I was sworn in as Premier of Victoria on 20 October 1999, and one of the tasks our government tackled early was the logistics for Melbourne’s Millennium Eve celebrations. I first got to know Harold when he chaired the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts, and the former government had given the Melbourne Festival responsibility for organizing the celebrations.
Harold and his team had put together a sensational program of free entertainment. In the end all my office had to deal with was the potential Y2K crisis—what a furphy that turned out to be—and the politics of the invitation list for a special event on the terraces of the Victorian Arts Centre. Suddenly, in among the usual A-list guests, were a whole swag of newly elected Labor members and the occasional union representative. Harold took it all his stride, and he and Bevelly were delightful hosts. It was a truly memorable millennium.
Harold has a rare ability to straddle both sides of politics successfully and to manage adeptly the high-maintenance personalities in government and on the boards of public arts institutions. He was always incredibly loyal. I never heard him say a bad word about Jeff Kennett, who’d originally appointed him to the Melbourne Festival board. When Harold decided his time was up at the Melbourne Festival I didn’t hesitate to cajole him into taking the helm of the Museums Board of Victoria. I knew it would take someone of Harold’s calibre to stop the new museum near the Royal Exhibition Buildings in Carlton turning into a white elephant. Harold didn’t disappoint. In his no-fuss, determined way he made it work. He recruited one of the best museum directors in the world, made it free for kids and got exhibits out on display. We can thank Harold for the fact that today it is a thriving hub of research and educational activity. A quintet of premiers was in attendance at a dinner to mark his retirement from the museum’s board—Premier Brumby and former premiers Kennett, Kirner, Cain and me—which I think was a first.
Harold’s generosity is legendary. I had the privilege of launching his family philanthropic trust in June 2000. As I said at the time, it was an extraordinary gift from an extraordinary man. My recent work in Timor-Leste, advising Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão, is a direct result of Harold’s philanthropy. When I needed someone to help fund the project so that I wouldn’t be a burden on the new government of Timor-Leste, I immediately turned to Harold. I knew he’d been a supporter of the Timor-Leste cause since meeting Xanana Gusmão when he came to Australia to launch the Melbourne Festival in 2001. We’d attended the same fundraiser in 2005, and I learned he’d been quietly helping Xanana and his wife Kirsty Sword Gusmão, particularly through his support for the ALOLA Foundation. We met in my office in August 2007, and I told him about Xanana putting out feelers for me to assist the new government, given my recent retirement, and before I’d finished speaking he asked whether half a million would be enough.
Since then I have been to Timor-Leste eight times. I have worked with the Prime Minister and his team to establish an independent Civil Service Commission, an Anti-Corruption Commission and improved independent audit systems. What a lot of people don’t realize is that, on top of rebuilding physical infrastructure like roads, schools and houses destroyed by retreating Indonesian troops and local militia in 1999, an entire system of government needs to be built from scratch. Establishing parliamentary democracy, executive government, a functioning bureaucracy, legal and policing systems, all at the same time, from virtually nothing, is an incredible challenge for any population. It is made all the more difficult in Timor-Leste as the twenty-four-year guerrilla war with Indonesia has left the population under-educated and psychologically scarred. Add to this the complications caused by language—under the constitution, Portuguese and the local language, Tetun, are ‘official languages’ and English and Indonesian are ‘working languages’—and it is all the more remarkable that the nation is functioning as well as as it is.
Harold’s financial support gave me a unique opportunity to provide truly independent advice to the Prime Minister. It allowed me to employ a research associate, Kim McGrath, and take a range of highly skilled executives with direct management experience to Dili, a number of whom are now working for the Timor-Leste Government.
