Remembering my friend Peter Thompson, the legend who hosted of AM, and so much more

Peter died on 11 September 11, 2026. He was only 73. 

 Wikipedia: 

Peter Thompson began his career as a sports broadcaster on radio at 2LF in Young in 1970. He moved to Tasmania in 1972 and worked as a presenter on various commercial stations, including 7EX, 7LA and TNT9. He also presented the ABC TV current affairs program This Day Tonight in 1978 Thompson presented ABC Radio Sydney’s Drivetime in 1987 and then the ABC morning current affairs program AM from 1988 to 1993. He was presenter of Radio National Breakfast from 1994 to 1999 and again from 2003 to 2004. He also hosted a series of 35 “Wisdom Interviews” for Radio National from 2002 to 2004. Thompson was the presenter of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Talking Heads, a weekly biographical television program about the lives of prominent Australians, which began on ABC1 in 2005 and ended in 2010 after 238 episodes.

All this is true, but it doesn't describe the person I was blessed to know, nor his absolutely pivotal role in saving the Frankin River.

At his memorial service on October 6, Bob Brown said the Franklin would not be flowing free today were it not for Peter. I spoke about Peter the person, and that time, back when we was fab.

 Peter Xavier Thompson

Peter loved his colleagues, and he loved people more broadly.

I know he loved me because he told me about two years ago, using those words, “I love you” – after Johnny Bwin’s funeral, and then every time we met and spoke on the phone after that.

He said it because … I think because he really did love me, and he wanted to make that clear while he could. 

And also because of that time… the 1980s and 1990s…. what it meant to us… those of us unbelievably privileged to work in ABC Radio Current Affairs when it was… all there was, really.

It’s hard to believe now… there’s news everywhere, but in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s AM and PM were the leading current affairs programs… the leading political forums in Australia… 

And the people who put them together in the Olivetti building in William Street and later on the first floor of ABC Ultimo… most of us were in our 20s and 30s… 

We were given enormous responsibility, although I don’t think any of us thought that was anything other than normal…

We had a head of department, an executive producer, and that was it… There was no massive news bureaucracy… (we weren’t even part of news at first)… there was no need to coordinate… with anyone.

And so we took our roles seriously…

If you had asked any of us what we thought about the situation we were in, 

we would have said we had arrived.

          

That’s how Peter acted.

                                                             

I arrived in radio current affairs in 1985 at the age of 27. Peter had arrived probably a year before, aged probably 31.

He had done an awful lot before; he had been a radio and TV presenter in Tasmania, getting near the top of his game….

And (as we’ve heard) he had helped save the Franklin… On his shelf in Radio Current Affairs was the book he had written, Power in Tasmania.

Because he knew just a bit more than most of the rest of us, he was able to be helpful, reassuring, welcoming, supportive… 

And he always seemed to know more than he let on... 

John Highfield has reminded me of the slight curl to his lips… the joke he quite got around to sharing…

As a broadcaster, even back then, he meant it.

What I mean is that there was no gap between him and the listener… he wasn’t presenting to the listener; he wasn’t lecturing to the listener; he was with the listener, helping the listener out.

Paul Murphy, the PM presenter, used to just love him… having someone with that warm, quiet authority and that voice in the studio with him for live Q and As... and if Thompson had joined him towards the end of the show, Thompson would say in the studio, and Murphy would sign off with something like: “and thanks for joining me here with Peter Thompson on PM”. 

Which is why in mid-1985, ABC News executive Ian Wolfe made an unusual decision.

The Hawke and Keating Tax Summit was being held in July. PM would broadcast from the event every night, of course, and at the very end of the day, around 9 or 10 pm, there would be a special extra program, 15 or so minutes, to wrap up the day and preview the day ahead.

Wolfe’s unusual decision was that Peter Thompson, rather than Paul Murphy, would present it.

