By Stephen Brook and Kishor Napier-Raman
The spirited citizen’s arrest of an alleged knife-carrying car thief by Carlton coach Michael Voss had Melbourne’s movers and shakers agog – because the cafe at the centre of proceedings is the Grand Central Station of Melbourne’s elite.
The Barton Milk Bar, where patrons witnessed a car flip onto its side in Denham Street, Hawthorn, on Tuesday morning, has long been the place where moneyed Melbourne likes to hang.
Carlton coach Michael Voss after stopping an alleged car thief while on a coffee run on Tuesday. Credit: Nine News
That includes ex-Australia Post boss Ahmed Fahour, now chief executive of Latitude; AFL legend David Parkin; big legal cheese Howard Rapke, who takes his cycling buddies there; and Demon Jack Viney.
On Tuesday Nine News presenter and reporter Dougal Beatty was walking to the train station when the biggest news story of the day landed right in front of him.
“I stumbled across the scene just after the crash happened. I got a quick interview with Vossy, who was reluctant to hang around,” Beatty told CBD.
But how did he magic up a microphone and camera so quickly? Finance legend Alan Kohler and his son Chris, Nine finance editor, were due to record a podcast at the cafe and had equipment and a cameraman at the scene.
The Barton Milk Bar in Denham Street, Hawthorn.Credit: Jason South
Denham Street was also the locale of the infamous drink-driving-car-into-a-fence crash that ended former Liberal MP Tim Smith’s political career in 2021.
It is even a favoured location for press conferences for former federal treasurer and ex-local member Josh Frydenberg, who assembled media there in 2021 along with Senator James Paterson and Barton Milk Bar co-owner James Laskie, for what was no doubt a scintillating discussion about JobKeeper and border closures. Those indeed were the days.
On Wednesday it was back to business at the Barton Milk Bar. Ex-premier Ted Baillieu was spotted enjoying a leisurely lunch.
LET THEM EAT CAKE
It was a press conference with a difference. Libertarian upper house MP David Limbrick appeared at the back doors of state parliament on Wednesday and proceeded to light sparklers on a cake shaped like a giant cigarette.
Butt really? Libertarian MP David Limbrick (right) and the cake in question.
All to draw attention to the spate of arson attacks on cigarette shops. The attacks now number more than 100 on shops nationally since March last year, the MP told CBD, an entirely arbitrary time frame which only a savvy media operator could deploy. In fact, Victoria Police later said there had been 97 such fires in this state alone since March 2023.
Limbrick and his band of brothers sang Happy Arson To You to the tune of Happy Birthday.
He admitted to CBD that the press conference was a stunt and “maybe even a bit cringe”.
“But it has allowed me to draw attention to the fact that organised crime is now running the tobacco industry because of a massive policy failure. The government needs to stop listening to people who call themselves public health experts. Prohibition of vaping was a terrible idea because prohibition has never worked. Meanwhile, the overtaxing of cigarettes has turned tobacco into a multibillion-dollar industry for organised crime.”
A member of the parliamentary press corps told CBD, sounding enthusiastic, “It was a chocolate cake and I had some of it.”
Two people who did not partake were the ministers with portfolio responsibility for the matters under discussion, Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes and Police Minister Anthony Carbines, who as luck would have it, emerged from parliament to hold a very serious press conference about the not unrelated matter of tough new bikie legislation. Theirs was an attitude of look but don’t touch.
STATE OF DENIAL
On Wednesday, Seven West Media struck back.
The West Australian news story on Wednesday.
The owner of Channel Seven and The West Australian was clearly stung by reports in The Australian Financial Review and this publication on the corporate decision to invite to a staff town hall meeting in Perth four performers dressed as “sexy Santas” dancing to Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas.
It was as if harassment and discrimination allegations had never been levelled at the corporation.
Some women left the meeting when the dancers appeared as Seven Perth news director Ray Kuka asked staff to support the forthcoming Alinta Energy Christmas Pageant, which they are performing in.
Who knows what Seven’s billionaire controlling shareholder, Kerry Stokes, who was also present, made of the incident?
Perhaps an indication can be gleaned from Page 10 of Wednesday’s West Australian, now under the control of former News Corp editor Christopher Dore, who has undergone a phoenix-like resurrection.
The paper ran an article headlined “Proud to be part of Xmas pageant”, with a picture of some of the “sexy Santas” accompanied by two junior performers who were not part of the incident and were aged eight. Think of the children!
The article quoted Raquel Muia, owner and creative director of The Performance Company and pageant veteran, who pointed out some pageant dancers had gone on to perform at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics.
“Ms Muia hit back at headlines in east coast media this week that negatively portrayed dancers who were hired to help launch the pageant at Seven West Media’s Perth headquarters on Friday,” the article, which had no byline, stated.
Seven West shenanigansCredit: John Shakespeare
“Dancers work two jobs to make a living, and if it wasn’t for companies like Seven West Media and Telethon Perth, performing artists would struggle for auditions and live experiences,” she said.
“God forbid these four young professional women, all studying nursing and teaching, be judged negatively rather than commended for their confidence, energy, and performance talent.”
Rest assured, Ms Muia, the harsh criticism was not against the talents of Mia, Saba, Sofia and Georgia, but against the sheer effrontery of using a dance troupe as human shields against serious questions about corporate culture.
ONE OF THE BEST
In one of the final outbursts in a career of headline-grabbing moments which would give Stonnington council shenanigans a run for their money, former North Sydney mayor Jilly Gibson likened her council’s new social media policy to something out of North Korea.
But Gibson’s last council meeting on Monday, which ended with the 25-year local government veteran storming out after her colleagues refused to name a plaza in her honour, felt at times like something off the Hermit Kingdom’s state television.
For nearly an hour, the meeting was dominated by gushing tributes to Gibson – some from her children and grandchildren.
Gibson’s partner, Martin Williams, read paeans from the likes of former governor-general Sir Peter Cosgrove and business identity Tony Shepherd, who called for Hayes Beach in Sydney’s Neutral Bay to be renamed “Jilly’s Beach”.
And in a rather bizarre turn, Williams, at the request of a constituent, serenaded Gibson with Scottish poet Robert Burns’ love poem A Red, Red Rose, which he delivered in an appropriate Glaswegian drawl.
Former prime ministers leave with less fanfare.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.