As chair of the ABC Kim Williams is responsible for spending $1.1 billion of your money, and is one of Australia’s most erudite men. Now, he has talked openly about seeing dead people and suggests some will consider him an “old fashioned weirdo.”
This man, who has also been a talented musician and composer, an extremely successful businessman, and an AFL commissioner, cannot explain what happened to him.
Yes, it was spooky. In the days after she died, and he had nursed her for months, his mother “visited” him many times.
He assumes it was a manifestation of grief and a sign of unresolved issues. But as he talks you can sense his considerable intellect struggling with what he saw.
He doesn’t know why it happened, only that it happened, and that she was very real.
Williams has outlined the experience in a very personal interview on the podcast “Neil Mitchell Asks Why?” where he also explains he has a degenerative neurological condition, describes a 35-year feud with broadcaster Phillip Adams, and argues the ABC must not be privatised or broadcast advertising.
‘It was a bizarre experience. A truly weird experience’
This is an intelligent, articulate, engaging and deep thinking man. But when it comes to seeing dead people, he has no answers.
In the days after her death in 2008 Williams’ mother Joan “visited” him several times and only stopped after her sister asked her to do it no more.
Some of the “appearances” were embarrassing. He describes one such “visit”:
“I was giving this speech… in the parliament actually, and mum appeared on the other side of the stage and started to walk across to me.”
“She had died a couple of days before,” he says.
“While I was delivering the speech I was saying in my head ‘mum this is not a good time please don’t do this'”.
“Then she came across the stage and then she stood on my right hand side. I was continuing to endeavour to give the speech, and I did actually falter then, and I did weep a little which was very embarrassing.”
“I recovered myself and kept on going, but I know the audience was enormously perplexed.”
“She visited me many times. She tapped me on the shoulder at night. And I spoke to my dearly loved auntie who was one of her three sisters. And my aunty said I’ll have a word to her.”
“Anyway mum stopped visiting.”
Williams says he does not believe in the spirit world, but can’t explain whether it was his grief coming through, or what actually happened.
“How that works psychologically, how it manifests, how it commenced and how it stopped is something I don’t begin to understand,” he says.
“But I know it happened because I lived through it and experienced it.
“She was not some sort of transparent apparition . I couldn’t touch her. But she looked real, I suppose she looked like a hologram.
“It was a bizarre experience. A truly weird experience. “
In a discussion which is at times raw, Mr Williams reluctantly and cautiously discusses his two suicide attempts, as a young man rejected by his lover, and says it was “a very very long time ago.”
“It was the action of a stupid young man, who clearly didn’t deal well with a rejection” he says.
“It was an act of desperation I suppose.”
Much of the history of Kim Williams is well known. He’s the ultimate high achiever: national leggo champion at age 10, superb clarinet player, promising composer, successful arts manager, and arguably the media executive who “saved” Foxtel.
He was for 20 months CEO of Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited empire in Australia and was an AFL commissioner.
He’s clearly driven, which he believes is largely caused because his father did not like him and not once during his spectacular achievements as a child and adult said “well done”.
On the ABC
Williams also discusses his attraction to Judaism, and agrees he lives much of his life as a Jew, although he has not converted.
He will not criticise the ABC’s coverage of the war in Gaza, and says it is the role of the ABC to provide “objectivity and accuracy” in reporting the war to allow people to decide for themselves on what is unfolding.
“Generally I think the ABC has done a pretty good job at that,” he said..
But Mr Williams does believe using “Zionism” to criticise Israel is wrong.
“Zionism is often used inaccurately and inappropriately in describing the current state of affairs in the Middle East,” he said.
He says the ABC should not be privatised and that he would resist any suggestion that it broadcast advertisements. But he will ask the government for more money.
“We certainly need more investment,” he says.
“Investment that is justified by the ABC in making a case to the Government, in making a case for the work that needs to be done in areas such as (improving) social cohesion.”
“We have a duty to remind all Australians of all the pillars of their democracy.”
He also describes openly his battle with ill health which has required fortnightly “infusions” for 21 years.
“I have a degenerative neurological condition which affects my limbs.
“Some people do it really tough. Mine is neither here nor there really.
“It’s called multifocal motor neuropathy with an electro conduction block. It’s an autoimmune condition and it means that the myelin sheaths that surround my nerves in my limbs are progressively being eaten away by my body.
“I can’t play a musical instrument anymore and I do deeply regret that because music is a great consuming passion in my life.
“But I listen to a lot of music and I go to a lot of concerts.”
The Adams ‘feud’
Kim Williams laughs easily and is self deprecating., Until it comes to the man once described as the ABC’s “most treasured” broadcaster, Phillip Adams.
In the early days of the Australian Film Commission Adams hired Williams as CEO. But a feud developed and they have not spoken for decades.
Whatever is behind that clearly irritates both men. Adams recently stood down after 33 years hosting the Radio National program “Late Night Live” , and managed a slap at Williams during his farewell speech. Williams wasn’t there.
“I don’t have a fight with Phillip Adams, he has one with me, ” Williams said.
“I haven’t spoken to Phillip Adams in 35 years, but he clearly harbours a deep animus towards me.
“I have written to him a couple of times, about matters that are known between him and me and which I have never publicised, where he has uttered things that are seriously untruthful and I have corrected him and asked him to cease doing that.
“He has obviously reacted rather badly to that.
“And I couldn’t care less that he’s offended. What I wrote was an accurate rendition of the matters in question and my view is how dare you.”
Asked if he ever listened to Adams’ radio program WIlliams said “I have to say that I stopped listening to Phillip a long time ago.
“I think he once said that Australian Television had made one year of television and then repeated it 30 or 40times.
“When I did listen to his program, I often had that feeling about his own radio program.”
Neil Mitchell is host of ‘The Neil Mitchell asks why?’ Podcast. New episodes appear weekly on Apple, click here, or Spotify, click here.
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