Paul McIntyre: Even the toughest shed a tear

The late Kerry Packer's final burst of public attention concluded yesterday with a NSW state memorial service at the Opera House, which saw the likes of supreme scientologist Tom Cruise arrive by private jet.

Cruise was there because he's close to James Packer and has been a high-profile conduit for winning Packer Junior over to the religion.

There were glimpses of James Packer's belief system in a predictably glowing but revealing tribute to his father on the Nine Network on Thursday night, in which Russell Crowe was the narrator.

James said he believed that the mind had a great deal to do with the physical health of a person and his father was affected greatly by the allegations arising from the Costigan Royal Commission in 1984, in which Kerry was tagged as the mysterious "Goanna" who ultimately sat behind a major illicit drug distribution syndicate and a series of murders.

Kerry Packer was cleared of the charges in 1992 but it took its toll. "I think it had an impact on his health," James said in the tribute.

"I believe people's health is affected by their mind and it was a dark chapter mentally for Kerry."

Prime Minister John Howard and former Prime Minister Bob Hawke also had their say on the Goanna slurs in Nine's tribute, with Howard saying they were "absurd and offensive" and Hawke declaring them "absolute bullshit".

Hawke was Prime Minister at the time of the Costigan royal commission and after the allegations were leaked in a now-defunct Fairfax newspaper, the National Times, he went out of his way to publicly fraternise with Packer to demonstrate his support.

Packer held then Fairfax chairman James Fairfax singularly responsible for the damage. At a dinner in 1992 to celebrate beating the royal commission, Packer publicly said as much and, according to accounts, he said something unpublishable about James Fairfax which implied he was hoping his rival would face a lingering and excruciating death.

At the start of the "Goanna" allegations, Packer said he called James Fairfax to ask him to stop his journalists writing "hysterical speculation" but the newspaper boss did not act. "He could have fixed it," Packer told the dinner party.

The Nine tribute also covered Kerry's tough upbringing at the hands of Sir Frank Packer, who built a newspaper business before it was handed over to his two sons after he died in the early 1970s. Kerry was dyslexic and scorned as an idiot by his parents. He was sent to boarding school aged 5, literally 100m down the road from the family mansion in Sydney's eastern suburbs.

He was later shipped off to an elite boarding school in Victoria and - as Kerry told it in an interview with British TV host Michael Parkinson - on returning home during a school holiday break he was sent back by his father on a two-day train ride because he had forgotten his tennis racket.

Publicly Kerry always said his father was firm but fair.

But a close mate and larrikin adman John Singleton revealed a different perspective in the tribute: "He told me at least half a dozen times in company and in private that the day his father died was the happiest day of his life."

In his remaining months it appeared Packer was not going to do the same with his own son, who said that Kerry had spoken some "beautiful" words to him.

In his time, Packer had eight heart attacks and a kidney transplant donated by his helicopter pilot.

He famously said after being clinically dead for seven minutes after a heart attack at a Sydney racetrack that he'd been to the other side and there was nothing there.

The good news, he said in a rare TV interview after his brush with death, was that there was no devil. The downside? There was no God either.

Packer survived his near-death experience because ambulance officers were able to use specialist medical equipment.

After Packer discovered that it was only available because of his status, he paid for every ambulance in New South Wales to be fitted with the same resuscitation unit.

Those sorts of stories were repeated throughout Nine's tribute and even the blistering talkback radio jock and former Wallabies coach Alan Jones dropped a few tears recounting his memories of Packer.

James Packer said that although Kerry didn't believe in the afterlife, he was "taking the positive" and hoping his father was looking down on them from above.