Bridget Griffen-Foley
ARC Postdoctoral Fellow in History, University of Sydney

Abstract

This paper considers the nature of workplace relations at one of Australia’s most powerful media firms, Australian Consolidated Press. It assesses the paternalistic and unitarian management style of its founder, Sir Frank Packer (1906-1974), the emergence of a more formal system of welfarism, and working conditions for employees at the Australian Women’s Weekly and the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs.

Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) is one of Australia’s biggest and most well-known public companies. While it has attracted little scholarly attention, the company is both the source and the weapon of the controversial Packer family’s wealth and influence. When people think about life at ACP under the management of its founder, Sir Frank Packer, I suspect that two images come to mind. One has Packer as the tyrannical and irascible employer, firing people indiscriminately; ordering employees to make up a newspaper poster and front page showing a crocodile crying on Stalin’s death; and, famously, sacking an employee for allegedly playing with the button of an ACP lift. The alternate image has Packer as the benevolent proprietor bestowing largesse to employees down on their luck.

In this paper I would like to draw upon these perceptions in order to raise broader questions about workplace relations at this particular media firm. The first section addresses the working conditions of employees, the way in which employees entertained themselves, and so on. The second section focuses on the executives who were expected to deal with workers and unions, how negotiations between management and employees actually proceeded, and how Packer was perceived by his employees. In considering these questions, the paper explores a tradition of paternalism and welfarism at ACP and the deployment of high and low trust forms of management by Frank Packer and his executives.

In 1918 Joynton Smith, the flamboyant former lord mayor of Sydney, had invited the journalists Claude McKay and RC Packer to help him launch Smith’s Weekly. Frank Packer’s father, like Lord Beaverbrook at the London Daily Express, was largely responsible for introducing a policy of paying substantial salaries to outstanding contributors.¹ On its appearance in Sydney 1919, Smith’s Weekly had become a focus for bohemian types, attracting notable journalists and poets such as Kenneth Slessor, Adam McKay, Bartlett Adamson and Colin Wills with long-term, highly paid contracts.²

Joynton Smith, asserting that he and his partners had agreed to make Smith’s Weekly “the Mecca of the Australian newspaper man”, claimed that twenty of the company’s writers and artists earned over a thousand pounds a year.³ In 1923 the triumvirate had decided to launch a morning newspaper in Sydney. The Journalist, the official organ of the Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA), had anticipated that the salaries that were rumoured to be on offer to the literary staff of the new paper would attract a galaxy of journalistic talent and “hammer rises out of the short-sighted and less progressive newspaper proprietors”.⁴

In 1933 the 26-year-old Frank Packer and his partner in Sydney Newspapers Ltd, EG Theodore, launched the Australian Women’s Weekly. So successful was the new magazine that in 1936 the pair formed Consolidated Press Ltd ⁵ and took over the ailing morning newspaper, the Telegraph. Like his father before him, Frank Packer was committed to recruiting outstanding journalists and artists to complement aggressive advertising campaigns and innovative promotional stunts. “Star” names such as Jessie Tait, Louise Mack and Lennie Lower were enticed to join the magazine, while the newspaper took on fresh young talent. Many of the contributors who joined the Telegraph in 1936 were from the Star, the crisp and vigorous tabloid that had enlivened the Melbourne newspaper market but had proved unable to survive the aggressive competition posed by Sir Keith Murdoch’s powerful Melbourne Herald.⁶ Don Whitington, who was offered a cadetship with the Telegraph, described his colleagues as “probably the best team of journalists ever assembled on one newspaper in Australia’s history”.⁷ Many of these individuals—such as Sydney Deamer, CS McNulty, Brian Penton, Cyril Pearl, “King” Watson, Richard Hughes, Godfrey Blunden and Massey Stanley—were destined to obtain high editorial office or international journalistic acclaim. Dr Emery Barcs, a Hungarian refugee who began a long association with ACP as a commentator on international affairs in 1939, asserted that the group “talked fast, were witty, and to me it seemed they were ready at any moment to sacrifice the most serious conversation for the sake of a bon mot”.⁸

