The two main jobs awaiting Ziggy Switkowski as he reforms Crown

Ziggy Switkowski now has two main tasks to ensure the reformation of Crown. Picture: Paul Jeffers

There’re some rather delicious ironies in Ziggy Switkowski being charged with saving James Packer’s billions by overseeing the reforms at and the post-Covid revival of the Crown casino group and thereby managing Packer’s exit from his once-was-controlling 37 per cent stake.

For back in 2004 Switkowski was CEO of Telstra and he wanted Telstra to buy the Fairfax print media group that the Packers – father Kerry and son James – were supposed to lust after.

In fact, they had long since lost any such desire, since Kerry had actually tried to buy Fairfax in the early 1990s – although Kerry in particular liked to taunt Fairfax journalists with the prospect of walking in the door and sacking them all.

Indeed, far from wanting to go deeper into media, at the first chance he got – within a year of his father’s death – James sold out of the Nine Network itself, and poured the money into Crown and his – now shattered - dream of building a global gaming empire.

In selling Nine, he pocketed a cool $5bn clear, courtesy of changes to the media ownership rules instituted by the Howard Government, whose communications minister was one Helen Coonan.

Yes, the same Helen Coonan, who until being replaced as Crown chairman – on an interim basis – by Jane Halton, was being charged with the Crown reform/revival task that will now fall to Switkowski.

Going back to 2004, Switkowski got rolled by the Telstra board.

Fairfax kept going its own way. Switkowski got replaced as Telstra CEO by the mercurial Sol Trujillo, and an awful – and that word is used advisedly – lot of history started unrolling and unravelling.

James and Kerry Packer.

Trujillo tried to ‘sell’ the Howard government on letting Telstra build and own the NBN.

The Howard government said no, via, well, communications minister Coonan.

PM Howard gave way to PM Rudd who embarked on his own mad, bad and just, well, ‘courageous’ plan to build the NBN through the government-owned NBNCo.

That NBNCo is now chaired by, well, what do you know, one Ziggy Switkowski – after he had been charged by then-PM Malcolm Turnbull with clearing up the debacle of the Rudd NBN.

Australian business can be a very, very small place. All these over-lapping sagas look like a madhouse merry-go-round version of Hotel California.

You know, something like: riders can swap places on the various horses as many times as they like, as they whirl around, but they can’t actually get off.

The final pieces in the ironic puzzle is that it was articles in the Fairfax papers that contributed to the final implosion of the Packer Crown, helping spark the inquiry in NSW which then cascaded into the Royal Commissions in both Victoria and WA.

Fairfax papers, which now rest in the bosom of that very same Nine media group - chaired now by, well, former treasurer Peter Costello, who as a rather boyish backbencher all those years ago in 1990, back when Kerry Packer really did want to buy Fairfax, went head to head with him at a parliamentary inquiry.

Put all that in a flow chart if you dare.

So, in 2022 Switkowski – when he finally gets into the chair after passing probity, as he will – has those two tasks.

Reform, completely change, Crown’s entire operating dynamic; and manage the sale of the Packer holding.

His task has got both easier and harder.

Easier, because Crown will keep its Victorian licence, its absolutely core franchise. The Barangaroo licence is also safe, and so will be WA’s. The core business value is preserved.

But harder, because the of new five per cent shareholding cap.

The ‘easiest’ single buyer was going to be competitor Star. It still might be.

Alternatively, more easily and quickly, Packer’s stake could be sold in an institutional book-build.