Off The Record: News and juicy gossip from South Australia’s corridors of power

THIS week in Off The Record; Politics and show business collide for a cutting-edge show at the Adelaide Fringe, footage of Tziporah Malkah with a cigarette goes up in smoke and Nick Xenophon gets lost in the moment during yet another candidate announcement.

SA Best Leader Nick Xenophon with his candidate James Sadler.Picture by Matt Turner

THIS week in Off The Record; Politics and show business collide for a cutting-edge show at the Adelaide Fringe, footage of Tziporah Malkah with a cigarette goes up in smoke and Nick Xenophon gets lost in the moment during yet another candidate announcement.

Politics scarier than naked act

POLITICS is often called show business for ugly people but it’s rare that the two professions entwine, particularly during the heat of an election campaign.

However, the performer dubbed Adelaide’s international queen of cabaret, Anya Anastasia, is “indulging and dismembering the nation’s political and social current affairs” in a new show that has its world premiere at the Adelaide Fringe.

Called The Executioners, it runs from March 8-12 at The Lab – finishing its season just five days before the state election.

Off the Record understands Anastasia has spoken to several key political figures as part of her research, although the detail of any revelations in the show is tightly held.

Queen of cabaret, Anya Anastasia

That said, the publicity blurb says The Executioners is “cutting-edge”, “tongue-in-cheek, provocative” and cuts “cleverly close to the bone”.

“Wearing your politics on your sleeve is scarier than taking your clothes off in front of people, and it’s more controversial,” Anya says.

Ironically, Bank SA chairman Peter Hanlon – whose firm was hurled into political byplay with last year’s failed bank tax – is a key collaborator and a producer, through his Adelaide-based independent production company Living Not Beige.

A former chief executive of Westpac’s Australian Financial Services division, Hanlon is also a director of the South Australian Museum.

“This multidisciplinary cabaret is driven by the urgent political agenda of several highly skilled and socially aware individuals,” the blurb says.

Sounds intriguing.

When the news goes up in smoke

NOW, Off the Record isn’t in the habit of offering advice to the criminal community, or even those innocent people who may have been caught up for one reason or another.

However, perhaps they should bear the following in mind next time.

Local TV news directors are hesitant about showing people smoking in their bulletins.

This came to light when the former model now known as Tziporah Malkah, left, and formerly as Kate Fischer, exited the Victor Harbor Magistrates Court while smoking.

The camos downed tools as they believed the footage wouldn’t see the light of day because of the cigarette. But they may have been over-cautious.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority told Off the Record that there was a ban on advertising tobacco, but that didn’t necessarily extend to screening news footage shot for television bulletins.

Tziporah Malkah outside court, in Victor Harbor. Picture: Dylan Coker

Poking the Liberal BEAR just weeks from state election

AN outbreak of factional infighting is just about the last thing Liberal leader Steven Marshall needs, just 35 days out from the state election.

Yet South Australian federal Liberal backbencher Nicolle Flint’s decision this week to speak out against Treasurer Scott Morrison’s new accountability regime for banks might be a portent of the sort of internecine internal conflict for which the party is renowned.

Flint, pictured, the Boothby MP, ruffled a few feathers when she cautioned against falling “into the dangerous bank-bashing mob mentality which, while potentially beneficial in the short-term, will hurt ... Australians in the long-term”.

Even though Flint does not intend to vote against the government’s Bank Executive Accountability Regime, or BEAR, a backbencher attacking government policy never goes down well with party powerbrokers.

Given Flint is firmly entrenched in the Liberal Right and the SA Liberal leadership, state and federally, are Moderates, it was like, dare we say, poking the bear. Marshall, a Moderate, has enjoyed a sustained outbreak of factional peace within state parliamentary ranks, helped by the guiding hands and support of senior SA Liberals and Moderates Christopher Pyne and Simon Birmingham.

This is despite a split within the Liberals of historic proportions when leading Right figure and former party president Cory Bernardi last year formed the Australian Conservatives.

That said, the Right leader who controlled the state Liberals in the early part of this century, Nick Minchin, is, as we revealed last week, happily helping the state campaign.

We even hear he joined Marshall, Birmingham and party president John Olsen (Right) for a strategy meeting at party HQ a few weeks ago.

Federal Liberal backbencher Nicolle Flint. Picture Kym Smith

Almost fully employed

SANJEEV Gupta is famous for keeping a shuttered Welsh steel mill’s entire workforce on the payroll for more than a year while he brought it back up to scratch for a full restart.

Gupta said yesterday every one of those workers, who were allowed to also work elsewhere during the period they were on half pay, came back to work for him. Apart from two, but they had died, which seems a fair excuse.

Hottest list in town
OUR list of South Australia’s 100 Most Influential People unleashed a big buzz around the top end of town.

Desperate to know if they were on the list, powerbrokers and/or their minions fruitlessly contacted the panel of leaders from The Advertiser newsroom – and even tried others not in the know.

One major corporate was even running a sweep during the week, as groups of 20 were revealed each day, about who would come in at number one.

Of course, our subscribers were the first to find out, on Advertiser.com.au.

Big blooper

IT’S not quite like former Adelaide Crow and Liberal Norwood candidate Nigel Smart not knowing the Orange Lane Markets were no more.

But political phenomenon and SA Best leader Nick Xenophon, above, knew that he’d made a blooper when he got the name wrong of Athelstone’s Eastern United Football Club, when announcing James Sadler as his party’s Morialta candidate.

SA Best leader Nick Xenophon with his candidate James Sadler at the Eastern Adelaide... errr Eastern United Football Club. Picture by Matt Turner

“We’re at the grounds of the Eastern Adelaide Football Club,” Xenophon said this week, before Sadler quickly corrected him. You can hear it for yourself at the very end of this week’s episode of the Off The Record podcast here.

Time heals
THERE is no doubt Kevin Naughton is a man of many talents: radio host, raconteur and former chief of staff to the now ex-government minister Martin Hamilton-Smith. Since Hamilton-Smith’s departure, Naughton has been elevated to a senior adviser position within Jay Weatherill’s office, whispering in his ear about all things investment and trade.

To see Naughton so firmly in the bosom of Labor is a little ironic. Naughton, then working for the Libs, was among those sued in 2009 after the “dodgy documents’’ affair.