By Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell
Anyone who isn’t a diehard monarchist might be forgiven for forgetting that King Charles III will be crowned in London this weekend.
Illustration: John Shakespeare.Credit:
But even though he has been doing the job since the moment of his mother’s passing, guiding those bereft Britons through months of mourning, he must have a special ceremony, during which Australians are asked to cry out and swear allegiance to the monarch.
Tickets to the pomp party are limited – but Anthony Albanese will be there, along with his hand-picked list of illustrious Australians, which includes figures like singer Nick Cave and Matildas star Sam Kerr.
It’s little surprise that some of the country’s leading monarchists, who aren’t the biggest fans of the Albanese government, didn’t make the cut. Still, we expected some of the House of Windsor’s biggest fans to at least head to London to soak up the ceremony.
Not so, says Australian Monarchist League boss Philip Benwell, who tells us he’s staying at home because “there’s too much to do in Australia”.
Members of the Australian Monarchist League, including Philip Benwell (second from left), at a gathering in Sydney’s Paddington last year.Credit: Steven Siewert
Given the lack of passion around King Charles, perhaps he has a point. Everyone from the league, which recently added former Liberal Senator Eric Abetz as national director, is doing the same.
FIT QUIT
Struggling homegrown fitness franchise F45 has cut one of the last remaining ties with its Australian roots. Investors on the New York Stock Exchange have been alerted that co-founder Adam (not the cricketer) Gilchrist is no longer a director.
That’s it. The company’s management has not provided any further details about the departure and Gilchrist is a hard man to track down these days after changing his number, deleting his socials and generally ducking out of public view not long after he stepped down as F45 chief executive last year with a $10 million golden handshake.
The one-time Australian schoolboy rugby union player’s famed property portfolio seems to be shrinking like his public profile, after he sold townhouses on Sydney’s northern beaches last year for a combined $23 million. Another pad, in Byron Bay, is listed for sale with an expected price tag of $11 million.
So much to talk about, but CBD’s efforts to track Gilchrist down have been in vain. His old mate and F45 co-founder Rob Deutsch – who said last year that Gilchrist was “tough to get hold of these days” – was no help either, and appears to have changed his number.
JONESING FOR SHARMA
It’s been nearly four months since the death of Senator Jim Molan, and still the Liberals haven’t settled on a replacement.
For a hot minute, ex-Wentworth MP Dave Sharma was a tangentially linked name, but recently confirmed he hadn’t nominated during an appearance on Alan Jones’ ADH TV web show, where the shock jock is serving out his retirement.
Jones, a diehard conservative, gave a surprisingly full-throated endorsement of the more moderate Sharma to return to parliament.
“Sharma’s intellectual quotient would outstrip the collective intellectual ability of almost all who currently determine the direction of the Liberal party,” he said.
“I suspect some hack will be given the nod by faceless administrators,” Jones said of the vacant Senate seat, which might have offended current frontrunners, former NSW transport minister Andrew Constance and state president Maria Kovacic.
Jones’ pleas for Sharma to put his hat in the ring fell on deaf ears. The ex-MP said he’d decided not to nominate, but teased at the prospect of making a return, saying he’d be keen to put himself forward for electoral office “when the time is right”.
Allegra Spender best watch out – Sharma could be out to lose Wentworth for a third time!
BAR BAR BLACK SHEEP
Looks like even elite Victorian barristers aren’t immune to the old Sydney versus Melbourne rivalry.
After the NSW Bar Association threw its weight behind an Indigenous Voice to parliament weeks ago, there’s been some impatience among Bleak City’s wigs and gowns about the Victorian Bar Council’s failure to do the same.
But the Council’s president Sam Hay, KC, is in a tricky position. He’ll cop it from some right-wing media if the council backs the constitutional change, and recently told members he’s being lobbied hard by barristers on all sides of the debate.
That vigorous debate among Victoria’s barristers has led to a rather curly conversation between Hay and his NSW counterpart Gabrielle Bashir, SC, after conservative Melbourne silk Stuart Wood, KC, told the Murdoch press that lawyers backing the Voice might be doing so for financial gain and that “NSW is just a joke”.
Another unnamed “senior Victorian silk” was quoted as saying the NSW barristers’ stance was “moral bullying”.
Awkward indeed for Hay who told local barristers that he’d reassured Bashir that “that many of the comments attributed to the unnamed ‘senior Victorian silk’ were offensive and wrong and should not have been made.”
Wood was contacted for comment.
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