James Packer has left the building (Credit: The Age, June 9, 2007)

Kerry Packer was a legendary gambler, but his son is moving to the other side of the table, writes Matthew Ricketson.

MANY have been surprised that someone who inherited media outlets that made him Australia's richest man would walk away from them, but the further James Packer moves from under his father's shadow, the happier he seems.

This month he sold down Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd's share in PBL Media to a quarter, for $515 million, and stepped down as executive chairman, although he will remain on PBL Media's board.

He had already sold half of PBL to private equity company CVC Asia Pacific for about $4.5 billion last October, to create PBL Media. He has since been investing heavily in gaming, online and in casinos.

Packer's gaming empire now spreads to Macau in China, Canada, Britain and the US, including Las Vegas.

In the next two weeks it is widely speculated he will marry a second time, to Erica Baxter, in a $6 million celebration, perhaps aboard his yacht, extending over several days among the French Riviera's most lavish hotels. Contrast this with the sometimes difficult relationship he had with his father, Kerry Packer, which was papered over in the funeral service after Packer snr died in December 2005.

A profile published in The Weekend Australian last year laid bare the rift between the two that stemmed from their differing temperaments: James shares his mother Ros' gentle demeanour rather than his father's legendary bluntness and volcanic temper.

Where James Packer has in recent years embraced Scientology, his father famously said after a near-death experience in 1990: "I've been to the other side, and let me tell you son, there's f--king nothing there."

The two also differed in their views from the mid-1990s on PBL's direction.

James Packer has shown little desire to wear the crown of media mogul. Indeed, he has never appeared as passionate about media. When he has, it is for the new media forms created by technology, such as online classified advertising sites, and in subscription TV, whose arrival in Australia his father worked determinedly (and successfully) to delay.

Kerry Packer loved how he could, with one phone call, change what 2 million people were watching. This "played to his command-and-control view of the world", according to Daniel Petre, a former Microsoft executive who worked with James Packer on internet strategy.

"One of the things Kerry didn't like about the internet was the fact that the consumer had real choice and control," Petre was reported as saying last year.

The Nine Network was for years the jewel in the company's crown. Not any more. Its vice-like grip on ratings dominance has weakened and advertising revenue has fallen.

Analysts expect that when the networks announce their 2006-07 results, Nine's revenue will be about $200 million compared with $300 million for market leader Seven.

Immediately before James Packer decided to reduce PBL's holding in Nine, and his magazines to private equity partners, the TV network comprised about 10 per cent of the company's value.

James Packer's keen interest in opportunities that new technologies offered was undermined when he lost more than $375 million of the family's money investing in mobile telephony company One.Tel, which collapsed spectacularly.

Kerry Packer, by all accounts, shunned James and then reminded him of his failure in front of James' peers. James, a close friend of One.Tel co-founder Jodee Rich, cried after telling Rich he could no longer support the company and that Rich had to go.

Last year Rich told a Sydney court that was hearing a case brought by ASIC against him to recover millions in compensation for One.Tel creditors, that Packer once said to him: "Jodee, I just can't stand it any more. Kerry gets sick and he always seems to get better." James Packer has denied he made these comments.

If James Packer is finding he needs to forge his own path in business, he is following family tradition.

His great grandfather, Robert Clyde, loved newspapers and by all accounts was a talented, creative journalist.

His grandfather, Sir Frank Packer, was only a moderately skilled journalist, according to biographer Bridget Griffen-Foley, but he loved running newspapers, especially enjoying the power and influence they allowed him to wield.

Under Sir Frank's proprietorship, The Daily Telegraphused its considerable clout to campaign unashamedly for the Liberal Party.

A fervent anti-communist, Sir Frank supervised an extraordinary front page in 1953 when Soviet leader Joseph Stalin died. Across the top of the page lay a cartoon of a teary crocodile, accompanied by the caption: "Poor old Joe." Beneath that was a news report datelined "Heaven" purporting to interview some of the many victims of Stalin's purges.

Kerry Packer worked in his father's newspaper and magazine empire, but preferred the then relatively new medium of television. He quickly showed a flair for understanding, even anticipating, ordinary Australians' tastes.

Kerry was keenly aware of the influence afforded by his position as owner of the nation's highest-rating TV network and biggest stable of magazines. He was politically conservative, but his beliefs ran second to his commercial pragmatism.

He supported whichever government was most likely to support his business empire.

He was also, according to biographer Paul Barry, perhaps the world's biggest gambler. His sheer wealth obscured the fact that in the long run few gamblers survive, let along thrive.

James Packer, although he reportedly rarely gambles, pushed his father hard to invest in casinos in the 1990s, which Kerry reluctantly began to do. Kerry had the gambler's aversion to investing in casinos — at some level gamblers have to believe they will win even if the odds are in favour of the house.

It appears no coincidence, then, that James Packer has positioned himself on the opposite side of the gaming table, as owner of the casino.

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