By Kishor Napier-Raman and Stephen Brook
What do Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Labor icon Graham Richardson, Nine Network entertainment guru Richard Wilkins and former Socceroo Mark Bosnich have in common?
They were all lunching together at The Malaya in Darling Harbour last Sunday, where they were spotted by a CBD reader cunningly disguised as a bowl of laksa.
Anthony Albanese, Graham Richardson, Richard Wilkins and Mark Bosnich.
As our nation’s leader, Albanese ends up breaking bread (or roti, as the case may be) with all manner of people, some more colourful than others. As does Richo, the famed Labor powerbroker, and one of the greatest practitioners of the art of lunching this nation has ever produced.
But the sight of this formidable foursome at the same table was a true fellas moment. And another sign of Richo’s remarkable longevity as a man about town.
“Albo and I are old mates, and we have lunch together occasionally,” he told CBD, informing us he was also old mates with Bosnich and Wilkins. Indeed, CBD reported a few months ago those two attended the former senator turned Sky News pundit and lobbyist’s birthday lunch at the very same restaurant.
Which represents quite the remarkable comeback for Bozza, a now beloved pundit whose journeyman career in the Premier League was better known for his off-field incidents and extra-curricular activities than his goalkeeping.
Now he’s made it all the way to the prime minister’s table. Who said Australia doesn’t do second chances?
Musical chairs
CBD reported yesterday about a couple of high-profile ex-politicians getting handed plum board roles by NSW Arts Minister John Graham.
It really is the giving season, because we can now confirm former Labor minister Bob Debus will also get a gig, having been confirmed as the next president of the Library Council, the governing body of the State Library of NSW. The former Blue Mountains MP was a minister in the Wran, Carr and Iemma governments. He later switched to federal politics, serving for a term as Kevin Rudd’s home affairs minister.
He replaces former Nationals MP George Souris, an arts minister in Barry O’Farrell’s government, who finishes his term as Library Council president. What a time to be an ex-pollie.
Debus, also minister assisting the premier in arts under Wran and Carr, told us: “I cherish the great cultural institutions of our state and it’s a particular honour to be moving to this position at the State Library.
“I think libraries are getting more important, not less, as the technological revolution continues.”
Eat the bugs
Education Minister Jason Clare seems a straight-laced sort, the kind of guy who declares every little decorative keychain he’s gifted on his register of interests.
So CBD was a little surprised to see that, according to data on the Inter-Parliamentary Expenses Authority, Clare had billed taxpayers $3500 for his home internet for a mere three months of usage. Talk about fibre to the node!
We recalled the time when former Coalition minister for failing upward Stuart Robert was forced to repay $38,000 in excessive home internet charges to the taxpayer. Presumably he was just playing a lot of Fortnite or whatever. A case of history repeating?
Clare’s expenses report just didn’t stack up – the same data also suggested he paid back about $1000. The whole thing was a mystery to Clare’s office too – they had no record of him billing that kind of money on home internet, which was set up and managed by the Department of Finance. A spokesperson told us the charges seemed “irregular”.
“The minister has written to the department for an explanation about these charges.
“The Department of Finance has confirmed Telstra are investigating and so far, have identified one credit owing to the Commonwealth,” they said.
Meanwhile, CBD’s enquiries were referred to the Department of Finance, who eventually confirmed the minister had never paid any money back to the taxpayer. The discrepancies, you see, related to how the data was recorded. Or something.
A very messy situation, but it seems like Clare is in the clear. Public transparency, however, is not. Expenses data for politicians only came back online in late 2023 after being offline for a year-and-a-half following a botched software upgrade.
Seems like all that time offline still hasn’t cleaned the bugs out of the system.
On point
This week, the teal independent Wentworth MP Allegra Spender became the latest to declare that she’d torn up her membership of the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge.
But the airline hasn’t slowed down its practice of showering our elected representatives with perks. Resources Minister Madeleine King declared she’d been gifted 75,000 Qantas frequent flyer points from the national carrier. She declared a similar gift two years ago.
We hear King got the points because she is probably cabinet’s most frequent flyer, regularly travelling between her Perth electorate and Canberra. By our calculations, Qantas’ gift gets you about three-quarters of an economy class return flight to London.
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