The inside stories of our richest people take patience and trust
It can take a long time to gain the trust of our top business people but then they can really open up.
I still remember walking into Anthony Pratt’s Villa Juanita mansion in Atlanta, Georgia, on a cold, wet January afternoon in 2011 and staring, transfixed, at a photograph on the mantelpiece that only a select few in the world had ever seen.
It was a haunting picture of Anthony’s father Richard on his deathbed with the son he had long mercilessly criticised but secretly admired at his side. The Pratt family patriarch, his body racked by cancer, had only hours to live. His face was expressionless.
The image was burnt into my mind as I sat down the next day with Anthony Pratt for the first wide-ranging interview of his life, an at times nerve-racking discussion that was 18 months in the making.
I lost track of the number of family functions, private dinners and lunches I attended before Pratt was prepared to let me into his inner sanctum, years before he gained his public profile as the nation’s richest man.
With another billionaire, James Packer, it took almost two decades for him to open up to me about his deepest secrets. Before one of the many off-the-record lunches we had in the famed fifth-floor dining room of his Park Street offices in Sydney while his father, Kerry Packer, was still alive, he said to me in the lift ride from the ground floor: “If Dad gets in this lift, you aren’t a f..king journalist, OK?”
In modern journalism there is an understandable and commendably insatiable desire to be first with the news online and to uncover scandal. But the patient fisherman seeking to tell a human story can still be rewarded. The Inner Sanctum, an idea of Melbourne book publisher Michael Wilkinson to mark my 10 years of writing for The Australian, reflects my firm belief that behind the share prices, EBITDA numbers and endless, sanitised investor briefings, our leaders are still very human.
Deeply personal stories
From Mike Cannon-Brookes nursing his children or Malcolm Broomhead, Ray Horsburgh, Barry Irvin and Kathryn Fagg talking about their cancer battles, to Paul Anderson recalling his wife’s brush with death or Carol Schwartz and David Fox speaking affectionately about their beloved fathers, these are deeply personal stories that had never been told before.
Some took place in the most unusual of circumstances.
To meet former Adsteam boss John Spalvins for a once-in-a-lifetime interview in mid-2011 to mark the 20th anniversary of his once famed company’s collapse, I took the overnight bus from Melbourne to Adelaide because of a pilots’ strike.
In 2010 Fox agreed to talk to me during a tour of the Fox family’s Avalon Airport but delayed the interview until we were on the freeway back to Melbourne. I sat in the passenger seat asking questions with my tape recorder running while he was at the wheel of his SUV, driving at 110km/h.
I also still remember more than five years later turning up at the front gate of Mike and Annie Cannon-Brookes’s multi-million-dollar mansion at Sydney’s Centennial Park on a warm late-summer afternoon, letting myself in the front gate and walking past the nondescript plastic play equipment on the perfectly manicured lawn to ring the front door bell. There was not a padlock, security door or guard in sight at the home of the nation’s two newest billionaires.
Our interview took place in their front sitting room — Annie was barefoot, Mike in thongs — surrounded by blow-up Star Wars figures, a hangover from their young son’s weekend birthday party.
Meeting critical deadlines
At the other end of the spectrum it was an immaculately dressed Brian and Rosemary White who greeted me after their long-serving butler ushered me through the front door of their spectacular Point Piper mansion only weeks before Christmas in December 2016. They treated me to a tour of the waterfront property and lunch before we sat down for an emotionally charged interview as the seaplanes took off from the harbour below.
In October 2017 I flew overnight from Melbourne to Buenos Aires and then drove for 90 minutes to meet James Packer at his spectacular Ellerstina polo property on the city’s outskirts for one of biggest interviews of his life.
I had an at-times testy off-the-record dinner with the billionaire that evening to break the ice, test the waters and fight the jet lag.
The next day’s series of interviews conducted through a constant stream of cigarette smoke were painful and draining. Then I had to turn the biggest story of my life around in less than 24 hours to meet a critical deadline for The Weekend Australian Magazine.
Successful private people are the hardest interviews to crack but I have found that once they agree to sit down to talk, they are almost always more open than their counterparts in publicly listed companies.
Of the 37 interviewees in The Inner Sanctum, only eight are chief executives or executive chairman of listed companies.
Some, such as Spalvins, were seeking some redemption. Others such as Peter Holmes a Court, Alan Myers and Leon Zwier sought to address and challenge their public images. Still others agreed to talk simply to seek publicity for their latest business venture, an asset sale or to mark a milestone. But the interview turned into far more.
I ventured to the Toorak mansion of billionaire philanthropist Heloise Waislitz in June 2015 for what was supposed to be a short interview and photograph to mark her Queen’s Birthday honour. It turned into an hour-long epic where she ventured to topics long taboo in the Pratt family world. At the end she stood up and gave me a long hug, uttering the words: “Thank you. You don’t know how cathartic that was.”
In any big interview listening is key but, to really get people to explore their inner demons and trials, trust is fundamental. People need to be comfortable and feel implicitly that you will handle their revelations fairly.
Some interviewees agreed to speak only following the intercession of a trusted intermediary who knew me. Some, such as Pratt and Packer, required multiple off-the-record meetings or phone conversations before they would agree to talk.
My subjects may have more wealth than any of us can ever imagine, run the biggest companies or sit on the most powerful boards in the land, yet they still have their own failings, trials and triumphs. The Inner Sanctum offers a different perspective on some of the nation’s most celebrated leaders of the past decade. This decade of interviewing has shown me that beyond the power and influence these successful people wield, the most compelling elements of their strories are their very human strengths and frailties.
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The Inner Sanctum: The Secrets of Australia’s Most Private Leaders by Damon Kitney ($29.99) is available at book stores and at wilkinsonpublishing.com.au