Former News Corporation Australia chief executive Kim Williams speaks with Kerry O'Brien at a QUT business leaders' function. Credit:Kim Stephens "I see nothing in the last election that was, ah, there may have been a greater degree of energy in that campaign but whatever commercial rewards are to be harvested from that will be from the response of the consumers and their products or not." However, when asked by forum moderator and ABC news veteran Kerry O'Brien his personal opinion of News Corp's election coverage – which included a now-infamous Daily Telegraph front page editorial on the first day of the campaign under the headline, Kick this Mob Out – Mr Williams was tight-lipped. "As a personal matter, I'll probably keep that in the personal inbox," he replied. "I think you have answered the question," O'Brien said.

"I think if you had felt comfortable with it entirely, you would have answered the question." The exchange came at the end of an address that marked Mr Williams' first public speaking engagement since his shock departure from News Corp on August 9. In a measured address, the man who worked for Mr Murdoch for nearly 20 years gave little away about life in the News Corp empire but was full of praise for his former boss. "He's a pretty dynamic and impressive individual and much less the caricature that people make him out to be," Mr Williams said. "He's very complex and at his best he's tremendously insightful, he's a very remarkable human being."

Mr Williams used the address to attack the country's politicians, as well as a tendency towards regulation he said was causing a growing divide between Australia's commercial and government sectors. "I personally think politics is a very noble vocation," he said. "But I think the general quality of direction in modern political life is disturbing." Mr Williams also lamented the Australian "glass jaw" or a cultural lack of a willingness to give and receive constructive criticism. "In management and politics and academia and in many other environments is in this country I think we have much to do in really embracing the necessity of having a healthy, robust constructive critical culture," he said.

However, Mr Williams' speech was not without its lighter side. Under questioning from O'Brien, he revealed he does not tweet, despite working until recently for one of the world's most famous Twitter users, rose to management through his training as a classical musician and almost went to jail as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. And above all human attributes, persistence is his most valued. "What's plan B? Plan A. People talk about plan B but there's very rarely a plan B," he said. Loading

"You don't have time to work on plan B because you are putting all your time into plan A. "Plan B is rubbish. People who talk about plan B have never run anything."