It’s been public knowledge for a while, but we had to see it to believe it: private equity baron Ben Gray with his arm around the Rail, Tram and Bus Union’s Victorian secretary Luba Grigorovitch.

One the corporate turnaround barbarian, the other bare-knuckle labour rights protagonist. At Rod Laver Arena for the Australian Open women’s final on Saturday night, the son of Tasmanian Liberal premier Robin Gray clearly smitten with a powerbroker of Victorian Labor’s militant industrial left.