These talented contributors, however, worked in an environment that was far from salubrious. When ACP was formed in early 1936, it acquired a building at 168-174 Castlereagh Street from Associated Newspapers Ltd, publisher of the Sydney Sun. The building was ideally situated for the production of a metropolitan newspaper: it was within walking distance of Town Hall and St James railway stations, and the Elizabeth Street frontage overlooked Hyde Park.⁹ The printing press occupied the basement and first floor; the second floor housed the composing room; the third floor was devoted to journalists on the Daily Telegraph and, from 1939, the Sunday Telegraph, as well as the library and Frank Packer’s office suite; accountants, advertisers and executives worked on the fourth floor; and the Weekly’s journalists and Theodore’s office resided on the top floor.¹⁰

Although the construction of the building in 1926 had symbolised the exuberance and optimism of Australian newspapers during this decade,¹¹ concerns about the standard of accommodation it offered to ACP workers soon emerged. Each floor was dominated by plywood partitions, creating the effect of a rabbit-warren. Some partitions were removed when ACP acquired the building, while others were retained to create the impression of mini-offices for specialist contributors such as the police roundsman, the court roundsman and the finance writer. It was common to return from holidays to find that one’s “office” had disappeared due to the strategic rearrangement of a partition. The building was to remain severely overcrowded for decades.¹²

In 1937 the AJA began to receive complaints from its members about inadequate accommodation for reporters and the foul state of the air as a result of the fumes given off by the Weekly’s rotogravure printing press.¹³ Syd Deamer’s son, Adrian, who began his cadetship at the Telegraph in 1946, recalls that the environment was “absolute hell”.¹⁴

Conditions for journalists on the Weekly, who spilled out into the adjacent Pulsford and Adams Chambers, were even more unpleasant. The bathrooms did not have hot water and buckets were strewn throughout the offices when it rained. The tin roof meant that staff broiled in summer and nearly froze in winter, and power restrictions during the war worsened the conditions for staff.¹⁵ In 1960 the assistant editor of Weekend, a weekly magazine published by an affiliate of ACP, complained that the windows had not been cleaned since the magazine had moved into its premises in Elizabeth Street and described the state of the lavatory as “disgraceful”.¹⁶

Sydney Newspapers and then ACP were prepared to pioneer and invest heavily in sophisticated printing technology. In 1935, for instance, Packer spent £130 000 on a lavish new colour rotogravure press—the first of its type in the world— to produce the Weekly.¹⁷ As we have seen, ACP was also willing to recruit, at considerable cost, talented contributors when it saw, or forecast, commercial potential; the war correspondents assembled by the company during World War II were regarded as amongst the best in the world.¹⁸ However, the money allocated for mundane but essential tools of work was never sufficient. Packer had commenced his newspaper career in the 1920s and had begun to assume executive positions during the Great Depression, when a number of newspaper and magazine titles had collapsed. The flurry of memoranda from “FP” concerning petty cash for models’ brassieres, camera bulbs and seating requirements bordered on high farce.¹⁹

It was the shortage of desks and typewriters that was to remain the most contentious industrial issue for decades. In 1965 a group of Telegraph journalists complained to the AJA that on most nights only three typewriters were available for the entire reporting staff; typewriters in need of repair lay idle for weeks; reporters had to buy their own pens and, in some cases, their own typewriters; and the number of chairs assigned to reporters was grossly inadequate. In 1967 the AJA, dissatisfied with the company’s response, decided to take the matter to the Arbitration Commission, after which the situation did improve to some extent.²⁰

If working conditions were poor, eating facilities were no better. Rat infestations were common and health authorities sometimes closed the staff “canteen”—a snack bar located on the third floor. Dandruff from the greying hair of the woman who presided over the canteen, Miss Daniels, was reputed to fall into the vanilla slices. Necessity sometimes demanded that women, in particular, eat in the canteen, but they preferred to frequent nearby cafes.²¹ Some of their more bohemian male colleagues also enjoyed afternoon sessions at coffee shops, and most made good use of the three adjacent hotels, the Castlereagh, the King’s Head and the Windsor.²²