He told me that he wanted Peter Thompson rather than Paul Murphy because Peter was a reporter, PM’s business and finance reporter, and listeners would trust what they heard more if it came from Peter, their person on the inside, than from

“a presenter”.

A few years later, after Peter had been away at Harvard gaining a Master in Public Administration, away at Steve Cosser’s company Broadcom, helping start Business Sunday, and away at 2BL presenting drive, Wolfe appointed him Presenter of AM.

The reassuring, supportive presence that we had felt on the Radio Caff floor spread to the AM office…  and spread out through the airwaves to become the reassuring presence of AM on air.

Peter usually knew more than the listeners, and he usually knew more than us… he was always soaking up information and synthesising ideas so he could use what he knew as soon as he needed a lead or a question... but he never made the listeners or any of us feel as if he knew much more than us.

Trevor Watson was his first executive producer. He says they set up desks facing each other and tried to create something new, something surprising, every morning. Trevor would come up with an idea (say for a new type of opening) and Peter would chime in, or the other way round. But he says they never disagreed. “Peter never questioned any of my decisions. What he did do was dip in and guide me”.

And Peter if he was stressed, he didn’t show it. If something wasn’t going well on air, he would smile at the control room through the glass. If there were mere seconds to go before airtime, he would calmly type.

For those of you who don’t know how the caff control room worked in the days when we used physical tape, I’ll briefly describe it to you. Johnnie Bwin and others recorded tapes in the lines room, then raced them round or poked them through a hole we had cut in the wall to the control room. At show time, Bwin would lace each tape up on a bank of machines along a wall, rewinding tapes that had been played and adding new ones as they came in. 

Another operator (Therese Malek was one) would do the switching. Tony Chilton, then later Leonie Highfield, had a role akin to a director, keeping time and giving cues. Johnnie would walk from machine to machine, starting each on cue and whipping down the volume with tremendous force if we needed an early out.

Therese Malek says that after every show Peter came and thanked her. He always made time for a chat with the people who had put the show together.

And then it was breakfast on William Street, and quiet (amused) listening over croissants.

When one of the production team had a birthday, he took her and colleagues to the Regent for breakfast. He genuinely loved all of us. And, much as how he knew a lot, he seemed to never get enough of learning from us.

Or hanging out with with us. He took some of us to his property at Kangaroo Valley.

Mark Llewellyn from the 1980s says the thing that he remembers most about Peter is his regular weekend game of doubles. He says the way Peter played tennis was the way he played life: effervescent, always laughing, the occasional duff shot, the occasional brilliant one, lots of hilarious commentary, and at the end you left with a big grin, feeling better than when you arrived! 

All through this time Peter Thompson was developing his own business, teaching communication.. He put some of his insights into a book, The Secrets of the Great Communicators, which I was thrilled to discover that my wife owned when we got married and put together our book collections.

By then he was at Radio National Breakfast, which he helped create with Mick O’Regan… developing a format that can still be heard in the program that goes to air today. And he was at ABC TV, making six seasons of “Talking Heads”, where staff say he was a dream to work with. 

Here’s a colleague, who posted online a letter he sent to Peter after the final season ended.

No doubt the good people in attendance this evening will be making or have already made flattering speeches about how no one could ever wish to work with a more professional, gentlemanly, warm and affable person. 

How your skilful and subtle, but probing line of questioning, manages to draw out the deeper, more private and genuine human being beneath the public mask of your guests. 

How you are charming and cool in a crisis, with never a bad word to say about anyone, and so confident in your own skin that no amount of executive direction, followed by the inevitable re-direction, can phase you. 

You may just have heard how much people have learned from working with you — things that will stand them in good stead — your sage advice resonating for many years to come.

And then the letter goes into specific reminiscences.

Those Talking Heads programs look great on YouTube, even today. Peter looks good. He did a similar thing on Radio National with the Wisdom Interviews. 

