Off the Record: The home of SA political, legal, business gossip
THIS week in Off The Record: Will Adelaide be seeing Liverpool again soon? Don Farrell addresses those election rumours and find out how on earth the Lord Mayor came to be playing guitar in China.
Opinion
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WILL the famous Liverpool Football Club anthem You’ll Never Walk Alone once again ring around the Adelaide Oval?
Chances are that it will, with speculation growing that the Reds of Liverpool will be making their way to Adelaide again, possibly as part of a deal that stretches for several years.
Liverpool played the Reds of Adelaide at the Oval last July, in an event seen as a large success as more than 53,000 fans crammed in to watch the match and for the mass karaoke event.
Liverpool beat Adelaide 2-0 in what was a fairly tepid match, but the highlight for many was the stirring pre-match rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone . It certainly put Port Adelaide’s Never Tear Us Apart in the shade.
Not that it heralded a good season for Liverpool.
The club sacked manager Brendan Rogers soon after and struggled again in the league.
Still, Liverpool has a proud history and carries a massive global support — their fans include Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis — and will no doubt pack out the Adelaide Oval when they come back, even if it’s just to sing the song.
THE DON GETS THE DROP ON HIS OLD GANG
THEY say in vino, veritas — in wine, truth. So we’ll have to take Don Farrell’s assertion at the launch of his 2015 shiraz last weekend that rumours of him aiming for a No. 2 Senate slot at the looming federal election are “entirely fictitious”.
Last month Off the Record reported on discussions for a return of the former senator who pulled the strings in the SA Labor Party for years.
Still, Off the Record is happy with its prediction and Labor operatives maintain Farrell will be “drafted” if PM Malcolm Turnbull calls a double-dissolution election.
The launch shindig at the Sevenhill Hotel was well attended by Labor types including Opposition defence spokesman David Feeney, state MPs Mick Atkinson and Jennifer Rankine and former prime minister Julia Gillard, left, who could barely move in the crush of admirers looking for a selfie.
Clare and Gilbert Valleys Mayor Allan Aughey was wearing a jacket and cravat ensemble, which would have made d’Arenberg’s Chester Osborn envious, and Adelaide businessman Peter Williams was also in attendance.
As for the wine, it’s a full bodied Clare Valley shiraz, with an undertone of backroom dealings and the slight chance of the occasional spill.
SHORT OF CASH
WHEN a good corporate citizen like Santos sneezes, community groups funded by the Adelaide-based company’s largesse risk catching a cold.
Pummelled by low oil prices, Santos will reduce its spend this year on arts, sport and culture, Off the Record can reveal. It says it will continue to invest in the community, but it confirmed forecast figures — not yet public — that show some pruning.
The energy giant pumps money into, among others, the Tour Down Under, the Art Gallery, Botanic Gardens, the OzAsia Festival, Common Ground homeless program and the Aboriginal Power Cup school football program.
It’s not all out of corporate goodness. As part of the deal with the State Government in 2007 to remove its shareholder cap, Santos established a social responsibility and community benefits fund of $60 million over 10 years. The company assured Off the Record there were no changes to the SA Deed and Santos would comply with all obligations.
PURPLE HAESE
LORD Mayor Martin Haese dubbed it “international diplomacy through music” when he took to a stage in Shandong during Premier Jay Weatherill’s China trade mission extravaganza. Off the Record is not sure what tunes he shredded — but it was definitely not a rendition of Craig Emerson’s Whyalla Wipeout.
CALL A (SPIN) DOCTOR
COME in spinner — in this case, through the front doors of the troubled new Royal Adelaide Hospital. Our well-placed spies report that SA Health Partnership CEO Duncan Jewell has pushed the red emergency button by his bed and engaged the services of one of Adelaide’s top public relations companies.
Apparently four PR firms were short-listed to show how they’d sprinkle glitter over the mess that has enveloped the consortium and government through delays, build problems and silly details such as storing patient records. With the government, unions and doctors lined up against them life won’t be dull.
ART V SPORT
ARTISTIC photographer Andrew Baines usually knows how to pull a VIP crowd to
his events. But he blundered in the timing of his latest book launch, coinciding with the Crows-Port Showdown, so he was deluged with apologies.
By the time Port fan and Opposition Leader Steven Marshall opened the event before a sparse crowd, the Power was already being thrashed, prompting Marshall to declare it the first time he was happy to be opening something instead of being at the footy.
Baines’ book, Museum of My Mind, includes photos of Amanda Vanstone sitting on a toilet at Henley Beach, WA Premier Colin Barnett at Cottesloe and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in the surf at Bondi, in a suit with a brolly.
PEOPLE CALL HIM ...
FUNDRAISER Maurice Henderson has landed a new gig, bobbing up at Adelaide Uni as something called “director, advancement”, which has something to do with trying to extract “philanthropic support” from ex-students.
His most recent job was as a fundraiser at the Liberal Party — he is reputedly a good friend of Innovation Minister Christopher Pyne. Before that, he was long-time executive director of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Research Foundation. He was also a Burnside councillor at the time covered by the long-suppressed report by former auditor-general Ken MacPherson on the council.
GLOBAL WHINE
WINEMAKER and former bankrupt Andrew Garrett has erupted on to Twitter and, after a false start in which he simply tweeted chief business reporter Cameron England’s name, he soon set about critiquing the integrity of our journalist, Brand South Australia and state MP Mick Atkinson. The vexatious litigant, who has lodged some extraordinary legal claims in his time, copied in US President Barack Obama, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and wine writer Philip White on one tweet to let them know of an ongoing court battle with Treasury Wine Estates. So far Garrett has garnered only six followers, who’ll no doubt be kept abreast of his legal travails.
ON THE MOVE
RAPID change continues in the State Government’s media minder circle. Michels Warren PR operative and former Advertiser journo Callie Watson (left) is the latest to make the jump, but has not yet been assigned a minister. Former SA Tourism commissioner spinner Jessica Playford returns from Hong Kong to take care of Police Minister Peter Malinauskas.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
TOM Phillips, who was the boss of Mitsubishi Motors Australia from 2000 to 2005 when the closure of the Tonsley plant was announced, is still getting rubber to hit the road as chair of the Southern Adelaide Economic Development Board.
The SAEDB, a joint initiative of Marion and Onkaparinga councils, has created an economic development plan to 2021 to boost prospects for the region.
Phillips, 69, also chairs the board of Flinders Partners, the commercialisation arm of Flinders University. In addition, he is active on the board of the SafeWork SA Advisory Committee and is a director of Archer Exploration.
He witnessed the pain of workers when Mitsubishi left and has closely seen the transformation of the site into what’s now the Tonsley industrial precinct. The man with 40 years of automotive experience, who started his stint at Holden, will no doubt have a sense of deja vu when the Elizabeth plant shuts down, most likely next year.
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