The staff of the Weekly, who worked mainly by day, entered via Castlereagh Street, while the journalists employed on the Telegraphs, who worked afternoons and nights, used the Elizabeth Street entrance. Nevertheless, a sort of communal spirit among employees did emerge. On Friday nights, for example, some staff members employed on the magazine and the newspapers would have dinner together at a cheap Greek restaurant.²³ A staff ball was held each spring, usually at the Trocadero and sometimes at the Grace Auditorium. An irreverent publication named Pack o’ Lies, which provided employees with an opportunity to “Sling Off” at Packer and his executives, was brought out to commemorate the annual event, which by 1951 was attracting some 1200 revelers.²⁴

Christopher Wright and Greg Patmore conclude that, in the years before World War II, the simple control of the entrepreneur predominated in many smaller Australian firms. Employers knew their staff individually and personally directed, evaluated and disciplined them.²⁵ Phillip Minns, too, in his research on workplace relations at John Fairfax & Sons, observes that the nineteenth century was the era of “simple control”. At small, family-controlled firms, the personal power and authority of the capitalist was almost absolute; he “saw everything, knew everything, and decided everything”.²⁶

I would suggest that this style of management was largely characteristic of the system at ACP, which was not formed until the 1930s. Frank Packer’s management technique was personal, highly arbitrary and unsystematic right up to his death in 1974.²⁷

ACP and its precursor, Sydney Newspapers, were essentially “family companies” from their very inception. RC Packer had played an integral role in the emergence of Sydney Newspapers in 1932, and he trained or employed many of the individuals who later worked for his son. These included GW Warnecke, the first editor of the Weekly and editor-in- chief of ACP; NQ Bradshaw, the first company secretary; Colonel RJA Travers, the manager and then general manager; and Alice Jackson, who succeeded Warnecke as editor of the women’s magazine.²⁸

RC Packer was respected by journalists who genuinely admired his journalistic flair and innovations, and the way in which he had risen from humble beginnings on the Tasmanian News at the turn of the century.²⁹ Willing to recognise and generously reward literary and artistic talent, he was also self-consciously paternalistic. On one occasion in the 1920s, after Warnecke and his wife had held a rowdy party, Packer stopped him in the corridor and said: “I hear that the gang lifted your roof last night”. Warnecke explained that he had hosted the party in aid of the Journalists’ Benevolent Fund, of which he was a trustee. Packer offered a donation, remarking: “The best kind of benevolence is the spirit that builds the paper we all depend on. Keep it up, George”.³⁰

Just as the Packers valued loyalty, they despised instances of what they regarded as betrayal. Frank Packer was unable to abide the suspicion that someone might be getting the better of him. His suspicious nature was undoubtedly hardened by an unpleasant incident that occurred in the early years of his company. In 1937 some printers had been so concerned about the impact of the new rotogravure plant on their health and on staffing levels that they appear to have sabotaged the plant: chemicals were added to the ink to give the paper a loathsome smell, grit was injected to wear out the cylinders, and fires were lit in the ventilation ducts. While Packer and one of his trusted executives tracked down the saboteurs, they were forced to issue embarrassing apologies to newsagents and readers. The episode hardened Packer’s expectations of his employees, and after 1937 he demanded more conspicuous loyalty from those around him than ever before.³¹ He adopted a “low trust” or “direct control” approach, relying upon dictatorial supervision, demanding employee obedience and punishing transgressors.³²

As the Kerry Packer biographer Paul Barry notes, the family has “a personal style like feudal kings”, suddenly making “an impulsive gesture of generosity and compassion to an old loyal employee who’s fallen sick or on hard times”.³³ Examples of Frank Packer’s paternalism are legendary. He bought an evening suit for a journalist to cover social functions when he learned that his wife was ill; sent a consumptive employee to a sanitarium in the Blue Mountains to convalesce; paid university expenses for young members of staff who were struggling to make ends meet; presided over lavish farewell parties for long-serving employees; and retained old and loyal employees to do nominal jobs.

