EMMA ALBERICI, PRESENTER: Kim Williams had an unorthodox rise to the top of corporate Australia. He began his adult life as a musician, a clarinettist and composer, before moving into management at Musica Viva, the Australian Film Commission, the Sydney Opera House Trust, Fox Studios and Foxtel before taking on the job running what was then known as News Limited and is now called News Corp Australia. He spent 20 years working closely with Rupert Murdoch before his abrupt resignation. He's been writing a book ever since, which he's here tonight to tell us about.

Welcome to Lateline.

KIM WILLIAMS, FORMER CEO, NEWS CORP AUST.: Hi, Emma.

EMMA ALBERICI: The furore from News Corp about the leaking of their financial performance this past comes week comes from a desire in part to keep that information secret. News is a publicly-listed company. You were the CEO for almost two years. Why such a lack of transparency?

KIM WILLIAMS: Well I imagine companies release the information they consider to be of relevance to them and News obviously believes this information is not relevant to market consideration relative to its own releases to the markets.

EMMA ALBERICI: But of course there are many Australian shareholders. They don't separate their Australian business when they report their results. It does seem odd.

KIM WILLIAMS: Well, I'm not responsible for any of this, so I'm simply ...

EMMA ALBERICI: Well what did you think of - no, well, you were there for a long period.

KIM WILLIAMS: I am an observer of activities and take some interest in a lot of the commentary that has been made both by News and by others and a lot of the subterranean commentary that's moving about, a lot of which is less than generous.

EMMA ALBERICI: Indeed. In fact, News has blamed you for the plunge in revenues in the 2012-'13 year for which these results that have been leaked relate. Do you take any responsibility for the falls in revenue during your time there?

KIM WILLIAMS: Look, I take responsibility for all the things that I did. I certainly don't take responsibility for the worldwide decline in revenues that is attached to print journalism-based businesses, for the same reasons all around the world that digital technologies have had a profound impact on consumer behaviour, on consumer preference and on monetary value of advertising.

EMMA ALBERICI: Is that a long way of saying, "No, you don't take responsibility for the falls in revenue"?

KIM WILLIAMS: I don't take responsibility for inheriting a whole set of Herculean forces, living with those Herculean forces and seeing those Herculean forces continue after my departure. I don't think - as much as I would like to accept responsibility for these things and to have that kind of imbued personal power, I think even someone with my kind of confident set of management settings couldn't take that responsibility.

EMMA ALBERICI: Of Rupert Murdoch, you say, "In the newspaper operation, he is very much the boss. It can at times be positively feudal." And you write his attitude was altogether different in the broadcasting and film businesses, where there was genuine meritocracy. How did those different approaches translate in practical terms?

KIM WILLIAMS: Well in film and television, I think that there's a general practical recognition on the part of News Corp as it then was, but 21st Century Fox as it now is, that it's a talent game. And that if you wish to compete and you wish to have a chance of being a successful winner in that business, you must compete on the terms that the whole of the industry operates on. And that means that you're acknowledging the primacy of talent and therefore it must operate as a meritocracy and must operate according to normal, natural rules of meritocracy. Print media operates very differently. And it is in many ways an industry which is frozen in many ways in terms of different forms of hierarchy and management where it hasn't really adapted as much to modern technologies and general modern management systems.

EMMA ALBERICI: How would News Corp's Australian business look different if you were still at the helm?

KIM WILLIAMS: Ohhh, that's a very hypothetical question. (Laughs)

EMMA ALBERICI: You must've pondered that ...

KIM WILLIAMS: Well I - what should I say? It'd be spectacularly profitable. It'd be performing brilliantly ...

EMMA ALBERICI: No, that's not what I'm asking you.

KIM WILLIAMS: Um, look, certainly - seriously, I would've been a consistent and strong advocate for further, um, deep investment in digital technologies and the development of very sophisticated digital products. Whilst trying to extract every ounce of living profit available from print, I was never in any way an antagonist towards print, simply a realist about where consumers were with print.

