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16th July 2014

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The Australian turns 50: Rupert Murdoch

PRIME Minister, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming tonight, and special thanks to Noel Pearson for his inspirational words. Today, 50 years after we launched The Australian, I can say with confidence that my father, who dreamt of creating a national paper, would approve of what we have built and how the paper has pursued principle and progress in our country.

On that very first front page in July 1964, I wrote: “This paper is tied to no party, to no state and has no chains of any kind.

CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF THE AUSTRALIAN

“Its guide is faith in Australia and the country’s future. It will be our duty to inform Australians everywhere of what is really happening in their country, of what is really happening in the rest of the world and how this affects our prosperity, our prospects and our public image.”

That statement surely remains as true today as it was then. But our mission has become even more crucial in recent years as the global economy has grown in scope and complexity, and the information age has transformed lives.

We are flooded with information — and misinformation — but are we better informed? We live in a data-driven world, but data can also drive to distraction. We live in an age of ever-greater opportunity, but it is not opportunity without responsibility.

When we started The Australian, the news in print was provincial, parochial even. There was still a colonial cringe and much doffing of the cap to Mother England. Our national identity was under-developed and oversensitive.

The Australian sought to offer a new, national perspective for Australia. We stood for a confident, more global perspective. We sought to define both our country and its role in the world. We respected the institutional inheritance, the rule of law and the democratic tradition; but we also understood and championed for a dynamic, independent future for our country.

At The Australian, both then and now, we have had a deep and abiding faith in our national qualities: our “have a go” entrepreneurial attitude; the sense of fairness; the merit of mateship; and the merit of merit, not an aristocracy, but a meritocracy.

At heart, we have a fundamental belief in free markets, free people and free speech.

We promote ideas that will make our country more prosperous and secure in our future.

Too often I have seen people in this business get caught up in the past. They long for a smaller Australia and a simpler way of life.

They lament how the world around them has changed rather than embrace the opportunity to be an agent of change.

This is not the case at The Australian or News Corp.

Here we celebrate the possibilities provided to us by the global ­information age. We cheer for the fact that more people than ever are reading and consuming news and ­information. And we know that, in this new environment, quality matters more than ever.

So, while tonight is a night to look back and reflect on what we have ­accomplished, I hope you don’t mind that I would prefer to talk to you about where Australia is going and why I am optimistic about our future.

Australia, with its entrepreneurial spirit and egalitarian way of life, has a comparative advantage in a world where not all are free.

We should be a beacon, but that means holding ourselves to high standards and not simply finding fault with others.

News Corp Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch / Picture: Rainer Hosch


We must be open to immigrants, to their desire to improve themselves and to the resulting improvement in our country.

I look at stalled immigration ­reform in the US, stalled by the ­intransigence of both Left and Right, and I see wasted opportunity for the country. It is in the collective self-interest to welcome immigrants, those who cherish the values of the country, and who are sometimes willing to risk all in the quest for a better life.

There are various threats to that better life, but government itself can be a threat. Thankfully, Prime Minister Abbott and his team are working to trim, not dramatically, the reach and the expense of government.

As President Ronald Reagan once said: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

Something forgotten today in too many places, especially Europe.

We are in favour of providing generous support for those truly in need, but, all too often, the term “public sector” has become a misnomer. And, we are all in favour of social mobility, and yet intractable institutions and special interests are often a barrier to individual achievement.

Education is the perfect example of this. We know that high quality education is the essential ingredient in the elevation of the underprivileged. So too are a loving family and a sense of purpose.

Yet we spend a disproportionate amount of time debating what is best for teachers’ unions and the system instead of what is best for students.

All of this is to the detriment, not just of our children’s future, but to the detriment of our nation’s future, as we lose our competitive edge against those nations that have prioritised education, in particular in math and science.

We bristle at discussions about personal responsibility, yet we should be celebrating those ambitious and disciplined individuals who have made a success of their lives.

We all need role models. I was fortunate to have two in my parents, who always sought to lead a purposeful life.

In fact, in his last will and testament, my father wrote that he ­wanted me to have “the great opportunity of spending a useful altruistic and full life in newspaper and broadcasting activities”.

Those are words that have stayed with me throughout my career, and were there in the background as I started The Australian.

Much of our region has changed in those 50 years and I am proud of the role The Australian is playing in highlighting and defining the ­importance of the economic and political transformation of Australia and our Asian neighbours.

We now have four new leaders overseeing more than three billion people across four countries, China, India, Japan and Indonesia, that are increasingly important for Australia as they are on our doorstep. President Xi, Prime Minister Modi, Prime Minister Abe and, it seems, President Widodo, have an opportunity to open and to develop their great nations, while Australia has an ­unprecedented opportunity to prosper from its fortunate geography. Just think, today India accounts for 2 per cent of the world’s middle class spending. In 20 years that will be more than 20 per cent.

Our prosperity will not come from simply exporting chunks of our terrain to those nations and beyond. It will only come if we take the time to understand these countries, to speak their languages, to welcome their students and to build on the cultural and commercial links that have evolved over the past couple of decades.

One challenge for us all will be to avoid a narrow nationalism, even as we cultivate pride in place.

The more secure we are in our identity the more able we are to make the most of our contact with others, that is true as a person and as a nation. We are certainly more conscious of our past and of the history of indigenous Australians. There needs to be an ongoing debate about Aboriginal aspiration, not a constrained, politically correct conversation. That is why objective, thoroughly researched reporting is so essential in an era in which intellectual or ideological fashion too often triumphs over facts.

And that is why it was so inspiring to hear Noel Pearson tonight.

We are proud to have contributed, along with many other Australian companies, to the Australian indigenous Education Foundation, which is on target in building a $120 million fund that will educate 7000 students over the next two decades.

To talk of future decades in the context of a newspaper will seem odd to those of little faith who ­believe that print is doomed and that mastheads are moribund.

That is absolutely not the case with our newspapers in Australia or The Australian newspaper. These are powerful canvases, able to engage, to entertain, to educate, to provoke, to occasionally irritate, and to ­enlighten. Not only at The Australian, but around the country, we have devoted editors, determined reporters and committed business teams who are producing compelling newspapers, but who also understand mastheads are platforms.

They comprehend that content has a value, regardless of how you deliver it, and that you should charge for that content.

We had many difficulties in those early days, with flights and fog and finances. I remember several nights, racing around Canberra airport at 3am in my pyjamas, begging the ­pilots to ignore the fog and get the papers to Sydney and Melbourne.

I lost a few of those battles, much to my annoyance. And I still hold a grudge against air traffic control.

But those challenges were never going to thwart us.

There is passion on every page of a great newspaper. That passion comes from an inspiring editor, which we have at The Australian in Chris Mitchell, and from a tremendous team, editorial and commercial, who come to work each day convinced that tomorrow’s paper will be even better than that published today.

That restless, relentless energy, and a boundless curiosity make a newspaper great. An ability to listen, to hear the sounds emanating from an informed society and to translate those sounds into compelling stories, make a newspaper great. The willingness to question, to challenge powerful people and powerful myths, and to provoke important national debates, make a newspaper great.

AN EXTRACT FROM RUPERT MURDOCH’S SPEECH AT LAST NIGHT’S 50TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATIONS FOR THE AUSTRALIAN NEWSPAPER

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(News.com.au)