Latham diaries, BHP pay rises, Chris Corrigan

1. The insight in The Latham Dairies



By Stephen Mayne

The Latham Diaries will be a unique exercise for Crikey because we are the only media outlet capable of fearlessly going through the thousands of allegations, anecdotes and insights.

The ALP has a huge incentive to trash Latham and they are doing their best to encourage various press gallery hacks to do the same. However, the press gallery doesn't need a lot of incentive because most of them get thoroughly done over too. Any Canberra hack who endorsed or welcomed the Diaries would quickly find themselves taking a lot of heat from their sources and colleagues, not to mention their bosses, so don't expect it to happen any time soon.

Latham might have called Crikey a "Sh*t Sheet" but we're big enough to cop that and still welcome the publication of his Diaries as an unprecedented insight into the political and media culture of Australia.

Sure, some of it is wrong, particularly the stuff where Latham has relied on third hand information and blown it all out of proportion. Lindsay Tanner summed it up well on Insiders yesterday and it seems Latham's allegations of muckraking against Beazley are hugely exaggerated.

The strategy being being used by the media and political establishment to demonise the Diaries is to highlight various elements which are exaggerated or plain wrong and there seems to be plenty of material to work with. Kevin Rudd is now doing that with the Laurie Oakes leaking story and The Age's Misha Shubert pushed another one out on the Insiders couch yesterday claiming John Murphy is now saying that Robert Ray's claims of a Kim Beazley dirt file on Latham could have related to anything from his public life, such as events at Liverpool Council.

This, of course, will only apply to the blunders. Where Latham lands a bulls-eye on the media, it will be conveniently ignored and this is where our role of approaching hacks for reaction will come into play. There are loads of gems in there, particularly about the media, which they will not be able to report properly or even respond to. For instance, this is what Latham writes after breaking bread with a media mogul on June 28 last year:

Had dinner with Kerry Stokes at his home in Darling Point. The exact opposite of Bill Gates: he spent three hours talking about himself. A long convoluted story about what he sees as a massive conspiracy between Murdoch, Packer, Telstra and the AFL to do him out of the Aussie Rules broadcast rights at Channel Seven. I couldn't follow most of what he was saying, but if only half of what said is true, it's the corporate story of the decade. Stokes is going to run it through the courts next year. But the case might last forever: this bloke can talk the leg off a chair.

With Kerry Stokes about to step into the box, that is a fascinating insight into his state of mind. Mark Latham really should launch his own website and start going to media company AGMs. Imagine Iron Mark vs Kerry and James Packer on the floor of the PBL AGM next month. Or what about coming to the Seven AGM and starting with, "about those things you told me over dinner last year...".



2. Why did Murdoch pay for the Latham Diaries?



By Stephen Mayne

The Murdoch press have led the charge in savaging The Latham Diaries, which begs the question as to why on earth they bid $80,000 for the exclusive rights to extracts from something which is so despicable? Given Latham's spirited attacks on various Murdoch hacks and the family itself, surely the strategy should have been to minimise the exposure the Diaries got.

What Latham has done is quite similar to the experience I had with Jeffed.com in 1999, where the strategy was to initially cultivate the media to maximise pre-publicity for something they hadn't seen and them dump all over them from a great height, after which you'll be banned.

On the morning of September 5, 1999, when jeffed.com went live with its Lathamesque spray alleging a great media and political conspiracy, the Sunday Herald Sun carried a cheery gossip item on its back page which included the following:

www.Jeffed.com

A nose-thumbing website that promises to spill a few beans in coming weeks. It belongs to the newest would-be political candidate, Stephen Mayne. Unfortunately, celebration turned to disappointment next day when it was ruled he was not eligible to run. As you know, he wanted to stand in the seat of Burwood against Jeff Kennett, well-known premier.

Mayne, more than two metres tall, was sorely disappointed but he has not yet given up. "I will continue with the website," he told me. "I am writing a detailed personal explanation about why I threw in a great job to do this. It will not be a political document. It will be a personal one."

Thank you very much for the pre-publicity, Rupert. At 10.28am that morning the initial 11,000 word spray against Jeff Kennett, the Herald Sun and the rest of the commercial media went live and thereafter I was totally banned from the Herald Sun and relied primarily on the ABC to get the message out.

Isn't this precisely what Latham is doing? He certainly understands the irony as you can see from this exchange with Tony Jones on Friday night's Lateline:

TONY JONES: Paul Kelly says the diaries raised the question of whether the sickness lies within the party or whether it lies within yourself.

MARK LATHAM: Oh, I don't really regard Kelly as all that reliable. I mean...

TONY JONES: Well, you gave him an exclusive interview.

MARK LATHAM: Well, News Ltd were bidders for it. Fairfax didn't put anything in, News Ltd bid some money, the publishers took the money, and if News Ltd want to promote a book that exposes some of the true nature of News Ltd, well, that's their business as far as I'm concerned.

TONY JONES: Did you think twice about that - by the way, just on that subject - did you think twice about taking money from News Limited?