Packer’s style was, and remained, arbitrary and unpredictable. But while he tried to maintain a face-to-face relationship with his individual employees, the expanding size of his firm and the activities of some of his editors and executives resulted in ACP gradually implementing a more formal system of welfarism. As Erik Eklund notes, the intricacies of the relationship between concepts such as paternalism and industrial welfarism remain ambiguous in the existing literature.³⁴  Here I am accepting Patmore’s conclusion that the origins of welfarism lie in the paternalistic practices of employers during the nineteenth century. It was perhaps inevitable that the paternalistic practices of Packer’s firm would evolve into a more sophisticated form of welfarism. ACP never adopted a consultative, consensual approach to decision making,³⁵ but it did seek to engender a company spirit, deepen employee loyalty and secure a more stable workforce by extending and improving facilities and services for employees.

ACP implemented programs that extended its influence over workers’ lives beyond the confines of Castlereagh Street.³⁶ The firm introduced superannuation and retirement funds in the 1940s, implemented a ground-breaking system of training for cadets and copy-boys and copy-girls, looked after the financial affairs of wayward but highly-valued contributors such as Lennie Lower, offered low-interest housing loans, and sponsored social and sporting activities for employees.³⁷ In 1946, for example, while the directors of ACP held a party in the Hotel Australia’s ballroom to mark the tenth anniversary of the revamped Telegraph, they made available a supply of beer to all departments so that employees could celebrate at the completion of the day’s work.³⁸ There were many sporting occasions, both social and competitive: in the 1930s the Telegraph fielded an eleven in the Daily Newspaper Cricket Competition, which was revived in the late 1940s; during the war Telegraph juniors arranged football matches against other Sydney newspapers; in 1944 day staff played night staff in a challenge cricket match at Queen’s Park; during the 1940s ACP departments began playing against each other in monthly golf tournaments, with teams competing for the Frank Packer Shield, which was donated by Packer, and the George Stanbridge Trophy, named after the foreman of the composing room; and, by 1952, women employees had created their own softball club.³⁹

The flip side of this benevolence was the Packers’ unitarist vision of the ACP group. They believed that they had a unilateral right to manage their employees free from outside interference. As early as 1923, RC Packer had hotly opposed the visits of the New South Wales district officers of the AJA to inspect the timebooks at Smith’s Newspapers Ltd.⁴⁰ Two years later, George Edward Clay, who was prosecuting the company for a breach of the award, recalled a conversation with Packer.

Packer:                     “If [Voltaire] Molesworth [an editorial executive] asked you to do a little extra work and you refused, you must not be surprised if he comes down on you like a thousand of bricks [sic]. I think he had every justification for his actions. When Molesworth asked you to do a little more because he was short-handed you quoted the award to him.”

Clay:                       “Are you short-handed?”

 Packer:                    “Yes, we are, and I have no doubt that is why Molesworth asked you to do a little more. You are a highly paid man, but when you are asked to help, you shelter behind the award”.⁴¹

In the first few years of the Weekly and the new Telegraph, there were various clashes between ACP and the industry’s unions: the company attempted to exclude rates for publishers from the first agreement covering the Weekly; it was not prepared to countenance a reduction in working hours; it was reluctant to supply graded lists to the AJA; it was tardy in paying overtime; and it failed to supply a timebook for journalists employed in the magazine’s Melbourne office.⁴² But it was in the years between 1939 and 1949 that relations with the union movement really deteriorated: ACP almost precipitated a split in the Printing Industry Employees’ Union of Australia (PIEUA) during a dispute over the inclusion of a syndicated comic supplement in the Sunday Telegraph; it played an inflammatory role in the bitter 1944 newspaper strike, after which allegations of victimisation emerged; it ran a sustained campaign against the AJA’s Code of Ethics, culminating in unsuccessful attempts by the editor of the Telegraph, Brian Penton, and a prominent columnist, David McNicoll, to have the association de-registered.⁴³

