The risk of reacting to something you dismiss as “silly” is that you end up looking like it. Macquarie chairman Glenn Stevens waded into the drama of the company’s prized $75 million a year audit contract at Thursday’s eventful AGM, addressing the conflicts around the board’s chair of audit Michelle Hinchliffe.

Stevens described the stories about Hinchliffe’s deep ties to KPMG (one of those bidding for the contract) as “silly talk” because she was a “highly credentialled” former partner of the consulting firm. Parking that this column repeatedly described her as exactly that, we won’t be offended because of what came next.