Journalist Matt Price dies aged 46

OBITUARY

Matt Price

Journalist. Born October 15, 1961, Perth. Died November 25, 2007, Perth

IN one corner of The Australian’s cramped bureau in Perth, a well-worn Akubra hangs over a shambolic desk half-hidden with crumpled bits of paper, well-thumbed books on politics and sport, scribbled notes, a small portrait of three adorable children sitting in a park and, just for good measure, a dirty old coffee mug.

Matt Price sat here. He shouted from here, laughed and hooted and banged his fist from here. He got outraged from here, so outraged that he’d rip off his telephone headset after being tipped into a story and come storming into your office, bellowing something about Howard or Rudd or Malthouse.

Matt made a lot of noise. But it was always interesting noise; an opinion (whether you wanted to hear it or not), a joke, a prediction, a secret, a plot. He was the quintessential Australian newspaperman, a prolific writer, a wonderful wordsmith and arguably the best all-round journalist to come out of the west to play such a prominent role in national affairs.

But much more importantly than that, Matt had a heart. He was a beautiful chronicler of the frailties of the human condition. He loved the underdog and the underdog loved him. His rusted-on passion for the Fremantle Dockers was testament to him loving the ugliest dog in the pound.

When doctors found tumours in his brain in early October, Matt wrote a message to his friends telling them that he was about to undergo exploratory brain surgery and about to enter “a long dark tunnel”.

The message was blunt and shocking, but optimistic. He signed off: “No pithy punchline, just the obvious observation - life is fragile, hug your loved ones.”

Matt died yesterday afternoon in his suburban Perth home attended by his beloved wife Sue and their three children, Jack, 16, Matilda, 14, and Harry, 11. It was less than eight weeks since his left arm went “awry” while writing a story on the demise of West Coast Eagles champion wingman Chris Mainwaring, the first warning sign of this mongrel disease that has taken so many at such a young age.

Tributes were last night still pouring in, from the headquarters of the AFL, to the office of prime minister to the Premier of Western Australia. It was a measure of the respect that Matt was held in that John Howard took time out during a frantic election campaign last week to visit him at his Mount Hawthorn home. Another former prime minister, Bob Hawke, is also close and had been seeking regular updates on his health.

Last night, prime minister-elect Kevin Rudd said Matt had emerged in recent years as one of the greats of the new generation of Australian journalists. “His writing brought a humour and warmth to often dry debates in the chamber. Matt sketched cartoons with words. Matt had a rare mastery of the art of satire - insightfully poking fun at the institutions and characters of politics. Through his satire, Matt often brought us all down to earth.”

The editor-in-chief of The Australian, Chris Mitchell, said Matt was one of a kind.

“Matt’s colleagues at The Australian, at News Limited and in the wider media and political community are devastated at the news of his death,” Mitchell said.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Sue and his children. We will really miss our brilliant parliamentary sketch writer. Matt was one of a kind. He was prolific and just as happy writing political commentary, as magazine profiles or Australian football and rock reviews. We will miss his conversation, sense of humour, humanity, good nature, positive outlook and wonderfully amusing take on the life of the body politic.”

Matt was always going to be a journalist. Born on October 15, 1961, he emerged from the Catholic school system with another well-known journalist, Sean Murphy of ABC television. They were five when they met.

“He was a wonderful, larger than life character, if that’s at all possible when you’re a small kid. He was cheeky and completely disruptive in class and everyone loved him,” Murphy recalls.

“He’d have everyone in stitches and falling about laughing, yet the funny thing was that when it came to the end of the year, he was the only one that would get the straight As. He was an excellent sportsman and quite brilliant, a wonderful, first-class smartarse who I loved dearly from a very young age.”

After gaining an arts degree at the University of Western Australia, Matt spent some months working with then Democrat senator Jack Evans. Bored, he decided to try his hand at journalism and secured a cadetship at the Albany Advertiser, a small paper in the south of the state.

Realising that he was never going to stay in the bush, Matt returned to Perth and got a job on the now defunct Daily News. His beat was politics and, surprisingly, he made little impact as a print reporter.

But Terry Spence, then news director at Channel Nine in Perth, saw what others didn’t and hired him. Matt took to television.

“He was marvellous talent, a robust personality who was one of what I called the golden boys, along with Michael Holmes (now a CNN anchor), and others like Geoff Hutchison and Michael Thomson, who have all excelled in their careers,” Spence says.

“He was a wonderful character, rattling around his desk, untidy and forever with his shirt hanging out. But he was quite brilliant, great thinker and a very funny man.”

