It’s a bit rich for the attack dogs of News Ltd to bang on about Fred Hilmer’s $4.5 million golden goodbye – in this page one story in The Australian, and this one in The Daily Telegraph.

After
all, why didn’t the News Ltd hacks compare the package with the sort of
money paid to departing executives from other media companies, like
Lachlan Murdoch, who recently quit the family company and will this
week receive a termination payment of around $US7 million and other
benefits that won’t fall far short of $A10 million.

Hilmer
will have collected almost $20 million in gross payments and equity
profits from Fairfax by the time he clears his desk in November, but
this is nothing when compared with the estimated $120 million-plus that
Rupert Murdoch has pocketed from News Corp since 1998.

There’s
also been no talk in the News Ltd papers about how Fairfax’s New
Zealand newspapers have performed – compared with when they were owned
by News Ltd for a few years. Under Hilmer, returns from New Zealand
have outstripped the rest of Fairfax and are far more profitable inside
Fairfax than they were when News was in charge.

Hilmer yesterday
referred to discovering more gold under every rock they overturned in
New Zealand, a rather unsubtle dig at the competence of the News Corp
management team across the ditch, led by none other than the man now
running The Australian and The Daily Telegraph, Peter Wylie.

Whilst Hilmer’s $4.5 million retirement package is a legitimate story, we doubt The Australian’s
ousted media reporter Jane Schulze would have beaten it up into a front
page story. News Ltd company man John Lehmann is already showing the
line he’ll be taking as The Australian’s new media reporter, whilst Schulze ponders her rewards after several years of good performance in a tough gig.