Literary Award: Best Non-fiction Book Winner

Neil Chenoweth, Packer’s Lunch, Allen & Unwin

In his 2006 book, Neil Chenoweth details the network wars played out between a group of Sydney’s business elite and the rise and fall of the restaurants that marked the changing borders of their turf war.

Chenoweth was part of The Australian Financial Review team that exposed the secret Swiss bank accounts of Rene Rivkin, Graham Richardson and Trevor Kennedy in 2003. That investigation went on to win a Gold Walkley. In his book, he then set out to draw a wider picture of Australian power and to expose the workings of a group of players who operated under a different set of rules to ordinary folk.

Packer’s Lunch charts the story of the shifting balance of power through the 1990s, which could turn on something as delicate as a restaurant seating plan. It traces the history of Rivkin, Kennedy and Richardson; Rodney Adler’s key role with Rivkin; the decline of AMP and the rise of Macquarie Bank.

Published within a tiny window of opportunity, Packer’s Lunch went to the printers three days before Kerry Packer’s death. Rivkin’s former driver, Gordon Wood, was charged with murder three months after it was published, limiting scope for further coverage for legal reasons.

Far from a light lunch, Chenoweth’s non-fiction examination is an allafternoon feast stocked with meaty intrigue and lubricated with free-flowing anecdotes. Neil Chenoweth is a senior writer with The Australian Financial Review. His first book, Virtual Murdoch (Vintage, 2002), documented Rupert Murdoch’s efforts to rise to the top of the global media mogul pack.

Judges’ comments: In Packer’s Lunch, Neil Chenoweth tracks a secretive group of Sydney insiders with the same relentlessness that his targets pursue power, influence and get-rich-quick deals. He reveals what they didn’t want known about their private moments in London hotel rooms, Zurich banks and on yachts on Sydney Harbour. And amid their fixations on money is the death of a beautiful young woman. The book explains a lot about how Sydney operates – even what restaurant to be seen in and where to sit.