News Corp’s Australian boss hits the market for a new speechwriter

Few executives in Australia enjoy the same amount of influence in the corridors and offices of Parliament House as Michael Miller, the executive chairman of News Corp Australia.

The bulk of Miller’s influence is, of course, exercised behind closed doors. But much of it is wielded in public policy debate, in the form of carefully constructed sentences read aloud from podiums, such as at the National Press Club, and printed in the pages of newspapers.

So our ears pricked up when we received word of the imminent departure of his speechwriter, John Barker, who’s set to retire in coming months. Barker, who is well-liked among his Holt Street colleagues, has become one of the most prominent ghost orators in Australian politics over the past decade. No surprise, then, that Miller has wasted no time hitting the market for his replacement.

Barker’s work for Miller, with assistance from a gaggle of corporate affairs executives at News Corp’s headquarters, has helped set the terms for some of the biggest policy fights on Australian shores in the last five years.

Chief among them was News Corp’s advocacy for the teen social media ban, and calls for broader tech regulation in Australia. But the influence of Miller’s public speaking on Australian tech policy debate could perhaps be epitomised by a 2024 address to the National Press Club.

In the address, Miller called for the Albanese government to introduce a new “Social Licence” framework for tech companies to operate in Australia, reviving the phrase popularised by the Canadian mining executive Jim Cooney back in the 1990s. Miller, with Barker’s help, went back to the Cooney well for an address on AI to the Melbourne Press Club last year, titled “The Big Steal”.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese may well have liked what he heard. Well, at least as far as the oration went. Because in July this year, the prime minister appeared to take a leaf out of the Barker-Miller playbook, and wheeled out the same phrase in July remarks on AI at the University of Sydney.

Who knows, maybe Albanese is also a Cooney fan. But from where we’re sitting, that’s the kind of influence that most government relations teams could only dream of.

Save the date

It’s been a tough few years for Star Entertainment. And next week promises yet more colour.

The casino operator’s chief executive Bruce Mathieson Jnr will front investors flanked by the company’s board at an annual general meeting scheduled for Tuesday morning.

But the main event is scheduled to take place the following day, when Federal Court Justice Cameron Moore hands down his hotly anticipated judgment on the case brought by the anti-money laundering watchdog against the company’s previous regime.

No doubt Mathieson Jnr will be looking forward to seeing the matter in the rearview mirror. Just how hard Justice Moore hits the company, though, was the key question raised on Wednesday, when the court listing alone set off a wave of low-level chatter over what further damage could be inflicted on the casino operator.

“The Star is looking forward to engaging with our shareholders at its AGM next week and providing a first quarter trading update,” a Star spokesman told CBD.

If these big-ticket events weren’t enough for the Star leadership team, there’s also the fact that the company is set to face the week without the hand-holding of crisis communications advisers.

Word is the company stopped using the blue-chip communications firm Sodali & Co late last year, before bringing the firm back in this year on a project basis to help out with its annual report. But that retainer expired last month, we’re told, leaving team Star to go it alone. We’re on tenterhooks.

Back to the future

The NSW Liberals are well and truly in campaign mode. Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane has begun appearing in political ads on TV before next year’s state election. Then, of course, there is the steady drumbeat of fundraising events, fireside chats, and candidate forums.

The latest of these campaign events to catch our attention is scheduled to go ahead next week at the Dural Club, to galvanise party support in the Hawkesbury. The event listing promises what we can only imagine will be a discussion led by Liberal MLC Susan Carter on mental health fitness and “the laws in place to protect society”.

But it was the name of another of the panellists wheeled out for the event that caught our attention: Dr Tanveer Ahmed, a name close observers of media may recognise as the columnist who was let go by The Australian amid plagiarism allegations a couple of years after Fairfax Media showed him the door for similar allegations.

When we went to the NSW Liberals to ask about the event on Wednesday, it was suggested to us Ahmed still has his professional qualifications and has worked in the field for some time, so would still be able to share some insight.

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.