MARK LATHAM: Oh, I don't know if it affects my case. It probably doesn't sit as comfortably with me as other parts of my life. But, you know, in Kelly's instance, telling me that it was a good move to get the troops out of Iraq, put the pressure on Howard, and shortly thereafter – a company man, he's very much a Murdoch company man, he's towing the company line, the Murdoch-American stance – to be bagging me for that policy position that in his private moments he supported.

News Ltd placed Paul Kelly in the ridiculous position of interviewing Latham about a book which embarrasses Kelly and reveals some of their private conversations. Even more incredibly, the book quotes News Ltd executive chairman John Hartigan as being "poorly briefed" and calling Latham to whinge about something he said in 2002 and then says: "This is what Paul Kelly has always said about the management of News Ltd - they hardly give you confidence in the quality of business management in this country."

No wonder The Australian went absolutely berserk against Latham in Saturday's editorial, which sat very strangely next to the promotion of their exclusive extracts. The same went for all of Murdoch's Sunday tabloids across the country. There really should be a big inquisition inside News Ltd as to why they bought the rights. Fairfax knew they'd be getting a huge towelling for the notorious Deborah Snow/Damian Murphy feature on Latham's sexual history in The SMH, so they didn't offer anything for it.



3. Glenn Milne's dark threat to Mark Latham



By Stephen Mayne

News Ltd columnist Glenn Milne has copped plenty of abuse from Mark Latham in his Diaries and during interviews with the ABC. Despite having two opportunities to respond in columns so far, Milne has not gone into print defending his actions in writing extensively about claims pushed by Latham's first wife or his alleged problems with women and the bogus bucks night video.

Latham has certainly upped the pressure by revealing private conversations with Milne, such as this from Enough Rope:

There's no doubt someone like Glenn Milne sees himself as a mover and shaker and not just a writer of stories. He actually sees himself as a participant. He once said to me that he played a role in helping Keating defeat Hawke, and he's determined to help Costello defeat Howard for the Liberal leadership. So he hasn't done too well on that front. That's a long running project for him. He's been working at it for 10 years, but he's a participant more than an observer of the system. They've really got a culture of know-alls, that people sit in the press gallery, they see all this stuff, they get on the grog at night with the odd politician. They swan around Canberra. They get into the idea the culture the state of mind that they know everything that's going on. Nothing could be happening that they don't see. Well, you know I think they see the tip of iceberg basically. What's under the waterline is hidden from the media and these diaries are one example of how there's a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes that where the media just wouldn't know diddly squat.

Milne really should respond to that. Latham also fired this shot at him on Lateline: "Inevitably, I'm this time leader of the Labor Party, it (the Kate Ellis rumour) will get into the media at some stage – a Glenn Milne will feed it into the system somewhere, all of these perverted voyeuristic types will feed it in at some point and I'll have to go through the same thing."

Milne is clearly furious and is darkly hinting that he will be raising the stakes against Latham by finishing today's column in The Australian today as follows:

A final postscript: while some divisions have emerged within the Labor caucus over Latham's diaries there has been near-universal revulsion at his resurrection of the June 2000 suicide of Victorian Labor MP Greg Wilton. Latham last week virtually accused Beazley and Labor's deputy Senate leader, Stephen Conroy, of causing Wilton's death.

Latham's gratuitous revival of the memory of this dreadful incident for his own self-serving political purposes has had an awful impact on Wilton's widow and two children. For that reason, no one wants to respond publicly to his attack. But one day, the real story of Latham's role in the Wilton suicide will be revealed.



4. Latham's hits on "sh*t sheet" Crikey



By Stephen Mayne

I popped up to the local Myer at 9am this morning where the ladies in the book department were still unpacking their skinny consignment of just 36 copies of the Lathan Diaries which only arrived on the goods dock at 8.30am.

The lady on the till joked that she was looking forward to to seeing if she was in it "because everyone else seems to be." I had quick squiz at the index and declared, "hey, look, we've cracked it for three mentions."

Two more sales staff joined the excited frenzy to check out what Iron Mark had said about "Crikey.com," although given the sledging, it would have been nice if the index had got our name right. The ladies looked at me strangely when they read the terrible things Iron Mark said, which were as follows:

On page 309, we have the following:

Once I dealt with Nelson, the media moved onto its next rumour, its next chance to land the big fish: a bucks' night video. Apparently the sh*t sheet Crikey started it on Friday. Then, Louise Dodson in the SMH on Saturday: 'The Labor Leader is yet to respond to other revelations, reports of a raunchy video taken at his bucks' night before his second marriage.'

Then the Dwarf (Glenn Milne) was onto it yesterday: 'Over the past 48 hours, there's been fevered speculation in Canberra about the existence of a raunchy bucks' night video involving Latham, and whether that was the smoking gun to be fired by Sunday.

On page 394, there is a reference to the bogus Kate Ellis rumour:

Another piece of smut sent to haunt me? More rumours and media speculation: perhaps another Crikey/Dodson/Milne/Price special? Let me guess: the Latham/Ellis video, shot by security cameras at the Holy Grail.