My most memorable trip to Timor-Leste so far was in May 2008— when Harold finally made it to Dili. I had hoped Harold would get there at some stage but, given his work and community commitments, I seriously doubted it would ever happen. But when it did, the timing could not have been better. The Prime Minister was hosting the Year of Administrative Reform Conference, which we had helped organize and which was the culmination of our work so far. It was the first time the conference room in the new Foreign Affairs building (built and paid for by the Chinese Government) was being used, which I suspect in part explained the huge turn-out. The Prime Minister personally greeted every delegate at the door—a marked contrast to the way I used to be secreted in a side entrance, then on to the stage at most conferences I attended as Premier. He then gave a passionate speech about the need for the bureaucracy to be independent.
It was in response to a long-winded question from the floor about the risks of giving the Fretilin Opposition a free hand that the Prime Minister really fired up. He thumped the podium, and our translator couldn’t keep up, but it didn’t matter—we all got the drift: the bureaucracy should be able to survive a change of government and be loyal to the new government, regardless of political party. It was an extraordinary moment, and I was thrilled that Harold was there to share it with me.
Harold always got on with everybody. He’s a no-nonsense guy, and he won’t stuff around. But he never seems to be in a hurry, and he’s never rude or abrasive. He’s short and sharp in a charming way, and he gets to the crunch of it. And he’s always got new ideas.
He likes the wheeling and the dealing, and he likes dealing with the heavy-hitters. And he tells it to them like it is—and some of them don’t like it.
Just Jeans and Harold Mitchell had a happy, eighteen-year relationship, and we are still friends today. Just Jeans opened its first store in 1970 in Chapel Street with capital of $4500. We took about $45 the first day. We ended up with about three hundred stores in Australia and New Zealand. And television was a big driver in getting us there. We floated the company in the late 1980s, and our family sold out six years ago.
Harold and Just Jeans were pioneers together. Harold went out on his own in 1976 just as we were starting our operation, taking jeans out of the department stores and selling them in shops for jeans only. Sounds reasonable today, but in the mid-1970s that was quite radical, just as Harold’s innovation was.
I met Harold in the mid-1970s. He was the up-and-coming media buyer for the advertising agency Masius, where we had our account. We were doing print and a bit of radio, and it was starting to not work. I went to the chairman and told him we were going to resign the account. The chairman said, ‘I’ve got a secret weapon.’ And he wheeled in Harold Mitchell. Harold’s idea was that we would go on television, which we’d never done. ‘Secret weapon’ was right—it was a brilliant idea, and Harold was the man to drive it.
Lionel Hunt and Noel Delbridge started doing the creative side, and Harold did these great schedules, mainly on Channel Ten initially. We would buy ads for $700 in prime spots, maybe fourteen or sixteen through the week. We spent a lot with Channel Ten because they were the risqué station at the time, with Number 96, The Box—edgy, sexy shows, which suited our image.
Harold organized the first two-minute commercial. It was for the opening of our sale in the late 1970s. The ad went forever and a day. We didn’t have enough models so we got all our staff to dress up in our jeans.
He was an innovator, always coming up with new ideas. In 1977 the VFL Grand Final was televised for the first time. Harold said this was the vehicle for us; he talked us into it and did the deal. He rang Ron Casey, who was running Channel Seven and arranged for us, along with CUB, to sponsor the telecast. We had the most unbelievable response—hundreds of letters, people in hospitals thanking the company—and sales just surged.
Harold went out on his own in 1976, and we were one of his first clients. We went to an agency called Spasm, and the condition was that Harold would do the media buying for us. Today it’s all separate. In those days they did their media in-house. We were one of the first break-aways. When he went out on his own, the agencies said he wouldn’t make it. They were genuinely sceptical, but that made him more determined. And within a few months he was on his feet. There was a lot of jealousy towards him.
He had some good supporters: us, Bob Jane. It’s good to do things with people who are also growing their business. Everyone likes to help each other. We were young—he was helping us and we were helping him.
We were very happy to keep working with Harold. He had such great relationships with the owners and the sales directors.
When we started Just Jeans there were two million pairs of jeans sold each year in Australia. Twenty-five years later that figure was fifteen million. We were lucky that we grew with the boom. We expanded into Sydney and Brisbane, usually buying out a group of stores, had a big closing-down sale, changed its name, rebranded the stores and reopened them as Just Jeans. Harold would go and get us fantastic deals and would advise on our campaigns. We didn’t have much money, but he knew that if it worked and we grew, there would be a lot more money flowing to the TV networks.
