John Lyons is a very good journo – it’s a pity his considerable
talents have been channelled into playing attack dog for the Packer
Pleasure Palace and that, as a consequence, he’s become an over-zealous beat
up merchant, albeit a still very talented one who produced this week’s Bulletin cover story demolition of Paul Keating.

Lyons was a product of
one of the great eras in journalism in this country – the supposedly
bad bad 1980s. The wonderful thing about the ’80s was that for all
the unbridled greed and dodgy behaviour, journos were actively
encouraged by their bosses to go after the big guys. I worked with Lyons in
the late ’80s in the press gallery of the NSW Parliament – he was
filing for The Australian, I was reporting for Channel 9.

Lyons was
a take-no-prisoners head kicker in the best possible way in that he didn’t
play favourites with anyone, including his journalistic colleagues. Everyone
was fair game, as I was to discover. On the night of Labor’s crushing defeat
at the hands of Nick Greiner, I was the target of an attempted assault by a
very tired and emotional John Singleton who had been responsible for the
ALP’s ad campaign.

John Lyons and the late Robert Haupt, then writing for The
SMH, both witnessed the incident and gave it prominent
attention in their respective journals. In the immediate aftermath of
Singo’s rampage, I turned to Lyons and remarked that it would have been so
much better had my video crew captured it on camera. Abandoning any
notion of honour among thieves, Lyons quoted me word for word,
completely undercutting any idea that I was a victim. Instead, I was
portrayed as the craven and cynical go-getter that I actually was. I was so
craven, the embarrassment lasted for about five seconds and I respected
Lyons all the more for not making any allowances for a fellow member of
the pack.

A little while back, in a daft moment of insecurity with a
second baby on the way, I wrote to Lyons applying for a gig. I got one
of those form letters saying “thanks but no thanks”, absolutely
no acknowledgement of the past.