CBD brought word on Monday that ACT Senator David Pocock decided to go full whistleblower and create an opt-in register for MPs to declare any lobbyists and other friends they’d sponsored for a Parliament House access pass.

The headline act was Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar, who as CBD reported, got in thanks to teal independent MP Allegra Spender. We hear that’s because of Farquhar’s role as chair of the rudderless Tech Council of Australia. Spender chairs the Parliamentary Friends of Innovation and Start-ups and sponsored Farquhar’s pass in that capacity.

A few other names on the Pocock list piqued our interest. The jacked former Wallabies captain granted access to Instagram talking head Konrad Michalski, better known as Punters Politics, who was a bit of a darling at the Midwinter Ball in August, posing for an infamous photo carried by four teal MPs.

Pocock also granted access to Alex Dyson, the Triple J host turned independent who thrice unsuccessfully challenged Liberal frontbencher Dan Tehan in his regional Victorian seat of Wannon despite this time having a massive $2.2 million campaign war chest (a little more than the $1.1 million he initially declared on his own website). We hope, for their sake, the price of Pocock’s sponsorship isn’t accompanying the senator on one of his brutal workouts.

Meanwhile, Tasmanian independent MP Andrew Wilkie sponsored a pass for journalist Peter Greste, who is being played by Richard Roxburgh in a film dramatising his harrowing imprisonment in Egypt.

Despite Pocock’s valiant crusade, which has the teals on board, nobody from Labor, the Coalition or the Greens has signed up to his new register. And we don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Lobby land

Speaking of walking the corridors of power, the latest name to land on the federal government’s lobbying register is former NSW Labor leader Luke Foley, listed as a principal consultant at government relations firm Govstrat.

The bipartisan firm also employs former Liberal senator Zed Seselja, and ex-Queensland premier Rob Borbridge, and has a client list that includes Rio Tinto and AGL.

CBD hears Foley has been doing consulting work for Govstrat for some years but was added only recently to the federal government’s register in anticipation of potential engagements in Canberra.

Foley, who quit the leadership after being accused of harassment by an ABC journalist (which he’s always denied), still pops up around Macquarie Street every now so often, and could be up for a new gig if reports linking him to a spot on the Greyhound Racing NSW board – an organisation with about as much baggage as Labor in its wilderness years – are true.

Abbott the lifesaver

Some people just attract headlines. Case in point, former prime minister Tony Abbott, without whom several prominent media outlets including this very column might sometimes struggle for content.

Setting aside his long and significant political career, Abbott also lays claim to a rich and varied hinterland of stuff just happening to him.

There was the time in the 2000s that a Parliament House sound recordist turned out to be the long-lost son he thought he had fathered out of wedlock as a teenager and given up for adoption. (Even more bizarrely, the whole thing turned out to be a case of mistaken identity).

There was the time PM28 raced into a burning building during the height of the bushfire crisis in 2020.

Or the time a luggage scanner at Melbourne Airport ruthlessly swallowed up his new spectacles.

Not to mention a train-wreck prime ministership that lasted barely two years.

Now we are greatly indebted to Sydney commercial FM radio (a phrase we can’t believe we are typing) for bringing to our attention the time back in the 1980s a youthful Abbott saved a woman and her little ones from a house fire.

To quote the somewhat breathless press release: “Speaking on 2DayFM’s The Jimmy & Nath Show with Emma, Sky from Balmain revealed she’s been searching for her mystery hero for 34 years.”

As “Sky from Balmain” told Jimmy (or was it Nath or Emma?): “When I was four-years-old, my house had burnt down on top of us, basically, and a gentleman pulled us out of the building, like he ripped the bars off the windows and everything! And it took me 34 years to find out who it was, because I’ve been searching forever, and it was actually Tony Abbott.”

Abbott confirmed the incident to CBD.

“Yes, it’s broadly correct. I was with a couple of mates at the Bald Rock Hotel … and we suddenly noticed flames coming from a top storey window of the house next door.

“There were young kids behind a barred window on the ground floor who couldn’t get out. I found a bit of pipe and smashed the (locked) back glass door to let the family out. No heroics really, just a good team effort to make sure people were safe.”

Back to Sky: “I’d love to take him back to that pub and have a beer. And you know, you know, thank him for saving my life, but I have actually been in contact with his office, and he said yes, that was me”.

This column would also personally love Sky from Balmain to take Tony from Warringah for a beer, or perhaps better, an onion.

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