Harold helped us with some great TV campaigns. We’d go for prime time in blocks. I never forget how much an ad on 60 Minutes cost—about $1000.
In retailing you get reaction within a couple of days. Harold would always follow, checking sales figures. And if sales didn’t go well, Harold would ring up the network and get some more bonus spots for us, using his favours for us. He worked very hard for his clients, always has.
He’s restless. He has to be always doing something. And he’s always thinking of new ways to do things, which we saw with his launch of emitch.
Harold is a genuine pioneer who was brave, energetic and an ideas factory.
Harold seems to have been part of my life for decades.
Everyone will say Harold is a very big man, although he’s becoming thinner now. He is big in size and big in energy, and he’s big in ideas and he’s hugely big in effort. There’s a lot of people who spruik a cause or an issue, but he actually backs all the spruiking up with action. His energy is boundless.
When I was Premier, Harold was appointed chairman of the Melbourne International Arts Festival. We had just appointed Jonathan Mills as director. That was a bit of a risk. Jonathan is as creative as Harold. Harold rang me and said, ‘I only want to see you for half an hour.’ He marched into my office at the appointed time with Jonathan, and he had what I can only describe as a butchers’ paper flip-board showing all the things he and Jonathan were proposing to do. I sat there in my chair just absorbing this rapid-fire presentation, which was as much about what was said and the flailing arms as it was about what was on the butchers’ paper. Whether it’s the MIAF, whether it was Museum Victoria, whether it was his chairmanship of the National Gallery of Australia, he throws himself into projects. I can’t imagine him ever retiring. He likes to be at the centre of activity, which is not hard for him because wherever Harold is, that’s where the activity is.
He won’t waste your time. He comes in, and it’s bang, bang, bang and he’s out the door again. It’s the way he’s always operated.
He hasn’t always been wealthy; he lost his fortune, then rebuilt it. We are lucky that there are high-wealth individuals who are good community patrons of a wide range of activities. And while some give money, Harold gives money and his time and energy. Harold and Bevelly are very generous. I don’t think you can separate the two. While Harold is the frontman, so to speak, Bev is very much involved in the charitable side of Harold’s largesse. I put Harold and the Pratts and the Myers together as three groups of people who make huge contributions to a lot of things cultural in Australia.
Some see Harold as a tough operator. I don’t see him as that. I think it’s Harold who very quickly forms a conclusion about any issue he’s dealing with at the time, and he has a style that is, for many, abrupt. But I don’t find it threatening. I like it because he talks my sort of language. You know where you stand very quickly. And he makes the best of time allotted. But I can understand people who don’t know him and might be a little timid and uneasy dealing with Harold, although Harold would hate to think that’s an outcome of his personality. Those people who spend any time with him at all would understand that he’s a very soft and very compassionate man, but his staccato way of dealing with things—getting through things quickly— is not everyone’s style.
He’s very consistent. Harold is Harold. Whether it’s at a function, in his office, at a restaurant, there’s a consistency about Harold. When you get to know him you understand he is a very big huggy bear.
Harold wouldn’t have made a good politician. He hasn’t got the patience. And he’s not interested in the minutiae of life. He’s more worried about the things that matter to him, the avenues through which he can make a contribution to broader society. He’s good at running galleries and museums and international festivals because he sits there and runs them. He’s not a shy and retiring man.
He’s comfortable with all types of people. I don’t think Harold has ever forgotten his roots. I think he has a very real connection with his father. He had a tough upbringing and tough experiences in his business career, and I think that has stood him in very good stead. He has accumulated wealth, but he hasn’t separated himself from life’s mainstream.
Harold doesn’t drink, and I’m not surprised at how much fun he has when sober. I go on regimes where I don’t drink for six months. You don’t need alcohol to be a humorous or lively person. Harold’s personality doesn’t come out of a bottle. He just sparkles wherever he goes. And anyone he meets he leaves with a taste of effervescence. He’s just so enthusiastic.