These events are, of course, worthy of more probing analysis, and must be seen in the broader context of industrial relations in the newspaper industry. As Wright notes, employer associations grew in number prior to World War II, and the publishing industry was no exception. The Australian Newspapers Conference (ANC) was formed in the late 1920s to address issues such as cabled news services, newsprint supplies, advertising policies and rates, censorship, the supply of news to the Australian Broadcasting Commission, and so on. Although the ANC fractured more than once over questions of newsprint allocations at times of acute shortages in the 1940s, its constituents generally appreciated the value of coming together for negotiations with the AJA and the PIEUA.⁴⁴

ACP’s negotiations with the industry’s unions over particular industrial issues and awards usually, but not invariably, involved Packer. In the early years of his company Packer sometimes asked union delegations to postpone meetings until EG Theodore or George Warnecke became available. Theodore, of course, was a former Labor premier of Queensland and federal treasurer, while Warnecke had extensive links with the union movement, particularly the Australian Workers’ Union.⁴⁵ But despite their strong labour credentials, the pair had little real impact on working conditions or industrial negotiations at ACP. Warnecke fell out with Packer and left the firm in 1939 and Theodore became increasingly preoccupied with running lucrative gold mines in Fiji, where his own dealings with native labour came under question.

Colonel RJA Travers, who became general manager of ACP in 1940, played a prominent role in industrial negotiations. Travers had studied Military Science at the University of Sydney before World War I; served with distinction with the AIF in Gallipoli, France and Belgium; helped to organise the visits of the Prince of Wales, General Birdwood and the British Squadron to New South Wales; and held various managerial positions with newspapers run by RC Packer in the 1920s and early 1930s.⁴⁶ It has been observed that many employers appointed former wartime military officers as industrial relations manager on the assumption that they had valuable experience in “handling men”.⁴⁷ David McNicoll recalls that “Galloping Jack” was well liked and filled an invaluable niche in the company:

Travers was a cheerful soul, but he could set [O]lympic figures in the boring game if he started on some of his pet subjects. He wore a returned soldier’s badge of the old design, which had been polished daily since 1918 until it was wafer thin

The Colonel had no hobbies, no sports, no interest in diversions. He did not read books, go to plays or the cinema. The office and the family were his life.⁴⁸

Although Travers was a competent industrial negotiator, the unions and the printers’ chapel increasingly preferred to do business with Packer. During protracted negotiations for a new printing award in 1953, the chapel declared that Mr Packer “appears to be the only person who can give any direct answers on behalf of Consolidated Press Ltd”.⁴⁹ Packer may have been blunt and often intransigent, but employees felt that they knew where they stood with him and his authority, unlike that of some of his executives, was never in doubt. Of course, in a company as large as ACP, it was not possible for Packer to oversee all its activities. What kept editorial staff and other employees in check, though, was the fear of a reprimand in the form of a memorandum from the volatile managing director. In 1968, for example, “FP” fumed that the redesigned cover of the Bulletin looked “like a mass of after-birth” and decreed that in future no covers were to be sent to press without his approval.⁵⁰ As one senior employee astutely observed, ACP was a public company but Packer was “the proprietor” and he had “the knack of seeming to run the company as if it were a corner store”. ⁵¹

Clearly, then, both low and high trust forms of labour management have co-existed throughout the history of the ACP group. Arbitrary paternalism and more organised forms of welfarism existed alongside authoritarian and coercive approaches to discussions about industrial issues, negotiations for industrial awards and attitudes to active participants in strikes.⁵² There is an obvious temptation to demonise ACP and the leonine Packer, known simply as “The Boss”. However, I would like to conclude this paper with a brief discussion of an episode indicating that the company could sometimes be more forward-looking than other Australian publishing firms or, indeed, the industry’s unions.

