Threats and Seductions: John Menadue on Rupert Murdoch’s handling of politicians

Rupert Murdoch repeatedly claims, falsely, that he has never asked a prime minister for anything. Yet his whole business career in three countries has been founded on threatening or seducing politicians to gain privileged commercial access or opportunities. I know this because I was on the board of Telstra when Foxtel was formed in 1995 through a joint venture between News Corp (Fox) and Telstra.

I had concluded that not only was the Foxtel deal a bad deal in terms of content availability, but I also objected to the significant political pressure being applied to board directors for the deal to go through. The board was told by the managing director that ‘the Government wants us to do the deal with News Limited’.

The whole point of…