My assessment has always been based on whether this is a good person. Is this a person I can work with? Is this a person I can trust? And the answer is yes. To me life is not about whether you fail or succeed. The thing that makes the world go round is people. With Harold you knew he was going to make things happen. Harold Mitchell makes things happen.
ARTWORK: A CLAPPER BOARD ON WHICH IS WRITTEN IN CHALK (TOP LINE) ‘This Is Your Life’. (SECOND LINE) Harold Mitchell.
When I was asked to write a piece about Harold for this book, I was both flattered and apprehensive. I was happy to write about Harold, but what if I offended him? Harold is not only a powerful man, with lots of very important friends, but also a very big man in every sense. What if he didn’t like what I wrote? He might get one of his mates to break my ‘pouring arm’, or even worse, he might sit on me!
So, the coward in me prevailed, and I decided to use a well-known TV format to pay tribute to Harold; in particular, his early years.
So, Harold Mitchell AO … this is your life!
CURTAINS PART AND HAROLD WALKS OUT. WE MEET AND SHAKE HANDS. HAROLD SITS DOWN, AND I REMAIN STANDING, HOLDING THE RED ‘TIYL’ BOOK, AND COMMENCE READING FROM IT.
ME: Harold, you were born Harold Charles Mitchell on 13 May 1942 in the small Gippsland town of Trafalgar in Victoria.
The population of Trafalgar in those days consisted of 1838 people, 16,341 head of cattle, 11,836 sheep, 6247 pigs and approximately 11,000 chooks. The population stayed roughly the same, but by the time Harold was eight, he had consumed most of the livestock.
Harold’s first job was as a labourer at the Trafalgar sawmill, and Harold’s first boss was this man …
V/O: G’day, Harold. This is Jimmy Ball. You used to call me ‘Knackers’.
(JIMMY ENTERS AND WALKS TOWARDS HAROLD.)
JIMMY: Geez, Harold, you haven’t changed a bit. You look like you could still put away a side of beef.
ME: Thanks, Jimmy, if you could sit over there.
(JIMMY WALKS TO SEATING AREA BEHIND THE GUEST OF HONOUR.)
ME (RESUMING READING FROM BOOK): After Trafalgar, Harold, you and your family moved to Stawell in western Victoria.
You were just seventeen when you decided to leave Stawell for the big smoke in Melbourne, and in those days, much of the big smoke was your own. You used to smoke about four packets of Alpine a day. You weren’t a smoker for long, but you made a fair go of it while you were.
These were the days when you not only smoked but also gave the grog a bit of a nudge, too … often with your great friend, David Evans, at the Domain Hotel.
Someone you saw a lot of in those days, Harold, was Edward Butler, a barman at the Domain …
EDWARD (V/O): Hello, Harold …
EDWARD ENTERS.
ME: What was it like carousing with Harold in those days?
EDWARD: It was pretty full on. Harold and his mate David Evans (‘the Beast’) used to drink at our pub a lot, then they’d leave together, giggling stupidly. I can see ’em now, walking down Domain Road carrying a Darwin Stubby, which they would sink before dinner.
ME: Were you surprised when Harold gave up the grog?
EDWARD: The entire liquor industry was in shock! I remember there were a few pubs and restaurants in Melbourne that had to put off staff after he stopped drinking.
ME: Thank you, Edward. Go over there and join the others.
(EDWARD JOINS SEATING AREA.)
ME: By the age of twenty-four, Harold, you had been appointed the media manager at USP Needham, and less than ten years later you were running the media-buying operations of Masius Wynne Williams.
You had been trying to talk Masius into starting a media-buying service without success, so you left to start your own company.
On 1 February 1976 you opened a new agency with Denis Merchant and John Pettett.
It was during this time that you first met our next guest, Nino Borlotto. He was the man who tailored your suits.
NINO ENTERS.
