Rupert Murdoch: John Howard Australia’s best prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull was ‘nuts’
In a series of interviews to mark the 60th anniversary of The Australian, Rupert Murdoch says John Howard achieved more in office than any other Australian prime minister.
John Howard achieved more in office than any other Australian prime minister, Rupert Murdoch says.
In a series of interviews to mark the 60th anniversary of The Australian newspaper on July 15, Mr Murdoch – who founded this masthead – said Mr Howard, prime minister from March 1996 to November 2007, was the best leader during his lifetime.
“You’ve got to give very high marks to John Howard,” Mr Murdoch said. “I think John Howard was a mature man who ran the country well.”
Interviewer Paul Whittaker, the chief executive of Sky News Australia and a former editor-in-chief of The Australian, asked Mr Murdoch whether Mr Howard was the prime minister who had achieved “real transformation” for the nation.
“I think so, yes,” he said.
Mr Murdoch, now chairman emeritus of News Corp and Fox Corporation, also offered his assessments of former prime ministers Robert Menzies, Malcolm Fraser, Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Turnbull.
Mr Turnbull famously took aim at Mr Murdoch in 2023, saying: “There is no individual alive who has done more to divide America than Rupert Murdoch.”
Asked by Whittaker for a response to Mr Turnbull’s attack, Mr Murdoch said: “I think Malcolm’s nuts. I mean he’s paranoid. He didn’t like the fact that we supported Tony Abbott versus him. That’s all.”
Mr Murdoch was more effusive about Menzies, despite having been at times highly critical of Australia’s longest-serving prime minister during his leadership, particularly in the 1960s.
“(We were) more British than now and Menzies was always flying the Union Jack,” Mr Murdoch recalled.
“As a young, I thought patriotic, Australian, I was very critical. I look back at him and he did some pretty great things, university systems and so on.”
The media proprietor discussed how his newspapers initially supported Whitlam in 1972, when Labor defeated the Coalition for the first time in 23 years. Mr Murdoch said Whitlam made “the biggest noise” but, ultimately, his government was a failure.
“The conservatives (were) in power for decades. Whitlam came along, changed it. He attempted big things,” Mr Murdoch said.
“We thought it was time, but we quickly changed our mind.
“I think it was time, but the government was totally disorganised. Whitlam had no idea how to run a cabinet.”
Mr Murdoch was equally blunt about Whitlam’s successor, Malcolm Fraser.
“He was, I think, a disappointment,” Mr Murdoch said. Whittaker also asked Mr Murdoch, a veteran of Fleet Street, which British leaders rated highly in his estimation.
“Only one: Margaret Thatcher,” he said.
“She really changed the country and she got rid of the class system. She was a meritocrat. She was not upper class. But really, she was no nonsense. And she knew more about the government than any member of her cabinet, which of course they hated.
“She’d be up till three in the morning reading the brief on something.”
The Australian: 60 Years of News, Monday 15 July 8pm AEST. Stream at skynews.com.au
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