Worner scandal a dilemma for Kerry Stokes and Seven West

Cartoon: Rod Clement.

It’s billionaire Kerry Stokes’s super-hard dilemma: what to do with his Seven West Media wild man, Tim Worner?

The board of SWM came together again yesterday to discuss the unfolding crisis surrounding its embattled boss Worner as revelations continued about his office indiscretions with former Seven executive assistant Amber Harrison.

It is believed Seven directors will convene as often as daily as the turmoil unfolds this week at the very top of Australia’s No 1 free-to-air network.

Kerry Stokes

Meanwhile, Worner was in his Pyrmont office yesterday — and the day before, when the news broke — trying to get on with business.

It’s a salacious crisis that Seven’s independent directors — John Alexander (he’s also got Crown Resorts’ China dilemma on his plate), tech expert Michelle Deaker, broker David Evans, former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett, iiNet founder Michael Malone and Gilbert + Tobin’s Sheila McGregor — could do without.

Amid allegations from Harrison there are at least four other women at Seven that have been caught in Worner’s intimate vortex, the Stokes board can only be turning its mind to top office successors — in the event more details are unzipped.

But Seven internal ranks are thin. One person externally who surely would love the job is Seven defector James Warburton, but then he was sacked by his rival shop Ten and is now getting by running V8 Supercars.

More credible is Nine’s former chief operating officer Simon Kelly, who’d surely love nothing more than to turn up in the Seven trenches against Hugh Marks, the man who beat him for Nine’s top job.

And there’s former Seven boss, the larger-than-life David Leckie, 65, back in rude health (just ask him) and looking for a fresh challenge.

Remember, the then 65-year-old Sam Chisholm — on the other side of a double lung transplant — went back to Nine in 2005 after running it in the 1980s. Stranger things have happened. But what about Stokes’s newly married son and SWM director Ryan Stokes? He’s already the CEO of major shareholder Seven Group. Could be time for the double.

Kennett’s call

In April amid Nine’s Beirut child kidnapping saga, Seven West Media director and former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett took to the moral high ground in the Herald Sun, urging Nine chair Peter Costello to “take control and exercise accountability” as Nine staff languished in a Beirut jail.

Jeff Kennett. Picture: Aaron Francis/The Australian

“Every aspect of good governance has and is being ignored and denied by those in positions of authority,” Kennett wrote.

Now Kerry Stokes’s Seven is doing its utmost to pip Nine at the post for the most embarrassing TV moment of the year, with revelations of Tim Worner’s cocaine-fuelled affair with Amber Harrison and alleged liaisons with another four women at Seven.

Yesterday, the notoriously litigious media company was threatening legal action against anyone who named the mixture of on and off-air talent: a host, an actress and two more executive assistants.

As has been noted by some of his rivals, there has been no word yet on the matter from Kennett.

No doubt he’s penning a column calling for accountability in between daily emergency board hook-ups. Keep an eye out for it.

Interesting times

For Seven West Media boss Tim Worner it’s been a year of ups and downs.

Seven West Media’s Tim Worner. Picture: John Feder/The Australian.

The new year saw the Perth-born media exec appointed as a director of Moelis boss Andrew Pridham’s Sydney Swans board, replacing former deputy ASIC chair Lynn Ralph on the board.

At about the same time he and wife Katrina Worner — the couple have four children aged 12 through to 20 — also bought an almost $10 million beachfront home in Manly.

The home is set on Shelley Beach and on a clear day offers views all the way up to the Central Coast.

The Worners then sold their redundant home on the same street for $6.7m.

At the end of the 2016 ratings season Worner once again claimed the title of running Australia’s No 1 free-to-air network. That was back when the Amber Harrison legal dispute was bubbling away in the background before, over the weekend, she triggered DEFCON 3.

Tim’s Power play

Among those on hand to witness the arrival of Fortescue’s big new iron ore carrier, the FMG Nicola, in Port Hedland on Monday was Multiplex heir Tim Roberts.

Multiplex heir Tim Roberts.

Roberts, a good friend of billionaire Fortescue founder and fellow Cottesloe resident Andrew Forrest, flew into the Pilbara aboard his Bombardier private jet, parking alongside Forrest’s own Bombardier at the generously named Port Hedland International Airport.

(For the record, to our admittedly untrained eye, Roberts’ jet looked to be the bigger and better of the two.)

But the presence of Roberts and his jet would also prove to be quite useful.

Later in the day, as Fortescue chief Nev Power and other senior staffers made their way back to Perth aboard a chartered Qantas flight, the plane was forced to make an unscheduled stop at Geraldton after suffering some electrical problems in the cockpit.

Fortunately, Roberts had also decided to stop by Gero — as the locals call it — to check on his fishing interests there.

In what was an ultimate boss move, Roberts let Nev and a handful of other select individuals catch a lift back to Perth on board his Bombardier.

The rest of the passengers from the stricken flight, including the journalists who were covering the day, were left to slum it on a later Qantas commercial flight home, meaning we will just have to keep wondering about what the inside of Roberts’s jet looks like.

Bollywood ahoy

It’s fair to say that when David and Jadie Forrest took calls from their billionaire brother Andrew inviting them on a cruise from Asia to Australia, they were probably hoping for something more salubrious than a ride on an iron ore carrier.

But the pair nevertheless accepted the invitation to join Twiggy for the maiden voyage of the FMG Nicola, named after Forrest’s wife.

Andrew Forrest of Fortescue Metals launches FMG Nicola.

The trio joined the vessel in the sea off Indonesia for the final three days of the 11-day journey from China to Port Hedland, before being joined on board by the extended Forrest clan — including Twiggy’s parents, his daughter Sophia and his son Sydney — on Sunday night.

In what we can only assume resembled a Bollywood remake of the famous scene in Titanic where Rose and Jack dance up a storm with the Irish peasants in third class, Forrest said the family and the all-male, all-Indian crew of the FMG Nicola danced the night away to Indian rock music.

The sailors aren’t used to seeing any females on board and Twiggy said even his mother drew a few lingering glances from the crew.