Thomson, who is still with Channel Nine Perth, worked with Matt at The Daily News in the early 1980s and then followed him over into TV. “He was so versatile, that was his real strength,” Thomson says. “He could do crime in the morning and sport in the afternoon, with a bit of politics shoved somewhere in between.”

Thomson remembers Price’s role in getting 20,000 paper masks of Eagles footballer Craig Turley, which were to be handed around to Subiaco football fans as a way of supporting Turley during an upcoming big game.

“Matt then decided to wear one to a press conference with Eagles coach Mick Malthouse, who blew his top when he found out about the plan and banned the masks. I think they all got pulped, 20,000 of them.”

In the late ‘80s, Matt travelled overseas with Sue, where he worked in London at various television bureaus. Executives began to notice his talents after his coverage of the Lockerbie air disaster just before Christmas in 1988. When he returned to Perth a few years later, he had little problems getting work.

But it was his jump into print that was his making. He joined The Australian in 1997 and it became obvious that he was an extraordinary talent. Within a few years, he was transferred to the press gallery in Canberra and there found his spiritual home.

Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery president Karen Middleton said Price made an art form of the political sketch.

“He made politics hilarious and he helped get a lot of people involved in the political process through his writing,” Middleton says.

“He very quickly became a dominant figure in the gallery with his keen eye for the unusual and his witty writing style.”

It was this ability that caught the eye of Barrie Cassidy, who was looking for clever, chatty journalists to join him on a magazine-style Sunday morning news program, The Insiders.

The veteran journalist says that of all the conversations he had with Matt over the years, he still could not have picked his politics.

“I would never have known which way Matt voted ... he praised, criticised or ridiculed on merit. I can honestly say that he was apolitical. He cared about policy, the individual, but he was never party political,” Cassidy says.

“It was his natural exuberance that made us think that we were doing something much more important than we were. He had a zest for life. He was also a very funny man, with a deft touch and great judgment.

“If there was Walkley for consistency, Matt would have won it. He was a stand-out.”

But it was Matt’s loyalty and compassion to friends in tough times that will be remembered by many, particularly the Herald Sun journalist Michael Harvey and his partner Cynthia Banham.

Harvey and Banham arrived in Western Australia in March this year after Banham, a Canberra-based journalist working for The Sydney Morning Herald, was flown to Perth after surviving a horror air crash in Indonesia that killed colleague Morgan Mellish of The Australian Financial Review.

“Cynthia was in a week-long coma and her life was in the balance,” Harvey recalls. “Matt was everywhere for us. Every day he would be calling or visiting me or his family were cooking me dinners, just the little things that friends do to take the pressure off in such terrible circumstances.

“We had many long conversations about the fragility of life during this time and his sense of spirit and optimism helped us both get through the most terrible six months.

“He never imposed himself on us, not once. His emotional strength was a pillar for both of us.”

Harvey says that in July, at a birthday celebration for him and Banham at Harvey’s brother’s house during a rare day release for Banham, the Price family came along and shared in the celebration.

“Cynthia was out of hospital for the day, and Matt and Sue and the kids came and he was excited for us, he was really, genuinely excited because it was such a step for us in our recovery process. That gave us great emotional strength. I don’t know what I would have done had he not been around to help me, to push me, to constantly be a shoulder to lean on,” Harvey says.

“I will miss him terribly.”

WA Premier Alan Carpenter, a former journalist and close mate of Matt’s, is devastated at the news.

“It is tragic that Matt should die so young. He was an extremely talented journalist, one of those very rare all-rounders who imbued everything he wrote with insight, decency and a sense of humour,” Carpenter says.

“Matt’s generosity of spirit shone through everything he did. I’ve known Matt for 20 years as a friend and colleague and enjoyed every single moment of his company.

“He will be painfully missed by people all over Australia. Matt had hundreds of friends and a beautiful family and we will all be thinking of Sue and his three children.”

For those who want to relive some of this great journalist’s finer moments, a selection appears below.

John Howard cracks a joke. (August 10,2007)

Kim Beazley, the too-nice guy of politics. (September 21, 2007)

On meeting Bob Dylan. (August 25, 2007)

Matt calls the 2007 election. (September 22, 2007)

On the end of another dismal Dockers season. (September 29, 2007)

John Worsfold is undislikeable. (September 30, 2006)

Dockers enjoy a rare winning streak. (August 12, 2006)

On the fragility of life. (March 10, 2007)

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