On stage at Allianz Stadium in October, Paul McCartney looked out over the crowd waving their illuminated phones in the air and said: “We know which songs you like, because the crowd lights up like a galaxy of stars.
“When we play the songs I like, it’s like a black hole.
“But I’m gonna play them anyway.”
That’s the glory of being 81.
You’ve made your name. You don’t need to justify yourself.
And if you’re 81-year-old television titan Peter Jeremy Meakin, you’re also way too wily to fall into the carefully laid traps of senior counsel.
Peter Meakin is a legend of Australian television news and current affairs.
He’s run the show at all the major networks – including Ten twice – and is famous for speaking softly, carrying a big stick and not wearing a tie.
He did have a tie on when he stepped into the witness box in the Federal Court defamation action between Bruce Lehrmann, Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson, but the rest of it was just what you’d expect from a supremely self-confident senior citizen with nothing to prove.
“That didn’t occur to me, no,” Ten’s former executive consultant, news and current affairs intoned calmly when Matthew Richardson SC, for Lehrmann, asked if it had occurred to him that Ten should seek clarification from Brittany Higgins about apparent holes in her narrative.
Richardson: “Did you suggest to Mr Llewellyn or anyone else that they speak to Ms Higgins?”
Meakin: “I can’t recall.”
Richardson: “You agree that when you read (the government’s statement to The Project), your understanding was that it did not corroborate what (she) was saying?”
Meakin: “I would accept that, yes.”
And then Richardson moved on, which is the point of cross-examination. Question, answer.
Unlike some other witnesses, Meakin did not argue, speechify, harrumph, throw smiles at the judge or crack sarcastic jokes.
Richardson wanted to know if The Project should have checked with Higgins why a contemporaneous email from an HR executive to Linda Reynolds’ chief of staff Fiona Brown indicated they’d given Higgins full support to go to police.
Meakin: “I think it would have been desirable, yes.”
Should they have checked about a text in which Higgins thanked Brown for being “absolutely incredible”?
Meakin: “Well, it wouldn’t have done any harm. I suppose in retrospect that we could have done a lot of things, but I think … I think we … I think Angus did a good job.”
Should they have requested an interview with Senator Michaelia Cash, as Meakin had suggested?
Meakin: “Well, all I can assume is that they didn’t take my advice. It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened.”
That’s the most senior journalist who touched The Project’s story conceding checks were not made and advice was not taken.
Where does that leave Ten’s qualified privilege defence?
Perhaps out there in the black hole, along with the lesser-known works of Paul McCartney.
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