Speaker 2: no longer as dominant there as it had been. But
Speaker 2: the problems were bigger than that, and they were industry wide.
Speaker 2: If you like, you know, you had PayTV, you had
Speaker 2: streaming services, you had the Internet, all competing for eyeballs,
Speaker 2: all taking advertising revenue. So things were pretty dire for
Speaker 2: the legacy media general, and free to AIRTV in particular.
Speaker 2: So under Costello some big things happened to try and
Speaker 2: shore up the business. He was on the board when
Speaker 2: Nine did a joint deal with Fairfax to set Upstand
Speaker 2: the streaming service, which people who watch these things described
Speaker 2: me as a pretty inspired move. Actually, then after he
Speaker 2: became chair, Nine made the biggest deal in its history
Speaker 2: taking over Fairfax Media. I mean it was sold as
Speaker 2: a merger, but it was really a takeover and the
Speaker 2: biggest media deal in Australian history. The owner of the
Speaker 2: Nine television network is taking over newspaper publisher Fairfax Media.
Speaker 2: Under the plan, Nine will merge with Fairfax Media, publisher
Speaker 2: of The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the Australian Financial
Speaker 2: Review and WA Today. So that gave it three very
Speaker 2: big quality newspapers and crucially also a string of talkback
Speaker 2: radio stations like two GB and Sydney and three AW
Speaker 2: in Melbourne. So that deal made them the biggest locally
Speaker 2: owned Australian media company. But more interestingly, in my view,
Speaker 2: it also made them the most diverse in sort of
Speaker 2: id theology and audience range. You know, it catered for
Speaker 2: all kinds of demographics, whether you wanted to hear you know,
Speaker 2: the talkback shouters like Ray Hadley.
Speaker 4: Into the question how long are you going to put
Speaker 4: up with brigid Archer, she's briefably crossed the Floridas a
Speaker 4: port labor on housing emissions reduction and sensor mentions against
Speaker 4: the Prime Minister and now embarrassed.
Speaker 2: Or watch the tabloid TV of a current affair against
Speaker 2: me and am Australias grumpy his grandmother?
Speaker 3: Why take out an ovo on an eighty six year
Speaker 3: old woman because she's a bitch?
Speaker 2: Or if you wanted serious journalism you know, a slightly
Speaker 2: progressive bent in the Sydney Morning Herald in the Age,
Speaker 2: or whether you wanted specialist financial journalism in the Australian
Speaker 2: Financial Review. The nine network now had all bases covered,
Speaker 2: so it became a very very powerful political force as
Speaker 2: well as a much stronger commercial one. Through all of this,
Speaker 2: of course, you know Costeo's on the board apparently a
Speaker 2: very dominant figure on the board. As one person I
Speaker 2: spoke to said, he would be the worst person to
Speaker 2: have on a board, any board, unless he was the chairman,
Speaker 2: and because he would have to be the dominant figure
Speaker 2: in the room. And that's absolutely accords with what we
Speaker 2: already knew from his time as treasurer. You know, he's
Speaker 2: a very dominant, very forceful personality. I guess you would say,
Speaker 2: to put the best spin on it, some would call
Speaker 2: him a bit pumptious. I think he did rub people
Speaker 2: the wrong way quite often.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell me more about that, because you mentioned before
Speaker 1: the editorial from the editor of the SMH Bevin Shields,
Speaker 1: essentially saying that they were constantly battling against Costello's reputations.
Speaker 1: So how much did his role as a Liberal Party
Speaker 1: elder affect his role as chair?
