Yahoo Finance Jackson Packer: Rare admission from teen-heir to Aussie billionaire's empire
“Australia as a country is very privileged, and I think our family in particular is very privileged."
Born Australia’s richest baby, the 14-year-old son of James Packer has given a rare insight into his life as he vowed to use his position and wealth to do good in the world.
Jackson Lloyd Packer acknowledged he’s grown up with wealth very few Australians would understand, let alone the children fleeing war in Ukraine he was visiting in a trip to Moldova with UNICEF.
“You want to help out because you know..I had so much growing up and I am so thankful,” he told A Current Affair. “These kids have been stripped to have nothing and it’s just better if we can all share what we have to make life a little bit easier for these kids going through an incredibly hard time.”
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He’s the second of three children Packer shares with ex-wife Erica, a long-time ambassador for the charity, who admitted she wanted to make sure her children grew up with perspective about what their share of the Packer’s $4.5 billion empire could do to help others.
“Australia as a country is very privileged, and I think our family in particular is very privileged. It's really important for me that the kids grow up. Really understanding that sense of responsibility that they have,” she said.
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It was her idea to take the teenager, who has grown up with Los Angeles,, to see the realities of war, and the tens of thousands of refugee children displaced by the Russian conflict.
He said the magnitude was “unfathomable” through the television, and was humbled by the work done by aid workers in emergency zones, like Gaza.
“I feel like I shouldn’t be wearing this,” he said when donning a ballistic jacket and helmet worn in conflict zones.
“I am not doing enough work… I am not putting my life on the line so I don’t think I deserve to wear this.”
The young schoolboy said when he likes something, he will throw himself into it, and while many teens admit spending hours on TikTok - his admission was more old school.
“If I like a thing I will just do it, like lego, or a puzzle I'll just like sit down and do it for a couple hours straight and I'll get hungry,” he laughed with his mother.
His 56-year-old investor father James is worth $2.8 billion and the 1132nd richest person in the world, according to Forbes. He and sister Gretel agreed to a division of assets a decade after the death of their father, media mogul Kerry Packer.
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