In 1941 Telegus was established to publish the work of copy-boys and copy-girls who were hoping to obtain cadetships. The newspaper both reflected and mimicked the crusading spirit and short, terse style of the Telegraphs.⁵³ As a sign of the benevolent managerialism which pervaded the company,⁵⁴ prizes were awarded for articles on topics such as “What are the main defects of modern newspapers, and what remedies do you suggest?” All journalists were expected to nurture potential talent—roundsmen conducted tours of their rounds and war correspondents were enticed to deliver lectures while on leave—and copy-boys, copy-girls and cadets attended weekly “junior advancement classes”. In about 1946 Brian Penton presented a synthesis of his views on the newspaper industry; A Guide for Cadets on Joining the Staff of Consolidated Press spelt out the social significance of journalism and ascribed an exalted role to the journalist.⁵⁵

Although the AJA had attempted to turn its attention to the education of journalists since about 1917, its interest in the question had been disrupted by war, depression and difficulties entailed in establishing university courses in journalism.⁵⁶  In 1945 the federal conference of the AJA again determined that the association should have responsibility for approving training syllabi, but no attempt was made to enforce this resolution for two years.⁵⁷ After Packer agreed to give the New South Wales district of the AJA a copy of the syllabus at ACP, complaints about the scheme began to emerge from cadets who were concerned that failure in the quarterly examinations would delay promotion at ACP by a year.⁵⁸ In 1948 the district secretary tabled a report on the photographers’ examination, which was divided into sections on photographic theory and general knowledge. He agreed with a feeling among cadets that knowledge of the Allied leaders in Berlin or of Penton’s books was of “no practical help in carrying out the work of a Press photographer”. While paying lip service to the view that some general knowledge was essential for journalists, the AJA official concluded that “the names of Henry the Eight’s [sic] wives are not of much use in helping the photographer to get a good picture of, say, Tilly Devine or [Norman] Von Nida”.⁵⁹ The issue remained unresolved for more than a year, with Penton insisting on the importance of journalists having a sound general knowledge and Packer refusing to give the AJA details of the syllabus.⁶⁰

This episode is significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, as debates continue about education for journalists and their claims to belong to a “profession”,⁶¹ ACP’s insistence that journalists should “operate on an intelligent level” seems far- sighted; its stance was certainly more progressive than that of the association which was designed to protect the professional status of its members. Secondly, the episode provides further evidence of the company’s reluctance to have its policies dictated by external agencies. And lastly, the uniqueness of the junior training system instituted at ACP meant that working for the company could be a positive, indeed memorable, experience. Adrian Deamer, who went on to edit the Australian, believed that the system was the best way to instill rigour and accuracy in a journalist. Harry Gordon, who became editor-in-chief of the Herald & Weekly Times, recalls that his time at ACP in the 1940s was like “sitting in a football team of champions”. He felt that he was in “the most marvellous seeding-place for journalism training”: “There is no doubt that I had my grounding in journalism during those years…and I can’t imagine a better one being available anywhere, at any time”.⁶²

