As told by Kerry Packer during his legendary testimony in 1991 to the Select Committee on Print Media in the Australian Parliament, back when print media was a thing. It was basically an ambush by a bunch of Lefty MP’s who didn’t know the law, didn’t know the business – basically didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about – but were sure that a billionaire owner of newspapers would use them to screw the Australian people so he could make more money (in 2025 see Bezos, Washington Post).

In other words, the usual Leftist projection; it’s what they’d do had they the power, something we’ve seen demonstrated ever more strongly since 1991, culminating – at least in NZ – with Labour’s Public Interest Journalism Fund.

But it turned into one of the greatest practical defences of capitalism ever seen, as Packer went beyond the specifics of the “case” against him to talk about bureaucracy, rules and regulations, tax, business, and the impact of all this on Australia and Australians in his lifetime.

Great quotes as he ripped them while stirring his cup of tea:

  • “If we got all the photographs done and then we could get down to actually being serious about it okay rather than just being a circus.”
  • “I appear here reluctantly.”
  • “You’re either going to have to believe me or call me a liar.”
  • “You have guidelines and you have changed them. You’ve twisted them around in response to pressure from journalists.”
  • “The attempted hijackings in this company, in this performance, have taken people who I know over there, who are saying, ‘why would anyone invest in Australia? The laws get twisted and changed, the whole structure gets moved around, depending on whether they like the colour of your eyes or not.”
  • “Now that’s the damage you’re doing changing the rules every single day, and I think the people people out there whose jobs have been pissed up against the wall don’t thank you for it.
  • “Since I grew up as a boy I would imagine that, through the Parliaments of Australia, from the time I was 18-19 years of age to now there must be 10,000 new laws been passed, and I don’t really think it’s that much better place. And I’d like to make a suggestion to you, which I think would be far more useful. If you want to pass a new law why don’t you only do it when you’ve repealed an old one.
  • I mean this idea of just passing legislation, legislation, every time someone blinks is a nonsense. Nobody knows it. Nobody understands it. You got to be a lawyer – they’ve got books up to here – purely and simply to do the things we used to do, and every time you pass a law you take somebody’s privileges away from them.
  • “There’s nothing wrong with minimising tax. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t minimise their tax.… I am not evading tax in any way, shape, or form. Now of course I am minimising my tax, and if anybody in this country doesn’t minimise their tax they want their heads read, because as government I can tell you you’re not spending it that well that we should be donating extra.
  • “As a government, I must tell you that you are not spending it very well that we have to donate extra.”

The whole thing, almost two hours, is belos