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Executives and celebrities race for Paris, but politicians drop out

By Kishor Napier-Raman and Stephen Brook

As business leaders, celebrities, sporting bureaucrats and miscellaneous hangers-on head to Paris for the Olympics, one group that will be largely sidelined are politicians.

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Neither Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and partner Jodie Haydon, nor Governor-General Sam Mostyn will be making the trip to Paris to cheer on the Australian team, with official duties instead falling to Sports Minister Anika Wells.

While in Sydney 2000 geographic proximity and host nation status made it politically acceptable for Prime Minister John Howard and wife Janette to turn into Games superfans, straitened times have even prevented politicians of 2032 host city Brisbane from attending.

Neither premier Steven Miles nor opposition leader David Crisafulli, who is rated a good chance of winning October’s election, will be in Paris. As far as we can tell, the most senior Queensland politician heading to France will be Gold Coast mayor Tom Tate.

The announcement of Australia’s flag bearers at the Monnaie de Paris on Wednesday will be a big event. Jessica Mauboy will be there to sing Higher, the official song of the Australian Olympic team, a track which was chosen with input from chef de mission Anna Meares and AOC Athletes Commission chair Cate Campbell.

Among the big sporting codes, rugby league is heading to Paris, while Victorian footy is staying home. Racing and NRL honcho Peter “Showbags” V’Landys and the league’s chief executive Andrew Abdo are the most prominent local sport administrators to attend.

As CBD previously reported, Hollywood superstar Nicole Kidman will head to Marseille to watch the Matildas. Catherine West, the new chair of broadcaster Nine (owner of this masthead) will attend the Paris Games, along with chief executive Mike Sneesby and other executives. Somewhere, Peter Costello is seething.

Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart will be in the stands in her capacity as a key sponsor of athletes competing in swimming, artistic swimming, beach volleyball and rowing, among others.

Katie Paige, the chief executive of key sponsor Harvey Norman, has confirmed her attendance at Paris.

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Former Olympic rower Rob Scott, better known as managing director of Wesfarmers, is another confirmed attendee. So is his wife Liz Scott, a member of the AOC executive. She won a gold medal at the Sydney Games in the water polo as Liz Weekes.

As former Olympians, they don’t come any bigger than swimming great Dawn Fraser, who has been invited to attend.

John Coates, AOC president from 1990 to 2022, will be there in his role as a vice president of the IOC, although he is retiring.

At the elections on July 24, AOC president Ian Chesterman will stand for election to the IOC.

Sydney to Hobart yachting identity Matt Allen is going. He is an AOC vice president, as is Evelyn Halls, a former fencer and dispute resolution lawyer.

One-time senator and federal minister for sport, Mark Arbib, is a member of the AOC executive.

LUNCH MONEY

Well, it’s been a hell of a week for the CFMEU. Revelations published in this masthead that the bad boys of the organised labour movement were getting in bed with bikies and other unsavoury underworld types forced the Albanese government to put the union into administration.

But some of the comrades still found reason to celebrate. Or perhaps commiserate. CBD’s spies spotted the CFMEU’s NSW construction division president Rita Mallia enjoying a long lunch at picturesque beachside Italian joint Pilu at Freshwater, before the entourage kicked onto Potts Point for more drinks.

Mallia is a key supporter of the controversial former Victorian state secretary John Setka (who quit hours before the investigation into the union was published) and NSW secretary Darren Greenfield, who insists on staying on despite facing corruption charges.

And on Friday, the NSW division took to Instagram to claim that the CFMEU was under “unprecedented attack.”

“CFMEU members are not stupid. They won’t be fooled by a rotten media hell-bent on destroying hard-fought-for and won conditions,” the union wrote.

No wonder Mallia seemed so unbothered by everything.

DIVINE COMEDY

Richard Alston, a former communications minister in the Howard government best known for his prodigious complaints about the ABC, has found a handy post-political career as a man of letters.

The retired Victorian Liberal senator, who served a couple of years in that most plum of post-political postings as High Commission to the United Kingdom, has already penned recent tomes on the public broadcaster (Their ABC: Inside Australia’s Largest Sheltered Workshop) and those smug inner city virtue signallers (The Trouble With Elites). Now he’s onto a topic closer to his heart – the medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri.

Alston’s The Glory of Dante is set to be released next month by Connor Court, the publisher of choice for Australia’s conservative thought leaders.

Alston told CBD his first failed encounters with Dante were during his school days. After forming a friendship with writer Clive James while in London, whose wife Prue Shaw is a world-renowned Dante scholar, Alston thought “well I’d better read the bloody thing”.

Now he’s fully across the nine circles of hell, does Alston think the 14th century Italian writer has any lessons for our contemporary politicians?

“Be true to what you know to be right,” Alston said. And he reckons that makes US President Joe Biden, whose position on abortion has evolved from scepticism to support, a “pretend Catholic”. Lord knows what that makes Donald Trump.

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Original URL: https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/cbd/executives-and-celebrities-race-for-paris-but-politicians-drop-out-20240721-p5jvbu.html