Endnotes

¹ Australian Women’s Weekly, 21 April 1934, p. 14.
² Peter Kirkpatrick, The Sea Coast of Bohemia. Literary Life in Sydney’s Roaring Twenties, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1992, pp. 114-16.
³ James Joynton Smith, My Life Story, Cornstalk, Sydney, 1927, pp. 272-3.
⁴ Journalist, 15 June 1923, p. 91.
⁵ In 1956 Consolidated Press Ltd was renamed Australian Consolidated Press. For the sake of simplicity, I have used the term “ACP” throughout this paper.
⁶ Bridget Griffen-Foley, The House of Packer: The Making of a Media Empire, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, 1999, pp. 27, 50-2.
⁷ Don Whitington, Strive to be Fair: An Unfinished Autobiography, Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1977, p. 54.
⁸ Emery Barcs, Backyard of Mars: Memoirs of the ‘Reffo’ Period in Australia, Wildcat Press, Sydney, 1980, p. 47.
⁹ Australian Stock Exchange, Australian Consolidated Press, I-A132 CP, Fiche 1, Prospectus of Consolidated Press Ltd, 10 January 1936, p. 7.
¹⁰ Interview with J. A. Morley, 15 November 1994, track A.
¹¹ Clem Lloyd, Profession: Journalist. A History of the Australian Journalists’ Association, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1985, p. 139.
¹² Interviews with Joyce Bowden, 2 December 1994, track A; Adrian Deamer, 5 December 1994, track A; J. A. Morley, 15 November 1994, track B. See also Donald Horne, Confessions of a New Boy, Viking, Ringwood, 1985, p. 264.
¹³ Noel Butlin Archives Centre (NBAC): N59/21, AJA NSW District Committee Minutes, p. 58, 8 September 1937; p. 115, 30 November 1937; p.134, 4 January 1938.
¹⁴ Interview with Adrian Deamer, 5 December 1994, track A.
¹⁵ Interview with Joyce Bowden, 2 December 1994, track A.
¹⁶ Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales (ML/SLNSW): ML MSS 3525, Donald Horne Papers; MLK 2148; ACP-Mem 2; memorandum from R. A. Ratcliffe to Keith Martin, n.d. (?April-June 1960).
¹⁷ Weekly, 26 September 1936, p. 4; Newspaper News, 1 October 1936, p. 17.
¹⁸ Interview with Elizabeth Riddell, 17 January 1995, track A.
¹⁹ See, for example, ML: ML MSS 3525, Donald Horne Papers; MLK 2148; ACP-Mem 1-5.
²⁰ NBAC: N59/165, Australian Consolidated Press Ltd Accommodation and Facilities.
²¹ Penelope Nelson, Penny Dreadful, Random House Australia, Milsons Point, 1995, p. 56. Also interviews with Joyce Bowden, 2 December 1994, track B; J. A. Morley, 15 November 1994, track B.
²² Barcs, Backyard of Mars, pp. 47, 90; Horne, Confessions of a New Boy, pp. 265-7, 277 and Portrait of an Optimist, Penguin, Ringwood, 1988, p. 291.
²³ Interview with Elizabeth Riddell, 17 January 1995, track A.
 ²⁴ Telegus, 12 October 1948, p. 2; October 1952, p. 1.
²⁵ Christopher Wright, The Management of Labour: A History of Australian Employers, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1995, pp. 10, 18, 35; Greg Patmore, Australian Labour History, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1991, p. 135.
²⁶ Philip Minns, “Technology, Work and Control: Industrial Relations and the Labour Process at Fairfax Newspapers, 1974-1985”, Master of Economics (Hons) thesis, Department of Industrial Relations, University of Sydney, 1988, pp. 14-15.
²⁷ See Patmore, Australian Labour History, p. 140.
²⁸ Weekly, 21 April 1934, p. 14; Griffen-Foley, The House of Packer, pp. 26-7, 42-3, 50.
²⁹ See Bridget Griffen-Foley, Sir Frank Packer: The Young Master, HarperCollins, Pymble, 2000, chapters 1-5.
³⁰ Warnecke’s Memoirs (original in possession of Mme Meg Sordello, Paris; copy in my possession).
³¹ Griffen-Foley, The House of Packer, p. 70.
³² Wright, The Management of Labour, p. 5.