EMMA ALBERICI: Is Rupert Murdoch averse to that idea? To that further investment?

KIM WILLIAMS: Look, I'm not here to talk about Rupert Murdoch or to offer some kind of Delphic realisations about ...

EMMA ALBERICI: But the book does talk about this sort of - you know, you call it feudal, positively feudal, which does, which does come ...

KIM WILLIAMS: Look, one can only ...

EMMA ALBERICI: With that description, it does give the impression that someone is a bit outdated in their views.

KIM WILLIAMS: Look, one can only describe the organisational framework and general approach on the part of News as being pretty feudal. I think it's a simple descriptive statement of the obvious for anyone who has worked there.

EMMA ALBERICI: Well, you mention in the book that your position at News Corp was no longer tenable after your decision to launch then Labor Treasurer Chris Bowen's book Hearts and Minds, where you also gave a speech at that launch. After a phone call about it with Rupert Murdoch, you talk about the fact that you knew that was the end for you at News Corp. Why?

KIM WILLIAMS: Well, clearly it had been what might be characterised as being a very bad personal professional decision. It's not one I resile from, incidentally. I thought that Chris showed considerable character in writing that book and offered what all politics needs, whether it's on the left or the right - it needs a profusion of ideas that get debated and tested and is constantly seeking to renovate itself through a commitment to public policy on the one hand and the people on the other. And I thought that it offered many ideas that were worthy of serious review.

EMMA ALBERICI: I reacquainted myself with your speech and I couldn't see anything in it that was obviously likely to cause offence.

KIM WILLIAMS: No, I wouldn't have thought so. I didn't think I made a partisan political speech at all. I think I made a very - a very strong speech about the importance of the renovation of ideas and processes in political parties and also spoke about how important it is that politicians are people who we actually respect and support in the process of trying to renew that notion of public commitment.

EMMA ALBERICI: And we're going to talk a little bit about politics because that's another area you traverse in the book, but we'll stick with the media for a moment. And the Sydney Morning Herald reported on Saturday that The Australian newspaper hasn't made a profit in six years. In your view, what's the future for both newspapers?

KIM WILLIAMS: What, for The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald? Well I don't - I have a pretty frosty crystal ball on all of these things, like most people, but I would think that all print journalism-based companies need to radically reinvent themselves and to find new ways of extracting a relationship with the public and actually having direct payment methods with consumers, particularly for digital products and digital products have to be appropriately priced. And frankly, I think the public are pretty practical about most of those things.

EMMA ALBERICI: But there are so many alternatives when it comes to information.

KIM WILLIAMS: Well there are. I mean, it wasn't I who decided to give the product away digitally for free for 20 years, which would have to have been one of the most stupid ideas in human history, but seems to have been one that was embraced very widely throughout the media community because they never took digital technology seriously. It takes a long time to change a human behaviour from saying free, suddenly pay. You can't just go (knocks three times on table), "You're going to pay us." It doesn't work.

EMMA ALBERICI: Now, I do want to explore some other issues that you raise in the book, like the fact that you've decided to give away 10 to 25 per cent of your income. Who gets that?

KIM WILLIAMS: Well that's one of the rules of engagement of my life and that's why I called the book Rules of Engagement. That goes to a wide variety of things. It goes to a number of charities, it goes to a number of arts companies, it goes very directly to artists. I sponsor an annual documentary fellowship, I commission music from composers and recently I've started commissioning plays.

EMMA ALBERICI: And a lot of people might not be aware of the fact that you actually started life as a composer and as a musician. You don't fit the image of an Australian media executive. I mean, you didn't formerly own casinos or win an America's Cup.

KIM WILLIAMS: (Laughs) Well, I think I fit the role of a thoroughly modern executive. Certainly I've met many, many executives in Europe and in America who play musical instruments. And earlier today I was reminding someone in another interview that Jim Wolfensohn is a very fine cellist and for his 60th birthday performed one of the Bach cello suites on the stage of Carnegie Hall, which of course he'd also personally driven the fundraising program to renew. So, I'm not alone in terms of a compatriot spirit within Australia.