Page 403:

The media serve it (intrusive gossip) up because they know it's a huge money-spinner. In fact, it has become our dominant public culture: on television, talkback radio, gossip magazines (more brands of them at the supermarket than lollies to tempt the kids), gossip columns (even the broadsheets have them now) and online rags like Crikey (the most popular website in Parliament House). I used to think of the internet as a force for liberating the information-poor, but all it has done is liberate the voyeurs and make them worse.

CRIKEY: Fair cop and plenty of material for a new Crikey mug or two. You should read what Media Watch said about the buck's night video rumour on July 12 last year. Also check out our detailed explanation at the time here. I can add today that we received the tip from a former Murdoch hack now with a politically prominent PR firm. We certainly didn't start the rumour but by emailing it to 4,900 subscribers at the time, we did increase its circulation, but it wasn't published on our website. In terms of our popularity at Parliament House there would be several more visited websites than ours, but no-one else can claim to hit the email inboxes of 216 people with aph.gov.au addresses like we do now. Iron Mark, like so many others before him, doesn't understand that we are primarily an email newsletter, not a website.



19. BHP pay rises and notice of meeting



By Stephen Mayne, tiny BHP Billiton shareholder

The world's biggest miner, BHP Billiton, has today released its 220 page annual report and 24-page notice of meeting for the forthcoming AGM in Perth. Check it all out here.

CEO Chip Goodyear has lived up to his name as his total pay rose to a record $US5.15 million in 2004-05, whilst chairman Don Argus collected a tasty $US490,000 making him Australia's highest paid non-executive chairman when you also include the juicy $US1.286 million lump sum waiting for him in the directors' retirement scheme.

The AGM in Perth on Friday, November 25 will no doubt be poorly attended and as usual, BHP has put the most controversial items at the bottom of the agenda. Items 17, 18, and 19 deal with the vote on the incredibly complicated remuneration report and up to 1.75 million new shares and options for the two executive directors, Goodyear and Miklos Salomon, the most senior remaining executive from the Billiton camp who has a tidy $US9.4 million in superannuation awaiting him.

Executives such as BHP Petroleum chief Phil Aiken must be happy they've stayed with the Big Australian through the good and bad times. Profits are soaring thanks to the crazy oil price and Phil saw his pay packet soar from $US3 million to $US4 million last financial year. Not bad for a divisional manager working out of Melbourne who doesn't even sit on the main board.

BHP Billiton had no less than 16 different executive equity schemes in operation up until June 30, 2005 and eight of these issued more stock over the year. Trying to keep up with who has made what under the myriad of different structures is nearly impossible, but someone like Don Argus can't be unhappy with his shares which are now worth almost $5 million.

The old BHP employee share scheme has issued a whopping 373 million shares over the years which are worth a hefty $8 billion with the stock up 52c to a record $21.51 this afternoon.

Have a trawl through the annual report yourself and see if you can make head or tail of it. There are no doubt hundreds of current and former BHP executives who are millionaires courtesy of the schemes and the boom in China, but getting a fix on the exact scale is no easy task.



20. Chris Corrigan's excessive hyperbole



By Stephen Mayne, small shareholder in Toll Holdings and Patrick Corporation

Patrick Corporation CEO Chris Corrigan gave a feisty interview to Alan Kohler on Inside Business yesterday in which he expanded on his earlier written allegations about the Pacific National deal with Toll Holdings in Queensland, including the following lines:

CHRIS CORRIGAN: We've had a major problem in Queensland where Toll, essentially, got Pacific National to set up a network in Queensland with them as a core customer. What's turned out is that they've morphisised the approval that they got from the board into a memorandum of understanding, which they claim is now legally binding and which basically monopolises for 20 years Pacific National's capacity to operate in the Queensland market. I mean, this is an extraordinary thing, and in the process the economics have also changed dramatically. So we have a major business issue. This is a grubby, grubby deal and it's a deal which they are trying to avoid having examined.

ALAN KOHLER: You were going to fall out, or were in the process of falling out, with Paul Little and Toll before the bid was launched?

CHRIS CORRIGAN: Absolutely. I have written letters that pre-date the bid which basically call into question the probity of this deal and the people that were involved in it. We've discovered, quite recently, that two of the senior executives of Pacific National, who were involved in the negotiation of this deal with Toll, were not only on the Toll payroll but are actually still incentivised by Toll under the Toll options scheme. So you had a situation where basically Toll employees were negotiating with Toll and changing the deal that the board had agreed to.

This is all good and well, although Toll claims the net present value is only $20 million whereas Patrick is claiming a revenue loss of $500 million over 20 years, which proves the old adage that there are "lies, damn lies and statistics".

What Corrigan conveniently ignored is that Toll is now offering to pay a premium to buy the entire business, so if Toll has really screwed its partner with this "grubby" value-destroying deal, why would they want to buy all of Patrick?

Meanwhile, did anyone else spot the braces on Corrigan's top teeth? No wonder he was talking without opening his mouth much? The lad turns 60 next year and is obviously planning to be around for a long time.

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