ME: Welcome, Nino. Do you remember your first meeting with Harold?
NINO: Bloody oath I do! I remember the first words he ever spoke to me. Remember, Harold? I was measuring your inside leg. I was quite nervous because you were an imposing man. I had my tape measure up your inside leg when you thundered: ‘Next time get your bloody finger-nails cut.’ I went home that night and my wife cut my nails … and she is still cutting them to this day.
ME: Thank you, Nino. Please go and join the others.
NINO TAKES HIS SEAT.
ME: Harold, you love food, and the food you like most is good meat. There is no better meat than that which is served lovingly by Vlado in his famous Richmond restaurant in Melbourne. Vlado joins us now.
VLADO ENTERS.
ME: Welcome, Vlado. How long have you known Harold?
VLADO: Since I opened my restaurant, Harold has been a regular. He’s one of the family.
ME: And how would you describe him?
VLADO: He is like my very best steak. He’s aged superbly, he is without peer, and at times he’s caused some people severe indigestion …
ME: Thank you, Vlado. Please be seated.
(THINKS) How magnificent it would have been all those years ago if Sir Frank Packer had employed Vlado for the GTV Nine canteen!
ME: Harold, yours is a remarkable life. You once described your business as being like an oak tree. ‘Oak trees are something that people plant as an acorn and they take at least eighty years to become fully formed, so almost everyone who plants an acorn will never see the end.’ Well, Harold, you are indeed lucky. You are one of the few who has seen the fulfilment of your oak tree within your lifetime.
You and the Mitchell family have been exceptionally generous with your time and your funding in Australia—particularly the arts.
All that remains for me now to say is: Harold Mitchell—This is your life!
MIKE HANDS ‘THIS IS YOUR LIFE’ BOOK TO HAROLD.
In the old days, media people in agencies weren’t seen to be as important as they are now. The chiefs of the agencies were the people we knew about and took notice of. Today, that has rather flipped around. The whole world has changed, and media people like Harold are the gurus.
Harold Mitchell was there from the start, when media planning and buying broke away from the agencies. It’s become a new industry. When Harold went out on his own, he wasn’t seen as a threat to the established agencies. He worked with the small agencies who couldn’t compete with us. The television stations all did deals, and the more media we bought, the lower the price for our clients. So Harold would bulk together all the media of the smaller agencies, together with some direct clients, and he was able to compete with the Pattersons and Clemengers of this world.
To Harold, we were the enemy. He used those words regularly. Today things are different, because we separated media in 1996 as every other major agency has done.
I’ve always had respect for Harold. He was very good at what he did, and others thought so, too. We used to handle advertising for New Idea magazine, which was part of Southdown Press. We made commercials and bought the media for them. TV Week magazine, another in Southdown’s stable, made its own commercials in-house, and Harold bought the media. In the early 1980s I put a proposal to Dulcie Boling, former chief executive of Southdown Press, that we could control the media for both. And it would have saved her around $75,000. But I couldn’t entice her to take business away from Harold. She wanted to stay with him, and it was a fair comment on his stature and ability.
For many years Harold has understood media as well as or better than anyone in the country. He’s a living legend, in every sense of the word.
Harold has been part of our lives for a long time. He is bigger than life, more generous than life; he’s great fun to be with; he’s always laughing. He’s got a very sharp mind.
I didn’t really have anything much to do with the business at all, but I saw Harold at various parties connected with Channel Nine and the magazines. Kerry thoroughly enjoyed Harold’s company. Everyone did. Kerry and Harold had a very amusing time together. Lots of humour.
I became really good friends with Harold during my time as a board member of the National Gallery of Australia (NGA). Harold was spectacular as our chairman. We’d arrive at the meeting, and Harold seemed to have done the meeting before we got there. He had seen the politicians or heads of departments, and we skipped through it very quickly. Harold does not like a long meeting. He caps it at around three to four hours. I think Harold has such a great intellect; he was six steps ahead of all of us. He knew exactly what he was doing and where we were going.
