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