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The billionaire Visy chairman has collected some of Australia’s leading political figures as advisers and is now a regular at Mar-a-Lago. What will he do with his latest, most powerful connection? By Jason Koutsoukis.
Anthony Pratt’s box seat ride to White House influence
In 2019, then United States president Donald Trump accepted an invitation from Anthony Pratt to cut the ribbon on his new paper and packaging plant in Wapakoneta, Ohio.
In a speech at the event, which then Australian prime minister Scott Morrison also attended, Trump called the Visy chairman a friend and lavished praise on him.
“We’re here to celebrate a great opening and a great gentleman,” Trump said. “Anthony is one of the most successful men in the world – perhaps Australia’s most successful man.”
Trump’s attendance meant that all guests had to arrive at the event several hours in advance, says one Australian official who was present. “We had a lot of time and opportunity to talk to Anthony,” he says.
“What I took away from that conversation is that Anthony is a man who knows a hell of a lot about boxes.”
His $24 billion packaging fortune undeniably gives Pratt easy access to power, but he has long appeared less assertive with it than fellow billionaires Gina Rinehart and Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, both mining magnates from Western Australia.
One serving Liberal MP who has met Pratt on several occasions said that while Pratt commanded respect, he was not someone who sought political influence in the same way as his wealthy peers.
“He’s someone who likes to be close to political power, but he’s not at all ideological,” the Liberal MP said. “If anything, he’s slightly socially awkward. He doesn’t have the easy charm of his father.”
“I’ve never known Anthony Pratt or the Pratt family to have asked for any special privileges or to cut corners or anything like that,” Victorian Liberal powerbroker Michael Kroger tells The Saturday Paper. “They will work with whoever’s in power, I think that’s their basic philosophy when it comes to politics.”
Indeed, when The Australian Financial Review assembled 16 panellists earlier this year to decide who should be on its annual lists of Australia’s most powerful people, Pratt was absent from their discussions.
That omission seems particularly striking now. Announcing a permanent move to the US last month, where he has close ties to the president-elect and his inner circle through his membership of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf club in Florida, Pratt is perfectly positioned for Australian officials seeking to influence the new administration.
“We have been fortunate to have the Pratts’ support for our AmCham Alliance Awards over the past several years,” says American Chamber of Commerce in Australia chief executive April Palmerlee.
“They are the largest Australian employer in America, and it is clear Anthony Pratt feels strongly about the importance of the alliance. Each year, the Pratt Foundation spends more money on supporting alliance-related organisations and causes than any other, as far as I am aware,” says Palmerlee. Nowhere was the value of the alliance seen more clearly than in the reports this week that Pratt had donated $15 million to Trump’s campaign.
Pratt’s deep roots in the US extend back to the early 1990s when, under the guidance of his father, Richard Pratt, he first moved there to lead Pratt Industries’ overseas expansion.
Growing the company’s annual revenues from about US$100 million to US$3 billion in 2016, Pratt rose to prominence in the US following the 2016 presidential election, when he attended Trump’s swearing-in ceremony. Pratt’s wife, Claudine Revere, a US citizen, had donated US$1 million to Trump’s inauguration committee. In 2017, Pratt paid a reported US$200,000 to join Mar-a-Lago.
After pledging in May 2017 to invest US$2 billion to create manufacturing jobs in the US at an event attended by Trump, Pratt regularly crossed paths with the then president and his inner circle at Mar-a-Lago. He stayed on Trump’s radar in other ways too, including taking out full-page ads praising the president in The Wall Street Journal.
Just how far Pratt managed to penetrate Trump’s inner circle became clearer after the 2020 election, when federal prosecutors interviewed Pratt as part of their investigation of Trump over his removal of classified documents from the White House when he left office.
Recounting details of private conversations with the former president, The New York Times reported Pratt had told prosecutors that Trump had revealed sensitive information about US nuclear submarines.
In secret tape recordings obtained by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, Pratt was heard detailing other aspects of his interactions with Trump, including how the former president had disclosed non-public details about US military action in Iraq and a private conversation with Iraq’s leader.