Brian Kennedy was the director. Brian had a great deal of charm, but he had a few blank spots as well. And Harold managed Brian absolutely magnificently. He wouldn’t let him talk to the press. Brian didn’t really have a very happy time with the media. Harold, being in advertising, knew exactly what to say to the press.
Harold was a strong chairman. You couldn’t disagree with Harold too much. But he had thought out which way the council should go, and presented his views very forcefully. He showed great leadership, he was a born leader, and sometimes people might have found that a little hard to live with. But he got the job done. It’s probably true to say he had discussed and decided many issues with the gallery before we all got there.
I was on the board when Harold was offered $100 million for Blue Poles, the iconic Jackson Pollock painting that Gough Whitlam’s government had bought for $1.7 million in 1975. My memory of that time is a board member saying, ‘I can’t believe we are discussing this.’ I remember a great deal of discussion, heated and otherwise. Was it the right price? Could we get more? My view was that you would never get it through government to sell. And can you imagine the hoo-ha if you’d sold it? We were very lucky that Gough Whitlam pushed to buy that painting. What a bargain it seems now.
I’ve really enjoyed my role on the board. I don’t think I opened my mouth for about two years or so because it takes that long to understand what it’s all about. And then I felt a little bit more confident.
Harold is a man’s man, and I was married to a man’s man. The business fellows always got on well together. Harold was inclusive. He wanted to widen the circle. He wanted more women involved as well as people who weren’t from the business culture. He brings people along with him. In that sense he wasn’t a stereotypical male member of the business elite. He wanted to bring people along on the journey and wanted to hear everyone’s contributions. I always appreciated that quality in Harold.
I was terribly sad when he resigned from the board of the NGA. He said he’d had enough.
He’s a great philanthropist and very involved. His foundation was a huge contributor to the Musée du quai Branly in Paris. In 2006 I went to the opening of the museum with Harold and Bevelly and Stuart and Amanda.
He’s passionate about the arts. He loves getting things done. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who pushes things through as quickly as Harold does.
I loved reading his column in the Australian and the Age because of its depth of knowledge of the industry he was writing about and the candour with which he wrote. Kerry was like that. I think it’s a great thing to be able to stick to your views. Kerry and Harold were both strong and blunt men. I would imagine their business dealings would have been very interesting to observe. Kerry would be pressing for lower prices, and Harold would be pressing for higher prices. I’m sure at times it would have been quite a sight.
Harold broke the mould of how the advertising business was run. And Kerry was making the Nine Network into a vibrant, energetic market leader. In a way they were pioneers together, and I know they admired each other. I think they were very much kindred spirits.
I have sometimes wondered what drives Harold. Harold drives himself. He won’t buckle under adverse circumstances. He’ll keep going and won’t accept failure. And I think he would be a very strong negotiator. I wouldn’t like to ever cross Harold.
He has a cast-iron work ethic. Nothing ever seems to be a problem for Harold. Often I’ve rung him later in the evening, and he’s still going, always cheerful. Never heard him down. He has a wonderfully positive outlook on life; the glass is always half full with him. And he doesn’t give anybody else his problems.
Harold used to come to Wimbledon each year where he would join us in our corporate tent, then watch the tennis. It was always nice to have Harold and Bevelly there. We’d have some great dinners in London, always laughing. Alcohol didn’t play a large part in these nights. Kerry didn’t drink. Our friends, Barry Humphries and Margaret Olley, don’t drink. Some very interesting people don’t drink. They’ve all had a problem with the drink at some stage of their lives. I was never conscious of Harold or Kerry not having a drink. They were both always great fun. They both wanted you to partake of the finest they had. If you went to dinner with Harold, there was certainly no reason you wouldn’t have a glass of wine. Or lots of wine.
Harold is interested in other people’s lives, and to do that you’ve really got to be a good listener, which he is.
The Packer family has always felt a fondness for Harold. We seem to have been working together for so long. I can’t imagine him retiring, but I know his life will be very full if he ever does. In the meantime I look forward to my next delightful phone chat with him, the eternal optimist, the glass-half-full man, my friend.