EMMA ALBERICI: And on politics, you've cast a very critical eye over the Australian landscape and you take particular exception to the quality of our politicians. What's wrong with them?

KIM WILLIAMS: Well, I mean, obviously all generalisations are wrong, including that one. But the general tenor of politics in Australia, I think, has diminished and there are a number of politicians in our Parliament who clearly have a limited understanding of the nature of our constitution, the nature of our court system, the way the international system operates. Arguably, they don't understand the way in which the administration of government works. They seem to think that you can just sort of wake up one morning and give a media conference and then suddenly everything should change by supper. It's less than worthy of the Australian people.

EMMA ALBERICI: What's the prescription? How do you fix it?

KIM WILLIAMS: Well I personally am very strongly of the view that we should have an American-style primary system for preselection where the voters get to choose their candidates. I think there's a lot to - it merits consideration very seriously and I think people who like politics generally think that's a pretty good system and it gets a lot of factions out of the road. I think we need to have some form of certification that demonstrates that anyone who's standing for office at least has a working knowledge of the principal elements of that which makes our polity operate. And I think we need to have some rules of engagement in relation to the way in which the Parliament itself operates in terms of having cost-benefit studies on major capital expenditure, that we should have sunset provisions in legislation which guarantee that legislation will be reviewed or terminated at a certain time, so that there are actually formal processes of objective review built into the system and that we actually provide within the system a number of checks and balances from aberrant occurrences from people who at times, frankly, evidence madness more than social commitment.

EMMA ALBERICI: One of the things we learn in your book is that you are a strong advocate for the Gonski education reforms. You're a product of the public education system in Australia. You write, "I fail to see how the needs-based public funding which the report posed rationally after extensive review can't be supported by all politicians unless they have other motives." What other motives do you suspect they have?

KIM WILLIAMS: Well I think a lot of arguments on education in Australia degenerate into a polarity of public: bad, private: good, or private: bad, public: good rather than saying what we need to have, given that we have a three-pronged system of education of public, of Catholic parish and of private - and we have the highest levels of private education in the world - is that we need to have needs-based funding from the Commonwealth. The states provide the core public education system in terms of public schools and then the Commonwealth has an overlay of general funding, which in my view, the Gonski report argued very eloquently for saying that that must be needs-based. Because we all have equity in the future of our society. And given that the majority of students go to public schools, it is in our collective interests to address areas of evident disadvantage. And what the Gonski report drew attention to were the cohorts of disadvantage which are alarmingly drawn in certain parts of the geographies of Australia so that there's a concentration of disadvantage creating a kind of disadvantage whirlpool which you can't escape from. Now, I think the report argued quite objectively about those things and I think politicians ignore those matters at the nation's peril. And frankly, I don't think that that's an issue for ideology. I think that's an issue for considered review.

EMMA ALBERICI: In fact as well as education, you also provide observations on the NBN, higher education reforms and a scathing attack on the competition watchdog, the ACCC, that seems to be peppered throughout. One gets the impression you might be considering a career in politics.

KIM WILLIAMS: Oh, no, I think I'm not the right sort of candidate for political life. I think I'm a little too blunt, a little bit too direct and I don't suffer fools graciously.

EMMA ALBERICI: Do you belong to a political party?

KIM WILLIAMS: No, I don't.

EMMA ALBERICI: Which way do you lean? It's not evident, actually, from reading your book.

KIM WILLIAMS: I actually lean, as I've got older, to take very strong positions on policies and I will - I'm an economic dry of a very, very, very definite persuasion. And in social policy, I'm probably alarmingly wet. So, if that can be accommodated within one soul, I do.

EMMA ALBERICI: Unfortunately, we have to leave it there. I thank you very much. We didn't get time to discuss the whole chapter on wine that you write, but I thank you very much for taking the time to be here.

KIM WILLIAMS: Thanks very much, Emma.