James Packer wants the one thing all his money will never buy

James Packer has always had money, and stood to make a whole lot more, but it would have never brought him fulfilment.

A happier, healthier James Packer dines with sister Gretel at Rockpool Bar and Grill in Sydney in October 2017. Picture: Richard Dobson

Casino mogul James Packer ­inherited a fortune, and he stood on the cusp of making a new one.

Pity then that money never made James happy.

More could make him less so.

Packer Jr is one of few moguls who has nakedly, at times quite desperately, admitted that all he’s ever wanted is a bit of affection.

He tried to find something like love with Mariah Carey, who wanted money when she broke up with him. He flirted with Scientology, which was likewise happy to trouser his coin.

He cuddled up to Hollywood, which did to him what it does to every wide-eyed ingenue — stripped him of cash, and left him alone when he was most vulnerable.

Born, raised and educated in Australia, he finds it impossible to live here. The boy who was once a jackaroo is now more at home on the ski fields of Aspen, or his private ranch in Argentina.

He had a good relationship for years with his sister, Gretel, before they fell out — over guess what?

According to Damon Kitney’s book, The Price of Fortune, by 2014 Gretel had grown justifiably alarmed by James’s Jerusalem infatuation, his RatPac partying, and all the rest. She got a hard-nosed school friend, Will Vicars, to get to work on a deal to take her share of her father’s empire.

James was upset. Nasty emails flew around.

That battle ended up costing James something more valuable than money. It cost him Ellerston, the famed polo estate where his ­father is buried.

The family matriarch, Ros, helped the siblings reconcile, and when James broke down with mental problems a few years back, who was there?

It was again Ros, photographed at the age of 80 being wheeled in a chair through Sydney airport, en route to her boy’s side. “I’m so happy. I love my sister,” he declared, after a truce with Gretel was struck.

He wept as he told the late Mike Willesee of the 2005 death of his father, saying their last phone call was “beautiful … He said he loved me. He said he was proud of me.”

His search for acceptance has seen him twice try to make a go of marriage — first with Jodhi Meares, then Erica Baxter (the mother of his three children) — and was once engaged also to Kate Fischer.

It has fallen over every time.

Erica was in Sydney last week to help Lachlan and Sarah ­Murdoch celebrate 20 years of marriage.

At the same time, James was in Aspen with one girlfriend, one ex-wife, a few hangers-on, and Ben Tilley, who has been on the Packer payroll for years.

He didn’t look happy. He looked overweight, and grim.

We don’t yet know whether Packer would have agreed to the deal Wynn Resorts offered before it backed out — two billion bucks and a 10 per cent stake in what amounts to a Vegas ATM — but we can all see why he might have been tempted: it would have allowed him to cash out of Crown.

But his payout wouldn’t have been enough to give him the one thing money can’t buy.