I first got to know Harold Mitchell in the 1960s when he was working at the advertising agency USB Benson. The media buyer was a man called Boyd Robertson. Agency media heads had an enormous amount of power and, to some degree, in the television industry they dictated the buying terms. Perhaps I was somewhat overwhelmed because I was just a salesman in those days.
My initial impressions of Harold were that he was a pleasant man but he wasn’t going to simply sit as a 2IC in a media department. Over the next decade we both progressed our respective careers.
By the time Harold broke away in 1976 and started his own media-buying agency, I was a member of the Television Advertising Board (TAB), and there was a strict process of accreditation for agencies. If an agency wanted to advertise, it had to be accredited. It was to Harold’s great credit that he changed this model. The agencies hated it and put a lot of pressure on the stations that controlled the TAB and boycotted him. There was a schism between the revolutionaries, being Harold, and the conservatives, being the agencies, who certainly didn’t want anyone interfering in their patch. It was war. Regrettably, this occurs most times when there is any form of progress. It is always the pioneer who gets the arrows in his back. Harold attracted a great deal of opprobrium. He then started to get clients who were prepared to do business with him, and the rest is history.
Gradually the industry matured and, over a period of years, accepted it. It didn’t seem so shocking any more. Having said that, he coped very well with all of the attacks on him. He is an exceptional tap dancer. There is absolutely no question that Harold Mitchell is the person who created a new way of media buying, and he deserves all credit for it.
His tactics were clever. One of the ways he established this new order was to take sides. He would choose, say Channel Nine, to be his friend. In turn, Nine would serve his interests and, by way of reciprocity, Channel Nine would profit enormously from the business but would also look after his interests in the bigger corporate struggle. He tended to have a series of very strong relationships offset by a series of uneasy ones. He would usually favour the Nine and Seven networks—in particular Kerry Stokes and Kerry Packer—leaving Ten aside somewhat because Ten was unable to do anything for him.
It was indeed a very different era. As it evolved, we at Nine decided to take it a step further and see if we could grab an even bigger slice of the media pile. In the 1970s Ian Kennon (Network Ten) and I started a group to isolate Channel Seven.
We went to the agencies secretly and said, ‘Here’s the deal.’ The agencies that were to get this deal had been handpicked. It was all done under the cover of darkness in a couple of days. Basically the agencies would spend the bulk of their money with Nine, the balance with Ten and nothing with Seven. We gave them a good rate, but we weren’t so helpful to their competitors, so they had a natural advantage.
At the time, Ted Thomas was chief executive at Seven, and I don’t think he liked what we did very much, but that was the cut and thrust of the television industry then.
Harold expanded his business probably a lot faster than he should have. I remember meeting with him at the Hyde Park Hotel in London, and we spent some hours discussing his predicament. When I returned to Sydney I talked to Packer about Mitchell’s problems. Packer was clearly a wealthy man and had a very extensive portfolio of interests. I knew that Packer had a soft spot for Mitchell, and Kerry did a lot of things quietly for a great number of people, including me.
Harold had excellent instincts for what would work. Every year the networks pitch their schedules, and they run around and talk a lot about what they can do. At the end of the day media buyers have to take a punt on where they put their client’s money. You’ve got to be able to assess who is going to win and who is going to lose and place your bets accordingly. Harold was very, very good the way he could pick the market. He was also extremely direct. He could simply cut through it all and say, ‘This is what we are going to do’, then go ahead and do it.
My experiences with Harold have been pretty good ones. I like him a great deal. He invariably backed the things that we wanted to do when I was chief executive of Nine, like World Series Cricket. He would get behind it, which in hindsight was pretty smart.
Harold has a different personality from me. Our lifestyles are different. I tended to be something of a hell-raiser. We didn’t mix a great deal socially. He tends to concentrate on a number of other things, which in many ways makes him a great deal wiser than me. But in those days everything floated along on an excess of alcohol and delusions of grandeur.
