They tried to outwit Crikey by holding their AGMs at the same time but we got to both the Fairfax and PBL meetings on Friday and gave both boards a good going over.

James Packer and Fairfax chairman Brian Powers both denied colluding to have their meetings clash, but it didn’t matter as we had a good go at both outings.

This was because I knew crazy Jack Tilburn would be at the Fairfax meeting wasting everybody’s time and that James Packer likes to race through the agenda.

So after a three minute chairman’s address it was straight into the re-election of directors at PBL.

The Packers don’t like corporate democracy so James slammed through all four director appointments on the one resolution. “Teriffic” he said when shareholders unanimously approved this democratic short cut.

James then attempted to put it to a vote without any debate until I got up and insisted on the right to speak.

The question went to the heart of what is wrong in governance terms with PBL. The board is full of Packer stooges or Packer-appointed management and there is no-one in there batting for the non-Packer interests who own 65 per cent of company.

Last year I asked several questions about the Packer-private versus Packer-public issue which has still not been properly countenanced in any media outlet in Australia.

Issues like the Packer’s private companies buying into One.tel at 10c a share and then PBL making its loss-making investment at prices closer to the $1 mark.

With the Packers now also setting up CPH Investments and ecorp as separate listed vehicles, it is hard to be confident that PBL will get access to the quality deal flow. That’s why PBL needs some genuine independent directors batting for the non-Packer interests so that when a deal goes elsewhere, they can thump the board table about it.

James tried to claim they have four Packer directors, four executives and four independents but this is pure bullshit.

One of Packer’s closest mates Robert Whyte is classified as independent as is Rowena Dabstringer (sic), the long term principal of Amskam (sic) where James went to school. The institutions really should be pushing for some more truly independent directors.

When we got to general questions, I threw in three about Crown casino. James said they’d lost $5-$10 million thanks to the World Economic Forum and were looking to insurers rather than the state government for compensation. That’s a relief. He also said the $7 million payout to Lloyd Williams was determined by an independent arbitrator and that they were working hard on plans to build the third tower.

My last contribution before scurrying off to Fairfax covered the latest outbreak of tension with the Murdochs but James actually tried to claim relations were fine. Anyone watching Channel Nine or reading The Australian knows this is crap given the bombs they’ve been throwing at each other recently. Remember Michael Pascoe’s big attack on Lachlan Murdoch a couple of weeks back which was smartly followed up by the Australian’s huge piece listing all of Packer’s dud property plays over the years.

We then had Bob Gottliebsen’s strange front page splash in the Weekend Australian two Saturdays ago alleging that Bob Mansfield’s Packer connections were causing concerns in the Telstra boardroom and in Canberra, particularly as Telstra has just hired long-term Packer mate Peter Barron as a political consultant. Everyone knows that Mansfield is close to the Packers. He was the bloke pushing the outrageous deal for Telstra to buy PBL for a lazy $18 a share earlier this year.

The only aspect of the Packer meeting that got reported properly was the Big Man’s attack on me after the questions about the troubles at Hoyts and the Murdoch stoush.

I’d already walked five metres back to my seat when Kerry Packer posed the question: “Do you basically set out to be offensive, or is it just natural?”

After I failed to take the bait, he demanded: “I’m waiting for an answer”. None was forthcoming, does he think I’m stupid or something. Poor old Daily Telegraph police reporter Charles Miranda but a bollocking two years back when he let Kerry engage him.

James answered parts of the question and claimed that the Packers were the ultimate good guys for not charging PBL for their services even though ConsPress Holdings incurred “millions of dollars of costs a year running our business”.

So, James, when you take Jodie and a bunch of mates to Noosa in the Channel Nine chopper, who pays? And what about when you take 20 mates in the private jet to Crown for Guillame Brahimi’s stag weekend at Crown in July last year.

Full marks for not drawing a salary like Frank Lowy and Rupert Murdoch do but I’d be most interested in knowing which of your expenses PBL picks up?

Pointing out the Fairfax mogul stooges

We got to the Fairfax AGM at about 11.45am and thanks to crazy Jack had not missed much.

I threw in a couple of opening offerings about the losses in F2 and all the editorial dramas at the Sydney Morning Herald that saw editor Paul McGeogh shunted off to New York last week.

Chairman Brian Powers put in a good overall performance at the meeting and simply said that F2 was performing well and it was good that McGeogh had stayed within the group.

The real action started with the director elections and the first one up was that long term merchant banking friend of Rupert Murdoch’s in Mark Burrows.

I gave an introductory spiel complaining that Fairfax did not need three merchant bankers on the board given it was a boring operational company. It also needed to be independent from the forces of Murdoch and Packer given their power and propensity to abuse their editorial power for their own commercial ends.

I then repeated what Rupert Murdoch told me after last year’s News Corp AGM when he said that “all the Fairfax directors are Packer stooges”.

The only problem with this was that Burrows is an old Murdoch associate.

When asked to describe his current relationship with Rupert, Burrows said they were still friends but then emphasised he had not worked for him since securing News Corp as a shareholder in the Seven network back in 1993.

We then had long time Packer adviser David Gonski up for re-election and I repeated the arguments whilst throwing in the additional concern about the three cross-directorships with Frank Lowy’s Westfield Holdings.

Gonski conceded that he is still advising Packer on deals but his defence was that he’s worked for every media mogul over the past 20 years.

Brian Powers defended the Westfield connection by claiming that the Fairfax papers had led the coverage against the shopping centre giant over the bogus newsletters that were delivered to residents around a rival developer’s proposed shopping centre at the old Arnotts biscuit factory in Sydney.

The SMH did lead the coverage but then they dropped off what should have been one of the biggest scandals of this year. I also pointed out that Fairfax had not covered the issue of Westfield’s outrageous censorship of my platform which should have gone out to their shareholders in the notice of meeting for next week’s AGM.

Then we had the re-election of Powers himself and the Californian claimed his relationship with Packer was cordial but not at all close and that the loan Packer guaranteed for Powers was now irrelevent because Powers’ equity in Fairfax was worth four or five times the guarantee.

About 15 shareholders came up to me after the meeting and said the questions were good and they learnt a lot. Even company secretary Gail Hambly said so and she was the woman who wrote to me rejecting my nomination for the Fairfax board because Paula had only bought her shares on the day we wrote to them.

The avuncular Dean Wills popped over for his usual chat and defended all the connections saying that Sydney is a small town and everyone knows each other. He said that he went to the LA Olympics in 1984 as a guest of Rupert and Anna Murdoch. Yes Dean, but there is a big difference between knowing someone socially and getting paid millions of dollars to advice them on media deals which is exactly what Gonski and Burrows have done.

If the Fairfax commentators were at all independent from management, they would have discussed this issue at some point over the years.

I’ve heard several Fairfax journalists comment that Packer and Murdoch have each got their man strategically placed inside the Fairfax boardroom for when the newspaper group inevitably comes into play.

If the staff had any spine they would agitate for change because everyone knows it is plain wrong. Even if the boys don’t breach confidences it is a terrible perception.

Brian Powers has said at the previous two AGMs that Fairfax was looking for a second Melbourne-based director and ideally someone with newspaper experience. If they have not done this by next year’s AGM then Crikey will happily stand and this time we’ll get the paperwork right.