It turned out that what he did with us at breakfast and in the office, listening to us, appreciating us, digging up, turns out to be about the best tool there is for interviews.  

I don’t know how he did so much. I couldn’t have. But at Caff we saw clues.

A calming a presence as he was at AM, he knew full well that he was presenting perhaps the world’s greatest radio program, following in the footsteps of Robert Peach, Hamish Robertson, Steve Cosser and Red Harrison.  

He brought those of us listening, and those of us at work with him in the morning, live Q and As as the Berlin Wall fell, as China massacred its own citizens, as Nelson Mandela was set free, as Margaret Thatcher left office, as Australia Day dawned in 1988. 

To keep doing so much, and so well, he put more effort than the rest of us into looking after himself.  He ate a grapefruit at his desk every morning. 

Before other people had arrived, he sat quietly at another desk on another part of the floor reading the papers alone and in silence.

The only way to get into the Olivetti building after hours was through an emergency door that smelled of urine and let off a piercing alarm.  Only Peter put his fingers in his ears to protect his hearing.

He explained to Geraldine Doogue (while working on Radio National Breakfast) that a key part of his job, their job, was to deliver.

“Geraldine, they pay us to be in good health,” he told her.

Part of the job was to be healthy. And mentally healthy.

Kay Nankervis remembers him filling in as AM presenter over Christmas, probably Christmas 1985.

She said it was the most relaxed, collaborative, fun time. Then a new radio manager dropped in to watch the show. Afterwards, he asked to speak to the staff and started giving pointers – He said “your intros could have been better” and so on.

While he was still talking, Peter stood up and declared that it was time to go to breakfast — “Who is that guy?” he said as they left. “He’s got absolutely no authority over us”.

I was involved in another such incident some years later a few months after we moved into our new studios in Ultimo.

The much-hyped new technology didn’t work. Radio Current Affairs had had a proud history of never putting mistakes to air. 

Suddenly, like the other users of the new technology, we were helplessly putting many mistakes to air.. microphones wouldn’t turn on, and sometimes they turned off all by themselves. Audio wouldn’t play. It was demoralising.

One morning, all of the audio stopped playing with minutes to go still on air.

John Bruce, the executive producer, said Peter… you go in that booth… it’s microphone works, and talk to Peter Thompson about anything. We bashed out a one-sentence lead.

Peter Thompson introduced me.. Peter Martin joins me now for more details.. Peter what does this mean?

Nothing. The line to the booth wouldn’t work either.

Then Peter calmly said, “Thanks for joining me on AM, it’s 29 past 8”, and walked out of the studio.

The difference between 29 past eight, and half past eight is massive.

At least 40 ABC radio stations, maybe as many as 60 – I don’t know how many local stations we had at the time – had to scramble to fill completely unexpected dead air.

A manager raced round and said we shouldn’t have done that.. Peter replied using words to the effect of “we should be provided with equipment that works”.

We went to breakfast. (We came back later to repair the show for Western Australia).

The bonds formed through those experiences, that special time, are stronger than almost all of the bonds we have formed since. 

That’s why Peter and I played chess over an app until his condition made that impossible, and that’s why we played chess in person whenever I visited Sydney until his condition made that impossible. That’s why we talked about politics and economics and the future of the world over the phone,  right through until the other week.

We spoke for 10 minutes a few days before he died.

I’ve talked about his genuine curiosity about people and his love for people.  I want to close with a quote from an ABC colleague about his love for all of us, whoever we are… for people listening.

It’s an observation made by Ian Hensche, who presented the mid-morning show in Adelaide and prepared it early each morning as Peter went to air.

He said Peter had a great voice, a beautiful, rounded, rich voice, but by itself that would have meant little.  Many people have great voices.

Here’s what did matter, what made all the difference, and I’ll quote Ian Hensche – using his emphasis to get across what he meant.

“The warmth that came though in his voice / wasn’t / fake."

I am privileged to have known Peter. I reckon we all are.

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