Speaker 2: Well. Having spoken to a number of former senior executives,
Speaker 2: a number of former editors, and you know, also Stephen Main,
Speaker 2: the sort of shareholder activist who is apt to bob
Speaker 2: up at nine agms and things and ask hard questions,
Speaker 2: they suggest to me that Costello was actually not very
Speaker 2: interventionist at all when it came to individual stories. To
Speaker 2: that extent, he was probably in actuality impartial, but the
Speaker 2: perception lingered. And you know, as a former editor of
Speaker 2: a nine newspaper told me, you know, Costello was sufficiently
Speaker 2: arrogant never to seek to kind of downplay his partisanship,
Speaker 2: and that infected the public perceptions, even if it didn't
Speaker 2: affect the reality of how, particularly the form of Fairfax
Speaker 2: papers reported things. So remember a few examples. You know,
Speaker 2: at the last election, Costello turned up at a polling
Speaker 2: booth to support the foundering campaign of his fellow Liberal
Speaker 2: treasure Josh Fridenberg, you know, and they had a happy
Speaker 2: snap taken of the two of them smiling together, and
Speaker 2: that went up on fridenberg social media. There have been
Speaker 2: a number of incidents like that. I think you would
Speaker 2: say most concerning of all was an incident back in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen when nine actually hosted a ten thousand dollars
Speaker 2: ahead fundraiser for the Liberal Party, attended by Scott Morrison
Speaker 2: and another senior members and hosted by the then CEO
Speaker 2: of nine, Hugh Marx, and that created enormous outrage the
Speaker 2: journalist at the nine papers in particular and among the
Speaker 2: media union, and eventually the nine newspapers acknowledged that it
Speaker 2: was a quote unquote mistake and emails were sent out
Speaker 2: to all staff saying it would not happen again and
Speaker 2: apologizing for these errors of judgment and so on. So,
Speaker 2: you know, these kinds of incidents, according to the former
Speaker 2: editors that I spoke to, were indicators that Costello just
Speaker 2: couldn't keep his mouth shut in public. And as one
Speaker 2: told me quoting here. It just made it impossible for us,
Speaker 2: you know, to convince readers and subscribers that there wasn't
Speaker 2: bias in the reporting. You know, even when there was none,
Speaker 2: the perception persisted, and that was a big problem. So
Speaker 2: I think to emphasize the point, we have a dichotomy
Speaker 2: here of perception and reality, and so the perception hurt
Speaker 2: the journalism, and it upset the journalists and people and
Speaker 2: be lining up to employ him for other corporate gigs.
Speaker 2: Because there's another former nine editor pointed out, you know,
Speaker 2: once you go out like this as he did, you know,
Speaker 2: it's pretty hard to get another public company gig. So
Speaker 2: one of them actually said, you know, Costell Costello would
Speaker 2: never get another public gig unlesson until the Liberals got
Speaker 2: back into parent maybe they would make him ambassador Tonga
Speaker 2: or something. So that's that's the way he was perceived there.
Speaker 1: Not the worst gig in the world.
Speaker 3: I think make it would be.
Speaker 2: It would be a nice gig. He could work on
Speaker 2: his son Tan.
Speaker 1: You know, well look on that on that reputation issue,
Speaker 1: Peter Costello's legacy seemed like it was set in stone.
Speaker 1: He was John Howard's treasurer, the man who oversaw this
Speaker 1: huge transformation of the Australian economy. But now with this
Speaker 1: one little video of an airport altercation, how much will
Speaker 1: his legacy instead be about the culture and what he
Speaker 1: oversaw at nine?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it reminds me of a very rude
Speaker 2: joke about a goat. You know, suddenly people don't remember
Speaker 2: all the good things he did and he actually did.
Speaker 2: You know, he was a very successful treasurer. He delivered
Speaker 2: a string of surpluses. I mean, admittedly they were easy
Speaker 2: economic times to do it, but still, you know, he
Speaker 2: did deliver a string of surpluses. He to some extent
Speaker 2: resisted John Howard's inclination to just spray the money around
Speaker 2: buying votes, you know. Instead of that, he set up
Speaker 2: the Future Fund essentially, you know, an investment vehicle to
Speaker 2: provide for Australia's future. He then ran the Future Fund
Speaker 2: and under him it significantly outperformed the market in general,
Speaker 2: and at nine he oversaw these changes that made it
Speaker 2: far more secure than its legacy TV competitors. So, you know,
Speaker 2: he did a lot of good things. Unfortunately, his achievements
Speaker 2: were kind of overshadowed to some extent by his personality,
Speaker 2: so sadly, and then he's gone in very inglorious circumstances.
Speaker 2: It's you know, it's all about Shakespearean really, Mike, thanks
Speaker 2: so much for your time. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, opposing groups of protesters yesterday
Speaker 1: confronted each other outside a lunch where Prime Minister Anthony
Speaker 1: Alberanzi welcomed Chinese Premier Lie Chiang. Angry confrontations broke out
Speaker 1: between supporters of the Chinese Communist Party and supporters of
Speaker 1: causes such as Tibetan independence and Hong Kong independence, with
Speaker 1: one alleging that at least one punch was thrown, although
Speaker 1: no arrests were made. And one hundred and two people
Speaker 1: who had an annual income of more than one million
Speaker 1: dollars paid no net tax in the financial year twenty
Speaker 1: one twenty two. According to information released by the Tax
Speaker 1: Office yesterday, it was an increase in the number of
Speaker 1: millionaires paying no net tax, with only sixty six in
Speaker 1: the last year those figures were released. That's all from
Speaker 1: the team at seven am for today. My name's Ashlin McGee.
Speaker 1: Thanks for your company. We'll see you again tomorrow.