Inside the networks of new Premier and Cabinet chief Jim McDowell
IN this week’s Off the Record, we delve into the deep networks of our state’s new top public servant — and reveal speculation about the famed Christmas Pageant getting a new St Nick.
IN this week’s Off the Record, we delve into the deep networks of our state’s new top public servant and reveal speculation about the famed Christmas Pageant getting a new St Nick.
Plus we uncover why some of our politicians are home but a little broken-hearted, and borrow from Monty Python to ask if there are any women interested in Adelaide University’s prestigious Council.
Inside the deep networks of our state’s new top public servant
WITH new Premier and Cabinet chief Jim McDowell’s extensive experience and wide network, it’s little wonder Premier Steven Marshall press-ganged him into the job.
The affable Belfast-born former BAE Systems Australian and Saudi Arabian chief has lived in Adelaide for most of this century yet has extensive ties in the corporate and political world far beyond the state’s borders.
During his time as BAE’s Adelaide-based Australian chief, from 2001 to 2011, McDowell forged a strong working relationship with former defence minister and SA Liberal senator Robert Hill.
More recently, the pair were members of the First Principles Review team, which recommended an overhaul of the Defence Department and attacked its waste, inefficiency and rework.
McDowell also is close to Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne, the state’s most senior Liberal, who last December appointed him as chairman of the first Defence Cooperative Research Centre for Trusted Autonomous Systems. This focuses on smart-machine technologies.
McDowell and his family are close associates of Liberal state director Sascha Meldrum, Hill’s former media adviser, and her husband Chris Keane, a former Liberal adviser and a long-time BAE Systems executive who worked with McDowell there.
Among McDowell’s extensive board experience is the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, which he chaired.
Just a day before Marshall, in November 2016, overturned bipartisan support for further study of the case for an international nuclear waste repository, McDowell predicted the project could reap up to $500 billion for the state — almost double the estimates at the time. Presumably he won’t be raising that with the boss now.
McDowell also is respected in Labor circles. UniSA’s council, of which he was chancellor, includes former health minister and Labor state secretary John Hill and board director Mary Patetsos, wife of former federal Labor Cabinet minister Nick Bolkus. In this role, McDowell even got to present an honorary doctorate to Barry Humphries, pictured above.
Home and broken hearted
MOTOR-HOME cruising new Labor MP Blair Boyer has been having a war of words with Treasurer Rob Lucas over the location of his electorate office — but it turns out he should be blaming former treasurer Tom Koutsantonis for his predicament.
According to a Treasury minute provided to Off the Record by Lucas, his predecessor rejected a request in March last year to provide $2 million for 10 new offices required by the redrawing of electoral boundaries. Electoral Services manager Paul Tatarelli askedKoutsantonisfor$1.5 million to find alternative accommodation in Fisher, Davenport, Lee, Mawson, Mitchell, Napier, Reynell, Taylor, Waite and Wright, plus another $500,000 for breaking leases.
In the case of Wright, its electorate office in the Golden Grove Village was occupied for 20 years by long-serving Labor MP Jennifer Rankine but moved into the new seat of King — won in March by Liberal candidate Paula Luethen.
Luethen subsequently moved in, leaving Mr Lucas with the job of finding a new office in Wright for Boyer, who chose to use a motor home and Virginia office as temporary bases.
Electoral Services officers this month signed a lease on an office for Boyer in a Salisbury East shopping centre to which he has objected, saying he wants to be based in Golden Grove closer to the bulk of his constituents.
His reaction has drawn a fierce response from Lucas, who told the Legislative Council this week Boyer’s constituents in Salisbury “deserve representation as much as the constituents in the other leafier sections of his particular electorate”.
Lucas said Boyer “for some bizarre reason” seemed to think he had a “God-given right” to “own, inhabit or possess” the office now occupied by Luethen.
The situation could have been avoided, he said, if Koutsantonis had taken the “sensible” action sought by Tatarelli and planned ahead, rather than turning down his request for funding. — Colin James
St Nick’s pageant takeover
BANKSA, under boss Nick Reade, pictured below, is being coy about whether it’s in the mix as the next major backer of the Christmas Pageant, with the naming rights up for grabs from next year.
A consortium of credit unions is supporting this year’s event — and has done so since 1996 — but the popular event will be looking for a new benefactor for 2019.
BankSA would only say that “as you know, BankSA is a strong supporter of some of SA’s most loved community events, including the Royal Adelaide Show and Fringe, and we will consider other opportunities’’.
The most famous event sponsor was John Martin’s, the former department store whose founder, Sir Edward Hayward, took inspiration from events such as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York, way back in 1933. The pageant would be a good brand fit for the bank, although the organisation does heavy lifting on the community front already.
Bottling up a red roasting for state’s powerbrokers
IN the dead of winter, what better way for politicians to warm up than a roasting at the annual Mid Winter Ball?
Co-host Mark Soderstrom, who hosts the Mix 102.3 breakfast show with Jodie Oddy when he’s not over at Channel 7 on sport duties, reckons he’ll be leaning pretty heavily on Seven offsider Jess Adamson for her political insights.
The hosts are just putting the finishing touches to the running sheet for the night. Soda reckons Premier Steven Marshall might be a bit “jumpy” on the night, but we’ll have to wait and see what he means.
About 550 of the state’s business, political and media elite will attend the event at Adelaide Oval next week, with sponsors such as Beach Energy, Electranet, BankSA and Telstra supporting what has been an annual knees up for seven years now.
This year proceeds raised will go to the Carly Ryan Foundation and The Road Home.
Torbreck Vintners has kindly chipped in an epic six litre bottle of Run Rig shiraz viognier which should have the chief execs digging deep at auction time. The event is also supported by The Advertiser.
Kym’s new band is a gas, gas, gas
FORMER rocker and senior Labor bureaucrat Kym Winter-Dewhirst is getting the band back together — or maybe it’s more of a crossover supergroup.
The former Department of Premier and Cabinet chief executive is heading up a bid to import gas into SA through Outer Harbour.
He’s joined by former Olympic Dam boss Dean Dalla Valle — who KWD worked with during his own time at BHP, and Brer Adams, former chief of staff to former Labor Health Minister John Hill.
KWD himself was also a former COS to Hill, from 2002-04.
Are there any women here?
ADELAIDE Uni graduates are currently voting to elect one of their own to the prestigious university’s Council. Ten men have put their names forward for the position, but no women. An oddity to say the least.
The council, which runs the Uni, currently has 14 members, of which only three are women. Among the blokes running for the one spot reserved for graduates are former deputy premier Graham Ingerson, below, current council member Robin Day and lawyer Richard Kimber, brother of Director of Public Prosecutions Adam Kimber.
