It\u2019s a hot and hazy morning in Sydney\u2019s La Perouse. The surrounding water of Botany Bay is a vast cloak of blue wrapping the headland where journalist Paul Barry meets me for a hike through Kamay Botany Bay national park.<\/p>\n
He has chosen the Henry Head walking track as our stomping ground. \u201cIt\u2019s a very restful place,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can often see whales breaching.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barry plays golf at the New South Wales Golf Club, found within the national park. He was once the captain of the golf team at Oxford University, but then he \u201cdidn\u2019t play for about 30 years\u201d. He says: \u201cI\u2019ve had too many kids. It\u2019s a very unsociable thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The former Media Watch host, now 74, has six children, aged 21 to 48. Barry moved to Australia from the UK 40 years ago as \u201ca bit of an adventure\u201d, but he says he was also frustrated by his lengthy commute from a village in the Cotswolds to London, where he worked at the BBC on Newsnight and Panorama.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen when I got here I thought: you can do both!\u201d he says. \u201cYou can work and live near the beach, have a family \u2013 and see your family. The weather\u2019s good, the people are nice and the place is gorgeous. So why go back?\u201d<\/p>\n
We circle La Perouse Museum, passing Bare Island, padding down the sandy stairs to Congwong beach. The sand squeaks under our shoes. \u201cWow, it\u2019s beautiful!\u201d he says, taking in the almost-empty beach and crystal-clear waves.<\/p>\n
\u2018Having lots of kids keeps you young,\u2019 says Barry, who cycles frequently, goes to pilates and plays golf. Photograph: Liz Ham\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Barry joined the ABC\u2019s Four Corners team as an investigative reporter as soon as he arrived in Sydney. A shining moment in his early career was when disgraced businessman Alan Bond \u2013 who was claiming to have brain damage during a criminal trial at the time \u2013 stamped on one of his business cards outside a Sydney court.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was as fit as a flea and absolutely mentally fine, so this whole thing was a complete pantomime,\u201d says Barry. \u201cWe bailed him up as he came up to court and I presented him with a business card and said: \u2018Do you remember me?\u2019 He stamped on it, and I said: \u2018Ah! So you remember me! So your brain\u2019s not that bad.\u2019 It was kind of a gotcha.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barry and his producer were rapped on the knuckles by the court shortly afterwards. \u201cIt was an outrageous thing to interfere with the legal process,\u201d he says. \u201c[But] the legal process was pathetic! Here was a guy who was lying through his teeth, and they could do nothing about it \u2013 or did do nothing about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018You don\u2019t want to write about someone who\u2019s grey and boring, whatever they\u2019ve done,\u2019 says Barry. Photograph: Liz Ham\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Barry published his first book, The Rise and Fall of Alan Bond, in 1991. He\u2019s since written about Kerry Packer, James Packer, the Murdochs, Shane Warne and Bond again. His latest book is The Big Steal, about the empty promises of steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta<\/a>.<\/p>\n The British businessman, whose company GFG Alliance owns several steel, aluminium and iron businesses around the world, bought the Whyalla steelworks in 2017 promising to invest US$1bn to save the South Australian town\u2019s leading employer.<\/p>\n double quotation markIf someone is irredeemably awful you don\u2019t want to spend 18 months locked in a room with themPaul Barry<\/p>\n But after mounting debts to suppliers, the collapse of GFG Alliance\u2019s main lender, Greensill, and a blast furnace in dire need of maintenance, the SA government forced the steelworks into administration in 2025, appointing KordaMentha as the administrator. Last month it was announced 500 permanent jobs would be lost<\/a> at the steelworks.<\/p>\n \u201cGupta was supposedly a saviour; he had this great narrative of him saving the planet, and saving western manufacturing and saving all these communities,\u201d says Barry, effortlessly leaping across a stream in his leather boots so we can continue along the trail. \u201cThere are probably 4,000 jobs that depend on it out of 8,000 jobs in the town.\u201d<\/p>\n Several countries are now investigating Gupta\u2019s business dealings, including Asic in Australia. Simply put, \u201cit\u2019s a scandal\u201d, says Barry.<\/p>\n So, of all the wealthy and powerful men in the world, which ones are worthy of years of research in order to write a book about them?<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s a particular type of person \u2013 kind of borderline sociopathic, who have more nerve, less fear, and they therefore achieve a huge amount, but probably do it at the expense of ethics or morals or treading on other people,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Barry says journalists these days are \u2018working too hard with too little resources and too little time to really dig and really find out what\u2019s going on\u2019. Photograph: Liz Ham\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re quite remarkable, most of the people I write about, in that they have this charisma, magnetism, and that helps them achieve what they achieve. You don\u2019t want to write about someone who\u2019s grey and boring, whatever they\u2019ve done.\u201d<\/p>\n We hit a bitumen road, pausing to let vehicles pass. \u201cYou always want to write about someone who\u2019s got good features and bad features. If someone is irredeemably awful you don\u2019t want to spend 18 months locked in a room with them. And you do really get to this sort of intimate relationship with your subject where you begin to know everything about them. You begin to understand why they do what they do \u2013 or you hope you do anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n Barry didn\u2019t speak with Gupta for The Big Steal, despite his best efforts, but he did interview several people who worked for him. Some found Gupta \u201cincredibly charming and persuasive\u201d, others called him a narcissist.<\/p>\n Why were people \u2013 including the media \u2013 so willing to believe in the \u201csteel saviour\u201d? \u201cI think they were desperate, and I think he had a vision they wanted to believe in \u2013 why wouldn\u2019t you believe in saving the planet, saving these communities and saving the steel industry? It was a story that everyone wanted to believe and they just didn\u2019t look hard enough.\u201d<\/p>\n Barry looks out at Botany Bay from the Henry Head walking track in Sydney. Photograph: Liz Ham\/The Guardian<\/p>\n What shocked Barry most about Gupta\u2019s failings was \u201cthe scale of it\u201d \u2013 repeated promises, repeated failures. \u201cI\u2019ve sat down and recorded the audio book, and even then I\u2019m shaking my head thinking \u2018I can\u2019t believe these guys got away with this stuff.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Barry doesn\u2019t have another book in the works \u2013 yet. He would like to write about Gina Rinehart, but \u201cit is a suicide mission\u201d, he says. She\u2019s so litigious. \u201c[But] people should not be off limits like that; people in public life like that should be able to be written about and analysed.\u201d<\/p>\n