From TV studios to rugby pitches to corporate boardrooms, Tom Baddeley likes to keep things interesting.
ANY Western Australians would recognise Tom Baddeley from the years he spent presenting the nightly news on ABC television.
These days, the local business community is probably more familiar with him as the key contact for some of the state’s primary representative or industry bodies.
Mr Baddeley is WA director for the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association (APPEA), a role he took on after 15 months as state director for the Committee for Economic Development of Australia.
That’s not to say the time spent as a financial journalist for The West Australian, which led to his eight-year stint at “Aunty” (that’s the ABC in journo-speak), doesn’t linger in the minds of many corporate heavyweights in WA.
Others may remember the three years he spent with Rugby WA as the inaugural media manager for the Western Force.
Alternatively, it’s unlikely the seven days he spent as The Australian Financial Review’s Perth bureau chief garnered too much attention.
But it’s doubtful that members of the general public or those in the corporate world would immediately recall Mr Baddeley as the lead singer or front-man of various local musical offerings which, over the years, have played the odd gig or two around town.
Official sales figures for the very limited edition CDs by local rock ‘n’ roll outfits ‘Dow Jones and the All Ordinaries’ or the more recent incarnation, ‘Silverhair’, are hard to source, so the bands’ commercial attraction could best be described as ‘underground’.
Mr Baddeley says he “rocks out” alongside long-time friend and former colleague, John McGlue, who, as well as being a former finance journalist and current director of corporate and financial communications group, FD Third Person, is also the band’s bass player.
“I’ve always loved music and played in a garage band,” Mr Baddeley explains.
“Me and McGlue are in a garage band called Silverhair – the older version of the Newcastle outfit (Silverchair).
“But how could I describe our music? Well, it takes a special kind of listening - noisy pop, we created a new genre called noisy pop.”
Mr Baddeley fondly recalls a particular show the group played for the law society at the Fly-By Night club in Fremantle about 10 years ago.
“I raided the ABC costume room and they had these marsupial heads, and we all wore these marsupial heads and I thought it would be very funny, so we came out ... not even a snicker,” he says.
“It was not flash.”
Regardless of his career to date and the various successes experienced in each role, including initially working as a corporate lawyer in Sydney for top-tier firm, Mallesons, Mr Baddeley feels he’s far from an overachiever.
“I’m definitely not an overachiever but fortunate in that I’ve had those opportunities,” he says.
“And I think one of the great things about journalism and the law is that you can use those skills in a number of areas.
“That’s allowed me to do everything from being a lawyer to a business writer to an advocate for the oil and gas industry and a little bit of rugby in between.”
Citing his parents as the greatest influence on his life, and his wife and two daughters as his “whole reason for being”, he still has plenty more to achieve, starting with the recent publishing of his first children’s book called Aussie Legends (published by Fremantle Press) inspired by his daughters’ preference for rhyming narrative and his passion for Australian history.
But Mr Baddeley suggests it was seeing his father’s disenchantment with his long-time, and successful, medical career that led him on this diverse career path.
“I remember thinking, ‘well I don’t want to get to a situation where that’s me, so I’ve always thought that I want to keep it interesting,” he says.
Greatest lesson you’ve learned working in media that’s translated across to your work in the corporate world?
As a journo you lose track of the power of the media. The key point is I developed a much greater appreciation (of how powerful the media really is) once I moved to the other side of the fence. When you’ve been doing it for 12 years you get involved with the process and so, to some extent, every now and then it would be a bit of Groundhog Day, and sometimes there’s not a full appreciation of how the words you’ve written or the words you’ve said can have a significant impact. It was only when I was on the other side of the fence that it became far more apparent.
Are you an overachiever?
No! I think I’ve been lucky I’ve been able to pursue some of these (positions). I’ve always thought ‘well let’s do this for a while and let’s get as much out of this as I possibly can in terms of enjoyment and the challenge’.
What would you do if you were premier for a day?
I would build a state-of-the-art rectangular sports stadium.
What did you want to be when you were a kid?
I wanted to be a writer, I think, well a songwriter or a book writer. Now I’m doing kids books, but don’t expect to see me as the next green Wiggle or pink Wiggle or anything. Maybe not.
