By Stephen Brook and Kishor Napier-Raman
CBD is always grateful to the Victorian Liberal Party for helping to fill this column.
We actually wrote that very line on Tuesday, but our sentiments remain the same because the woes of the party continue to be in the spotlight.
Former Liberal MP Matt Bach will be back in Melbourne soon.Credit: Wayne Taylor
State Opposition Leader John Pesutto is being sued for defamation by MP Moira Deeming, whom the Liberals expelled from the parliamentary party last year after she attended that Let Women Speak rally that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis.
But it was former Liberal MP Dr Matt Bach in the news this week as Federal Court Justice David O’Callaghan ruled on Thursday that Bach would have to leave his role as deputy headmaster at Brighton College in his new home of Great Britain and fly back to Melbourne to give evidence for Pesutto in person, as is standard in such cases.
“Dr Bach must have known in May when he swore his first affidavit that there was a likelihood that he would have to attend the trial in September in person, that certain inconvenience would be caused to his students and family as a result, and that he would need to make arrangements accordingly,” O’Callaghan said. In other words, do your homework, Bach.
It will be a long trip for a party favour, especially as all the evidence in chief has already been agreed and affidavits taken as read to lessen the time in the witness stand.
“He will fly for 48 hours to potentially be in the witness box for probably not much more than one hour,” one legal observer said of Bach.
The case has already attracted the defamation big guns. Barrister frenemies Matt Collins, KC, for Pesutto and Sue Chrysanthou, SC, for Deeming, have already seen a lot of each other in court this year as each has acted in both the Lehrmann and Al Muderis defamation trials.
And come September 16 they will be back to do it all again for three weeks.
What are the mounting legal costs of this caper, CBD wondered aloud. “Absurd,” our legal eagles told us.
THE BOOK YOU NEVER KNEW YOU NEEDED
In the ranks of recent Liberal Party leaders, Brendan Nelson doesn’t get all that much attention. The former Howard-era defence minister, now a top London-based executive at troubled aircraft manufacturer Boeing took the reins after the Ruddslide of 2007, lasting just nine months before getting toppled by Malcolm Turnbull, kick-starting the carousel that delivered us five Liberal leaders in a decade.
But in the Liberal extended universe, Nelson has gained a post-political reputation as a silver-tongued soaring orator. So much so that conservative think tank the Menzies Research Centre recently published a book on Nelson’s selected speeches.
To be fair to Nelson, probably his best-known bit of speechifying, a response to Kevin Rudd’s 2008 apology to the Stolen Generations, was widely lauded, including by Labor titans like Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating, who knows a thing or two about delivering a good oration.
Brendan Nelson launches a new book.Credit: John Shakespeare
Australia might’ve forgotten Nelson, but the Liberal faithful haven’t. At a launch event in Sydney last week, former prime ministers Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison shared a stage with the former party leader for a panel discussion.
Among the former party hacks in the crowd, CBD’s spies spotted Morrison’s old apparatchik Yaron Finkelstein, state NSW MPs Tim James and Alister Henskens, and former federal director Brian Loughnane, husband to Peta Credlin, who’s conducting a review into the NSW Liberals’ disastrous failure to get its local council election forms in on time. No doubt it was this stuff-up, rather than Nelson’s stirring speeches, that was on the tip of everyone’s tongues.
BEFORE THE FALL
SPOTTED: Last Friday, two media executives sat down for lunch at Sydney CBD power dining favourite Bambini Trust.
Call it the calm before the storm. Days later, one would be unexpectedly announcing his resignation, while the other would be grappling with a scandal of his own.
While ABC managing director David Anderson was enjoying his long lunch with Foxtel chief executive Patrick Delany, Foxtel’s spinners were figuring out how to respond to questions from online outlet Crikey about an old photo of him performing a Nazi salute.
This masthead subsequently reported that Delany’s salute was a mocking reference to former Socceroo Mark Bosnich, who had his own ill-fated Sieg Heil moment during a Premier League game in the 1990s. Delany, like Bosnich, has apologised for his salute.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, Anderson surprised the media bubble by quitting one year into his second five-year term and just months after Kim Williams took the reins as ABC chair.
ALL SMILES
Far be it for us to compare the great game of rugby league to a soap opera, but CBD couldn’t help but notice a twist in the long-running cold war/feud/stand-off between former Melbourne Storm greats Cameron Smith and Cooper Cronk.
Cooper Cronk, Cameron Smith and Billy Slater pose with their Hall of Fame rings and blazers.Credit: Getty Images
The bad blood between the former teammates – triggered by Cronk following his heart to the Sydney Roosters and sustained by a million salacious inches of tabloid column copy – has been so entrenched we had thought management of their induction to the 2024 NRL Hall of Fame on Wednesday would be stage-managed as carefully as a Ballets Russes production of The Rite of Spring.
Rumours that Smith wasn’t keen to share a stage with Cronk all came to nought. The former Storm captain’s induction was closely followed by Billy Slater and the pair remained on the side of the stage to witness Cronk’s induction. Smith was forced to grin and bear it. And grin and bear it they did, even hugging it out for the cameras in front of the gawping crowd. It certainly looked convincing for the cameras, although Smith made a quick exit afterwards while Cronk and Slater, seated on a different table, shot the breeze until late.
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