Piers Akerman

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Piers Akerman is a conservative columnist for the Australian News Limited newspaper The Daily Telegraph. He was born in New Guinea, but raised in Perth, in Western Australia, by his parents John and Eve Akerman.

The third son in a family of four children, Akerman attended Guildford Grammar School, then became a boarder at Christ Church Grammar School, where he remained until the end of his schooling. According to a Sunday Age profile on Akerman, published in 1991, he was "asked to leave" Guildford following a dispute with the headmaster there, and did not complete his final exams while at Christ Church. Akerman, however, denies any disagreement, and says that he did complete his final exams.

Akerman began his media career at Western Australia's only daily, The West Australian. He then moved on to the Victorian newspaper Newsday, and took his first News Limited job at the Daily Mirror in Sydney. His career often took him overseas, working for a time at The Times, of London, and also spending ten years as a foreign correspondent in the USA. On returning to Australia, he was Editor of The Advertiser, Adelaide (1988) and The Sunday Herald Sun, Melbourne (1990). During 1990--92 he was Editor-in-Chief of The Herald and Weekly Times group in Melbourne before becoming a Vice-President of Fox News, USA in 1993.[1]

Akerman's columns are noted for often raising the ire of the former leader of the Australian Labor Party and the Federal Opposition, Mark Latham. Latham was known to weave complaints about Akerman's writing into his speeches, and in 2002, while protected by parliamentary privilege, publicly accused Akerman of being addicted to cocaine well into the 1980s. Latham has not, however, raised the issue outside parliament, and Akerman has repeatedly denied the allegation.

Piers Akerman lives in Sydney with his wife, Suzanne, and children, Tess and Pia.