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October 14, 2002
It was like being the
high school slut except this time the experience was much
longer lasting - two virginities lost in one most interesting
day. My first encounters with both Rupert and the lumbering
Crikey giant himself were definitely an experience not to be
forgotten.
The same can probably be said for the few hundred News Corp
share holders lucky enough to experience an
uncharacteristically interesting AGM this year, mostly thanks
to the mischievous yet thoroughly professional running stoush
between Rupert and Crikey that was the ongoing point of
interest for the meeting.
Kicking off the morning meeting the Mayne Man in the lobby
of the Hyatt for some pre-AGM strategies and prep, the vibe at
the place was strangely non-existent - in fact, if you didn't
know that the AGM of Australia's biggest company was being
held in the downstairs "ballroom" (commonly known as a
basement) you would have guessed business as usual in sleepy
ol' Adelaide.
Terry Mcrann walking round looking like the lonely guy who
is first to show up at the party was probably the only sign
that something significant was brewing downstairs.
Having been prepped on the 20+ questions Crikey wanted
asked in the AGM and gone through the suicide bomber friendly,
Adelaide style, highly informal registration process, I was
into the meeting and chose to sit smack in the middle of the
front row of seats. This is where probably the strangest
realisation of the day kicked in for me - how can security
surrounding 3 Murdochs be so unbelievably lax? With little
more than confidence & low-level business attire, a dodgy
looking unshaven student (I was referred to as the "bearded"
one by Crikey's subscriber update on the AGM but I'd say its
more like two weeks without a shave) complete with a bright
yellow Quiksilver shoulder bag and a scuffed up pair of Merrel
clogs, managed to be seated less than a 5 metres from Rupert,
and even closer to young Lachlan and James.
Not a single metal scanner, no bag check, not a search in
sight, and here I was sitting so close to one of the worlds
most powerful men that the multitude of ways a Jihad-minded
man in my position could have nailed 3 Murdochs in one sitting
was one of the main thoughts I would refer back to when
business at the AGM got boring. But luckily (for me and the
Murdochs), this was rarely necessary - thanks mainly to Crikey
and with backup from the ASA bloke, the AGM maintained a
fairly consistent feeling of debate and discussion.
I could cover all the resolutions voted on and the business
side of the meeting, but Crikey himself went through this in
much greater depth than I could hope to offer. Instead, here
is a few of my own reflections on being a 21 y.o
AGM/Rupert/Crikey virgin exposed to such a corker of a
meeting.
Crikey himself absolutely stole the show and even from a
non-reader's perspective it was the Crikey questioning and in
particular the board tilt that was the clear highlight of the
AGM. If my memory serves me correctly even Rupert himself only
received a brief lukewarm show of applause once following his
10 minute plus opening address, whereas Crikey received two
decent sized ovations, one predictably following the excellent
board nomination speech, and a spontaneous round of applause
following his speech in opposition to options for
non-executive directors.
I agree with Crikey that Rupert's age is starting to become
more apparent. Despite being solidly professional, witty and
quite sharp facing the questions, he botched some figures
horribly quite a few times much to the embarrassment of the
fellow board members who had to correct and help poor dotty
old Rupe through the tough times when his memory (and basic
mathematics) seemed to be failing him.
There was a quite nice friendly bit of jousting going on
between Crikey and Rupert, and Rupert seemed to be in a good
spirit about it. When Crikey admitted that he had no chance of
flying back to Sydney on the News Corp jet Rupert interjected
in a flash with "you're right" and this brought up a hearty
bit of laughter from the masses. Crikey got his own laugh out
of Rupert, when responding to Rupert query of the extent of
Crikey's News Corp holdings. "A modest amount", he said,
"certainly nothing like your own interests" which brought
another decent laugh to the crowd. Score : One all.
That Lachlan fellow certainly is a sharp looking young man.
I'm not into "the love that dare not speak its name", but
Lachlan sure is a good looking young chap and looked more like
a model than an executive director, lounging back on the end
of the board table in a sharp single breasted pinstripe suit,
spiked up hair and funky minimalist Patrick Bateman glasses.
That gold-digging O'Hare woman certainly has found herself
some decent breeding stock. Pity about his crap American
accent, he sounds like a complete wussy. As opposed to the
director sitting directly on Ruperts right, general counsel
Arthur Siskind, who had an awesome hard-ass Brooklyn Italian
accent, like you'd expect to hear coming from an angry cabby
in a bad American movie, or the tough Italian cop on his last
day till retirement.
The post-AGM festivities were a little underwhelming. I
made sure to slug down plenty of the free beer, although it
was disappointing to see that local boy Rupert didn't provide
Coopers Pale Ale (a crime that any South Aussie recognises),
and instead doled out some watery draught crap instead. Even
more shocking was that some communist pinko has managed to
infiltrate one of the world's last great patriarchal
organisations and corrupt their catering policy, with not a
spot of red meat or man-worthy food in sight.
Chicken skewers, pita rolls, vegetable pizzas and
cucumber/tuna sandwiches were the order of the day. The
greatest injustice of all was to find a quite decent looking
party pie, dunk it in tomato sauce, bite into it and discover
some bloody vego mixture of corn, cheese and asparagus. How
very un-Australian Rupert. That, the lack of Coopers beer and
your sons crap yankee accent should have you barred from South
Australia for a long time.
All in all, it was a great experience, and Crikey, you most
certainly stole the show. Sorry for disappointing you and only
asking one mediocre question (a WorldCom inquiry that got shot
down in about ten seconds), but by the time I got up you had
already won the crowd over with about 4 smoking gun questions
in a row and I would have looked like a mediocre bearded
imitation if I tried a similar stunt. Walking around the pinko
nibbles area drinking my injustice beer, I heard the words
"Stephen Mayne", "that guy who ran for the board", and "that
Crikey bloke" spurting from the lips of shareholders all over
the place. A much more consistent theme of conversation
post-AGM than Rupert's lacklustre year or Lachlan's swanky
haircut. | 
