Richard Goyder rewrites history
Uncle Rich thinks he nailed it.
The biggest issue with Richard Goyder's wide-ranging interview last week in The Australian Financial Review is knowing where to even start. Broadcast from a parallel universe, it contained nearly a dozen legitimate contenders in the award category for 2026's Most Delusional Statement.
There was his claim that Meg O'Neill's recent poaching by BP is "good for Woodside, in the sense that Woodside has developed someone of her talent in the relatively short time she was there".
As chairman in 2021, Goyder made a spectacle of failing to recognise O'Neill's extraordinary capability, appointing her acting CEO while he established whether she was quite up to Alan Joyce's gold standard. "Make sure you get this right," his wife Janine (who he mentioned in this interview no fewer than five times) warned him about CEO succession. Today, Meg O'Neill sits astride the global energy industry while Alan Joyce is unemployed and flogging a memoir.
Then there was Goyder's zany explanation for being arguably Australia's worst listener. "There's a real task, if you like, of balance – of having your antennas up, so you're hearing what you need to hear, and blanking out the stuff you don't want to hear; and sometimes you get that wrong, clearly. Sometimes if there's a fair bit of noise on something, you think, you know, maybe there's something to that, and we should have a look."
This is a man who as AFL chairman flatly refused to read The Boys' Club by Michael Warner, let alone engage with its core thesis – now borne out in technicolour by AFL House's vile stitch-up of Cate Sayers in aid of Luke Sayers, which allegedly occurred on Goyder's watch.
