By Noel Towell and Kishor Napier-Raman
It’s not exactly an Australian democratic tradition for authorities to call for calm around polling places, but the state election keeps getting uglier and that’s just what the Victorian Electoral Commission has been forced to do after just a couple of days of pre-polling.
The commission called on Monday for candidates and supporters to stay on the right side of electoral laws, which provide for up to five years behind bars in cases of violence or intimidation around voting centres.
The reminder came after an incident at the St Albans voting centre earlier that day between Hakki Suleyman – father of local Labor MP Natalie Suleyman – and a Freedom Party activist required the electoral commission booth manager to defuse the situation, with both parties claiming the other was at fault.
Responding to CBD’s inquiries, a commission spokesperson took the chance to “remind candidates and their volunteers to adhere to the conduct guidelines, as election managers have the power and authority to request the removal of any person who is behaving in a disorderly manner or causing a disturbance”.
Both the Freedom Party and Labor have lodged complaints with the commission and police, both alleging harassment at the polling booth at Werribee, where an alleged incident occurred on Tuesday between Treasurer Tim Pallas and Freedom candidate Mark Strother.
North East Border Trades & Labour Council secretary Chip Eling is nursing a broken leg after an alleged assault by a man enraged over the state’s COVID-19 response at a voting centre in Wodonga just half an hour after polls opened on Monday morning.
Police said on Wednesday they were still investigating and that no one had been charged.
ETERNAL FAME
Departing CSIRO boss Larry Marshall was pegged by staff at the federal scientific agency as, well, a confident fellow as soon as he was ushered in the door by the Abbott government – which didn’t bother with a science minister – in 2015.
Long-term vision: Larry Marshall.Credit: John Shakespeare
With his Silicon Valley jargon and willingness to discuss his achievements as a tech entrepreneur, some of the public sector organisation’s workforce didn’t quite know what to make of Marshall.
And we’re delighted to learn, after Marshall announced on Tuesday he would depart when his term expires in June, that nearly eight years in the federal bureaucracy haven’t changed him.
Marshall’s email sign-off to staff on Tuesday contained a lengthy list of the CSIRO’s achievements under the “Strategy 2020” he launched in mid-2015.
“I’m confident it will continue to see CSIRO grow in trust and respect for many years, decades, and even centuries to come,” he reckons.
Centuries, eh? There have Roman emperors with less lofty ambitions than that.
THAI FLYER
Former City of Melbourne councillor Tessa Sullivan has spent too long being best known as the highest-profile victim of disgraced ex-lord mayor Robert Doyle’s sexual harassment.
So it’s nice to see Sullivan opening a new chapter, even if her new gig is a little out of left field.
She has been appointed as Thailand’s honorary consul to Victoria, with a select crowd invited to a soiree to mark the occasion.
Sullivan, who is of Thai heritage, did not respond to CBD’s request for a chat.
WHITE-COLLAR BLUES
CBD’s eyebrows nudged northward at the news that former van Eyk chief executive Mark Thomas has managed to stay out of jail this week over his role in the collapse of the financial services outfit.
The wheels of justice were in no hurry on this job: nearly nine years passed between Thomas’ offending – using his position as a director dishonestly with the intention of obtaining an advantage for himself, to give it its official title – and Monday’s sentencing in the NSW District Court.
Van Eyk collapsed in 2014 after Macquarie Investment Management pulled the pin on $5 million in loans to van Eyk subsidiaries after the millionaires factory became worried about van Eyk pushing millions of dollars of investors’ funds into a Cayman Islands-based fund.
Macquarie was later hit with a $400,000 fine – and $200,000 in legal costs – and had to shell out $30 million to compensate investors stung in the van Eyk collapse after admitting, in another Australian Securities and Investments Commission-instigated case, that it had mismanaged its exposure to the once-respected investment house.
In the wake of the van Eyk collapse, it emerged Thomas had been moving millions of dollars between van Eyk subsidiaries and using the money to stave off takeover attempts and keep the companies under his control without properly disclosing the purpose of the loans.
The former chief executive copped 15 months behind bars for that lot, but he won’t see the inside of a cell – if he keeps his nose clean – as the court agreed to let Thomas serve his sentence via an intensive corrections order after it noted there “was no investor loss”.
We wonder what they made of that at Macquarie HQ.
WEDDING PARTY
It’s been five years since Australians overwhelmingly voted in favour of marriage equality, and the sky has not fallen in, unless you count the brief storm that forced a Tuesday night commemorative event at NSW Parliament House to hastily move indoors.
The reception, hosted by Equality Australia and brought to Macquarie Street by Sydney independent Alex Greenwich, brought together some of the protagonists from that moment.
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Malcolm Turnbull, the prime minister who presided over the tortured plebiscite process, made an appearance, along with his wife Lucy.
He was joined by a smattering of his fellow Liberal moderates: Senator Dean Smith, who introduced the private member’s bill to parliament, and now deposed MPs Dave Sharma and Trevor Evans. Evans, who was Queensland’s first openly gay federal MP, opposed the marriage equality postal plebiscite, preferring a parliamentary vote.
And while Turnbull has copped flak for dragging Australia through that process, Smith was full of praise for the former PM’s role in legislating marriage equality.
A pity Malcolm and Lucy had already left by the time he got up to speak.
From the Labor side, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus gave a few remarks, with NSW Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council Penny Sharpe showing up, while Newtown MLA Jenny Leong was there for the Greens. But the biggest celebrity was five-time Olympic gold medallist Ian Thorpe, who was a high-profile advocate for marriage equality, and who recently popped up in Equality Australia’s campaign against the Morrison government’s unsuccessful religious discrimination bill.
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