Over the years I've dealt with all the major media owners. They were all interesting, but Kerry Packer was one apart.
He loved a disaster, and some might argue he made most of his dramas himself. But history shows he was a giant on the Australian landscape and he certainly left his mark.
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Earlier in my career I got into a spot of bother and Kerry gave me a bit of a hand, and I'll never forget it. I sat with him for over an hour while he made me tell him over and over again about my mistake.
I had signed four personal guarantees for a company I only had a very small interest in. When things started to go awry, everyone ran away and I was left holding the bag. Kerry seemed to delight in my naivete but I sure learnt never to sign a personal guarantee again.
"Does that include me?" asks Louise.
"It does. What is it about the never never you don't understand?" says Charlie.
Kerry had friends all over the world and I used to notice how most of them tended to agree with each other.
Dog Days looming?
We are all a bit like that, so with my head filled with the Trumping of America I decided to look again at the views of one of my heroes, the Nobel prize recipient Joseph Stiglitz.
In his great 2012 book, The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future, he forecast that America was headed for trouble because of increasing inequality. Everything he said seems to be coming true with the rising up of people feeling the system isn't fair.
Now he says that his crystal ball has become a little cloudy with Trump's victory.
"You call that a victory?" gasps Louise.
Well, we are yet to see who will be the real winners and losers, but the rewriting of the rules of politics looks more likely to make the American dream even more of a dream rather than a real possibility for the President-elect's new constituency.
The people are speaking with their spending. They seem to have grown tired of the negativity.
But that's America.
In Australia, one of our great economic thinkers, Ross Garnaut, made it clear in his 2013 book, Dog Days, that we are about to become an unlucky country run by second-rate people.
But I am an optimist. And with new good reason.
Growth spurt
On Tuesday I got a briefing from Michele Levine, the longtime chief executive officer of Roy Morgan Research Company, a powerhouse of market and social research in Australia. The formidable Michele has turned my thinking around – for the better.
While the doomsayers obsess about figures that seem to show that we are not doing well, Michele has the latest information about what Australians really think and more importantly, what they are doing.
The Morgan research shows the overall picture of the Australian economy is healthy. She points to most indicators significantly improved on the same time last year. Inflation is down, GDP growth is up, the ASX 200 and Australian dollar are little changed and petrol prices are down. The ABS reports retail sales up 3.1 per cent in the year to September 2016.
As for the fear that we will be overwhelmed by a Trump-inspired anti-globalisation wave, Michele says a declining number of Australians agree with the statement "Globalisation brings more problems than it solves". The figure was at 54 per cent, down from a high of more than 61 per cent in 2006 and also falling from 58 per cent in 2012.
And people are shopping again!
More retailers believe "the next 12 months is a good time to invest"; 66 per cent are of that view, well up from 58 per cent a year ago.
Growth is also occurring in the leisure and entertainment sectors. Spending for the year has reached $77 billion, up from $69 billion last year.
Spending up
So the people are speaking with their spending. They seem to have grown tired of the negativity and put their hands in their pockets despite the predictions of a whole range of economic experts.
But there is one telling fact at the end of this latest and massive Morgan poll. There is no widespread confidence that the government is taking the country in the right direction. Like many polls, it puts the Labor Party ahead by quite a margin.
More people now think that the government is taking us in the wrong direction. Charlie thinks the government isn't listening to ordinary people, in the way this Morgan poll reports. They worry about too many irrelevant issues.
Meanwhile, Christmas looks like being a big one for everyone, with shopping centres booming and planned extended trading hours.
The only shop that doesn't seem to be back in business is the one in Canberra. You work it out …
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