Pratt also claimed he had paid a fee
of “about a million bucks” to former New York mayor and Trump confidant Rudy Giuliani for him to attend Pratt’s birthday party, explaining that Giuliani was “someone I hope will be useful one day”. Pratt compared Trump to a mafia figure who used henchmen to do his dirty work: “Can you imagine how yuck it would be to poke someone’s eyes out in a fight? So he does that but in life … He’s shameless and fearless. He’s got incredible balls,” Pratt said in one of the recordings.
“Trump says, ‘Would you go and tell that guy over there to steal for me?’ And so he can say ‘I never told the guy to steal’. And things like that is how Trump gets away with it.”
Trump is “outrageous”, Pratt is recorded as saying. “He just says whatever the fuck he wants. And he loves to shock people.”
Another powerful figure Pratt spoke of cultivating in the secret recordings was King Charles, then the Prince of Wales. “My superpower is that I am rich. So I am useful to him, right?” Pratt said.
When news of the recordings broke in October last year, as well as allegations that he had revealed classified information related to US nuclear submarines, Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social to deliver a strong denial.
“The Failing New York Times story … about a red haired weirdo from Australia, named Anthony Pratt, is Fake News,” Trump posted. “I never spoke to him about Submarines but I did speak to him about creating jobs in Ohio and Pennsylvania, because that’s what I’m all about.”
While Pratt may not rank on the lists of Australia’s most powerful movers and shakers, few doubt his ability to make his voice heard if and when he needs to do so.
In February this year, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attended an event at the Pratt family’s famed Melbourne estate, Raheen, that was headlined by pop superstar Katy Perry.
Among the guests were former Victorian premier Dan Andrews and the woman who succeeded him, Jacinta Allan.
When he was premier, Andrews was a regular beneficiary of Pratt’s hospitality. In August 2022, an exclusive group of wealthy Victorians gathered at Raheen for a Victorian Labor fundraiser, with guests forking out $4500 each to attend.
Since leaving office, Andrews has stayed close to Pratt. In July, Pratt took on Andrews as a consultant for a reported $100,000-a-year retainer. This week, Andrews attended a Christmas party hosted by Pratt at the Mandarin Oriental, New York.
The next day, Premier Allan announced she had appointed Pratt to a new Premier’s Business Council to be chaired by former Australia Post and National Australia Bank chief executive Ahmed Fahour.
A generous donor to both sides of politics – in the year prior to the 2022 election Pratt’s companies donated $4 million to both Labor and the Coalition – Pratt has also cultivated contacts inside the Liberal Party.
In July, former prime minister Scott Morrison was added to Pratt’s roster of advisers, also for a reported $100,000 a year, joining his predecessors Tony Abbott and Paul Keating as consultants. Keating’s monthly fee of $25,000 eclipsed Abbott’s $8000.
“Pratt is a powerful person in Australia, there is no doubt about that, but it’s a question of how he uses that power,” says a Victorian Labor insider. “The major draw is that he’s a donor, someone with the ability to cut a cheque that is much larger than most. So, on that basis, people listen to him and anyone who says they don’t listen to someone who is a major donor is simply not telling you the truth.”
The irony of so many Labor luminaries gathering at Raheen wasn’t lost on one insider, who said his own personal interest in attending “one or two events” there was because of the home’s historical significance as the one-time residence of Melbourne Catholic archbishop Daniel Mannix, who played a crucial role in leading Catholic voters away from the ALP when the party split in 1955.
“Having been the site of so much chicanery and plotting against the Labor Party when Mannix was there, I was always quite curious to see the place for myself,” the Labor insider said. “I would find myself drifting off to those parts of the place that were roped off and imagining the conversations that took place there among the people that Mannix gathered there and which, ultimately, helped to keep us out of power in Victoria for more than a quarter of a century.”
With Donald Trump set to take up residence in the White House next year, Australian officials expect Pratt to continue where he left off in 2020 in terms of his efforts to ingratiate himself with the new administration.
“Pratt has had numerous opportunities to take up US citizenship, but unlike other prominent Australian businessmen who have found success in the US, he hasn’t done so. Many see this as testament to his loyalty to Australia and its interests,” said one former adviser to the Albanese government. “I expect that will remain the case, and when it aligns with his business priorities, he will also be available to help advance Australia’s national interests.”
Pratt received his US green card in October. In a LinkedIn post, he said he “will be returning to Australia on a regular basis”.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on December 14, 2024 as "Anthony Pratt’s box seat ride to White House influence".
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