By Noel Towell and Kishor Napier-Raman
We’re connoisseurs, here at CBD, of a fiery annual general meeting, and we reckon that Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ) — one of three professional bodies for the nation’s bean counters — might have a wild one in a couple of weeks.
Nobody paid much mind last Monday when the not-for-profit group lived well beyond that description, publishing its FY23 financials featuring a $13 million loss, quite an effort for the people who are meant to be good with money. A $10 million asset write-down didn’t help, in fairness.
But things took a twist this week when one of the CA ANZ’s 136,000 members, Brisbane accountant Jason Andrew, took to LinkedIn — where you come for the networking and stay for the fighting — to roast the organisation’s financial management.
Andrew clearly hit a nerve as a bunch of other professionals piled onto the site with their own criticisms, some of them even invoking the dreaded name of Alex Malley, the former CEO of rival outfit Chartered Practising Accountants - who was sacked in 2017 and later stripped of life membership of the organisation.
The online furore prompted CA ANZ’s member engagement dude Mark Rice to log on and tackle Andrew on questions of accuracy and explain that the deficit had been telegraphed in the previous two years’ annual reports, as part of a five-year financial management strategy upon which the membership had been consulted.
But that didn’t silence the dissent, with the LinkedIn discussion going on and on, attracting a fair bit of disagreement too with the original attack.
So it seems reasonable to expect a lively time at the AGM on October 20 when the group’s chief executive Ainslie Van Onselen will present the year’s results at a virtual event. Bring it on, a spokesperson told us on Thursday.
“CA ANZ welcomes engagement by our members with the annual report and with the performance of the organisation,” she said. “We’re committed to transparency and welcome informed discussion because an active membership is a vibrant membership.”
PLUMBING HEIGHTS?
Political advisers, especially the ones who worked for Dan Andrews’s government, are not usually singled out for special appreciation. It’s a dirty job and all that…
But Plumbers’ Union maverick secretary and Labor Right powerbroker Earl Setches, who knows more than most about dirty jobs and isn’t one for bowing to the whims of convention, wasn’t shy last Friday night at Trades Hall, showering some love, and some of his members’ money, on the men and women who kept the Andrews operation ticking over for the better part of a decade.
Cheers, mate! Plumbers’ union secretary Earl Setches with Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews.Credit: Suuplied
When we chased down a tip that Setches was seen shouting the bar at the gathering of government, Labor Party and union movement insiders who got together to mark the former premier’s departure, Earl explained the matter in his own inimitable style.
“I didn’t shout the bar for long,” he told CBD. “Just a couple of drinks for the staffers, the ones who’ve been involved all along. They get treated like shit to be perfectly honest so the Plumbers Union was quite happy to put on a couple of beers for an hour for people who’ve stuck up for the working class.
“They get paid shit money, they work long hours and they get treated like shit.”
News to us, we suggested to the union stalwart, that political staffers were toiling away for a pittance — only the very junior-burgers would be on less than five figures.
“Well, compared to…” Earl began, before diplomatically trailing off, and try as we might, we couldn’t get him to finish that thought.
But anyone who’s had some plumbing work done lately will know exactly what he’s talking about.
HOLLYWOOD ENDING
Brett Ratner, the movie director who’s been out in the cold since a woman accused him of rape — he denies the allegation and has not been charged — is leaving Hollywood for Israel, where he’s reportedly emigrated this week.
In these parts, Ratner is best known as a critical character in the James Packer melodrama. The two were business partners in film production company RatPac with Ratner giving Packer the creative nous to break into the movies while Packer’s cash helped his partner’s star rise all the way to the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
That star’s unveiling, just months before the first wave of the #MeToo movement effectively ended Ratner’s career, happened to be attended by another illustrious Aussie — then foreign minister Julie Bishop.
Ratner was also responsible for introducing Packer to Mariah Carey, a relationship the pop diva later said “didn’t matter”. The implosion of the 10-month engagement led to suspicion that things were also cooling between Packer and Ratner.
Not long after, Packer sold his stake in RatPac to squillionaire magnate and industrialist Len Blavatnik in 2017. But that wasn’t the end of it, with Packer and Ratner caught up in a Hollywood sex-for-roles scandal — in which Packer was never accused or involved in wrongdoing — that broke in 2019, involving Packer’s ex-girlfriend and aspiring starlet Charlotte Kirk.
Maybe saying goodbye to tinseltown is not a bad move for Ratner.
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