³³ Quoted in Janet Hawley, “The second son also rises”, Sydney Morning Herald Good Weekend magazine, 31 July 1993, p. 12.
³⁴ Erik Eklund, “ ‘Intelligently directed welfare work?’: Labour management strategies in local context: Port Pirie, 1915-29”, Labour History, no. 76, May 1999, p. 126.
³⁵ See Wright, The Management of Labour, pp. 5-6, 215-16.
³⁶ Patmore, Australian Labour History, p. 134.
³⁷ Griffen-Foley, The House of Packer, pp. 72-3, 181; William Hornadge, Lennie Lower: He Made a Nation Laugh, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1993, passim.
³⁸ Telegus, 1946 (copy supplied by Associate Professor Patrick Buckridge).
³⁹ Telegus, 30 March 1944, p. 4; 2 June 1944, p. 4; 12 October 1948, p. 4; 14 May 1952, p. 4; 14 May 1952, p. 4; August 1953, p. 4.
⁴⁰ NBAC: N59/8, AJA NSW District Committee Minutes, 2 August 1923, Secretary’s Report. See also N59/18, AJA NSW District Committee Minutes, p. 100, 20 March 1935.
⁴¹ Journalist, 15 July 1925, p. 106. See also Lloyd, Profession: Journalist, pp. 146-7.
⁴² Griffen-Foley, The House of Packer, pp. 28-9, 69-71.
⁴³ See Griffen-Foley, The House of Packer, chapters 5-8.
⁴⁴ See R. B. Walker, Yesterday’s News: A History of the Newspaper Press in New South Wales from 1920 to 1945, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1980, pp. 117, 119, 121; Gavin Souter, Company of Heralds, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1981, pp. 229, 627n.
⁴⁵ Bridget Griffen-Foley, “A biographical profile of George Warnecke”, Australian Studies in Journalism, no. 3, 1994, pp. 74-5, 77-9.
⁴⁶ Griffen-Foley, The House of Packer, p. 50.
⁴⁷ Wright, The Management of Labour, p. 103.
⁴⁸ David McNicoll, Luck’s a Fortune, Wildcat Press, Sydney, 1979, p. 284.
⁴⁹ Printer, July 1953, p. 58.
⁵⁰ ML/SLNSW: ML MSS 3525, Donald Horne Papers; MLK 2152; ACP-B3; memorandum from Packer to Horne, 11 March 1968.
⁵¹ Horne, Money Made Us, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1986, p. 56.
⁵² Wright, The Management of Labour, pp. 5, 215-16.
⁵³ Bridget Griffen-Foley, “Operating on ‘an intelligent level’: Cadet training at Consolidated Press in the 1940s”, in Print Journalism, Politics and Popular Culture, eds Ann Curthoys and Julianne Schultz, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1999, pp. 145-6.
⁵⁴ Patrick Buckridge, The Scandalous Penton: A Biography of Brian Penton, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1994, p. 289.
⁵⁵ Griffen-Foley, “Operating on ‘an intelligent level’: Cadet training at Consolidated Press in the 1940s”, in Print Journalism, Politics and Popular Culture, eds Ann Curthoys and Julianne Schultz, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1999, pp. 145-8.
⁵⁶ Lloyd, Profession: Journalist, pp. 163-9.
⁵⁷ NBAC: N59/30, AJA NSW District Committee Minutes, 4 September 1947, p. 1, 1 April 1948, p. 3, 15 April 1948, p. 2, 7 May 1948, p. 3.
⁵⁸ NBAC: N59/31, AJA NSW District Committee Minutes, 15 July 1948, pp. 5-6, 22 July 1948, p. 2, 4 August 1949, p. 4, 11 August 1949, p. 2.
⁵⁹ NBAC: N59/31, AJA NSW District Committee Minutes, Photographers’ Examinations at Consolidated Press Ltd (Report by District Secretary), November 1948.
⁶⁰ NBAC: N59//31, AJA Cadet Sub-Committee Minutes, 12 January 1949.
⁶¹ For example, Chris Lawe Davies & Chris Smyth, “Education for professional journalists: A career path model”, Australian Journalism Review (AJR), vol. 12, January-December 1990, pp. 134-44; John Henningham, “Australian journalists’ attitudes to education”, AJR, vol. 15, no. 2, July- December 1993, pp. 77-90.
⁶² Interview with Harry Gordon, 26 May 1995.