Scene of Lehrmann Thai massage snafu uncomfortably close for Murdochs - The Australian Financial Review

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Media Observed

Sam Buckingham-JonesMedia and marketing reporter
Mar 25, 2024 – 5.00am

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Strange times indeed in the world of Sydney media, with a bitter dispute between Seven Network producer Steve Jackson and his one-time close friend, Taylor Auerbach, going truly public in the last week.

Auerbach is a former Seven reporter who secured Spotlight’s interview with Bruce Lehrmann – before Jackson took over as producer. The program received a Walkley Award nomination – only to lose it once it emerged the political staffer had been remunerated for his appearance.

This week, News Corp’s Sam Maiden reported that a Seven employee, later revealed to be Auerbach, had put $3000 on the network’s corporate card to pay for Thai masseuses for Lehrmann. That news led Sky News Australia to sack Auerbach, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

But it could have been an uncomfortable weekend for executives at the News Corp-controlled broadcaster. Auerbach, it turns out, has been negotiating with Rupert Murdoch’s eldest daughter, Prudence MacLeod, over the sale of his family’s Elizabeth Bay property. That’s the family home that the Thai masseuses turned up at in 2022, it seems.

(Other Spotlight specials have also been filmed at the home, including a tell-all interview with Anthony Koletti, the husband of fugitive Melissa Caddick, who disappeared and is presumed dead.)

The Elizabeth Bay family home in question.


It was only six months ago that MacLeod and her husband Alasdair MacLeod offloaded another Sydney property, up the road in Woollahra, for $17.5 million to Scape Australia founder Craig Carracher. That property had originally been commissioned by John Laws and was later owned by mining executive Nick Curtis before the MacLeods purchased it.

Property industry sources said London-based Prudence MacLeod was hoping to make the Elizabeth Bay property her family home. Her real estate agent Ben Collier – who specialises in some of the highest-end Sydney property deals – had been working up the contracts, they said.

In previous listings, the house has been described as a property with “elegance and enduring tranquillity”. It has had an “illustrious roster of neighbours”, according to those adverts, “including Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch, Russell Crowe and Warren Anderson, among others”.

The property had last been on the market in 2019, with an estimated sale price of $4.5 million – but it never changed hands, remaining with the Auerbachs. It is unclear whether this transaction is similarly dead.

In other news​

EGM: Media company Southern Cross Austereo has all but agreed – pending some due diligence – to be taken over and picked apart by rival ARN Media and its private equity mates over at Anchorage Capital Partners. But that hasn’t stopped its bankers at UBS quietly asking shareholders and ARN to withdraw a call for an extraordinary general meeting at which Southern Cross chairman Rob Murray would be asked to resign. No chair wants to be turfed out, and Southern Cross has to call the EGM within two months. Sources close to the deal say ARN has zero appetite for mercy and won’t ask mutual shareholder Spheria Asset Management to withdraw its EGM demand. In the cut-throat world of M&A, few people will help rid a rival of a sword of Damocles.


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