In the television industry, you have no plant, no stock and no factory. It thrives on the creativity of the human mind, so that every day you are trying to invent new ideas, then hope they work. Having said that, by and large, most things fail. There have not been a lot of enduring television properties over the decades. But the energy created in these ‘therapy sessions’ is to some degree where a lot of the success or otherwise is derived.
Harold got his ideas another way and probably is the better for it. Now Harold is sixty-seven and I am seventy, and we certainly don’t live now like we used to. What we do have in common is that so many of us, like Harold, like me, are slowing down somewhat. There’s a point where everybody has to make room for the next generation, and when you’ve devoted so much of your life to work, one does struggle with the idea of retirement.
I remember going to see Professor Duncan Geddes in London. He is a world leader in the field of respiratory medicine. He said, ‘You have a major health problem, which is life-shortening, and you are going to need to have a transplant and you should not be working.’
I said, ‘What on earth will I do?’
He said, ‘Plenty of you guys come in and see me. You are all basically physical wrecks because of the toll that your careers have taken on you. I give the same advice to all of you. Go away for six months. Boredom is an indulgence of the stupid. An intelligent mind will always find things to occupy itself with, and if you are still bored, come back and see me and I will show you how to alleviate it.’ Then he said, ‘Do you know how many have come back to see me?’
I said, ‘No.’
He said, ‘None.’
This is a good tip for anyone thinking about retiring. It is also a good tip for Harold.
We’ve all had a lot of fun over the years. Done a lot of clever things and some not so clever. It’s been an amazing journey really and always eventful. Incidentally, never boring. I’ve enjoyed enormously my relationship with Harold over these years. I very much hope our paths continue to cross.
‘You earn the big money, so you better get the big money.’
So said the President of the Melbourne Festival Harold Mitchell as he pushed the board of the festival to approve the biggest box-office target in its history.
‘And if you don’t get it, you’ve done your job.’
And that was the end of the meeting.
Harold likes short, action-packed meetings.
The year was 1997 and I was the festival’s general manager. It was the only Melbourne Festival directed by Australia’s only true impresario, Clifford Hocking AM.
Until that board meeting, the directors of the Melbourne Festival had always believed that there was an upper limit to the number of people who would go to an arts festival in Melbourne.
Clifford and I both believed that the number of attendees was only limited by the nature of the shows in the program, and Cliff was intent on giving Melbourne a huge festival of enormous stylistic breadth—from Regurgitator to Handel, from Beckett to Long John Baldry and Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ along the way. Harold and I were thrilled by Cliff’s approach but the board was nervous.
I got the senior staff together and we did the budgets and recommended them to the board for approval. I told Harold in advance that we were convinced that we could get record box-office numbers with Cliff’s program. He seemed relaxed and unfazed.
So I was a little surprised when he turned a bit fierce at the end of the debate and told me that my career was riding on the result.
As I drove home that night I thought long and hard about the big day. Passing through Laverton, the feeling of panic eased, and I called Harold on his mobile.
‘Harold, that was a good board meeting and thanks for backing the target,’ I said. ‘And by the way, I’m fine with your ultimatum. If we don’t get the target, you won’t have to ask for my resignation.’
‘Don’t be so bloody stupid and melodramatic,’ said Harold. ‘We are all in this together.’
Pure Harold! Focus their minds and then back them to the hilt. That’s the leadership style of Harold Mitchell that has given me the most exhilarating and rewarding years of my professional life. He is the most effective person I have ever worked with or ever seen at work—a unique combination of ‘roll your own’ business acumen and unshakable personal ethics.
The first time I met him in his office, a teetotaller in an antique chair surrounded by bar mirrors, he said, ‘This place runs on pure communism—everyone is equal except me’. And the truth is that Harold Mitchell, so easily misunderstood by so many, at the end of the day knows that he is no more than a sawmiller’s son who made a lot of money and had the chance to do a lot of good by backing a lot of people along the way.
I am privileged to be one of them.