Amelia Hamer generated (a rare moment of) positive coverage for the Liberal Party with her impressive win in the Malvern preselection at the weekend.

Next-gen here we come, many Liberal moderates cheered.

Hamer, whose Liberal credentials are well established – she is the Oxford-educated grandniece of former Victorian premier Sir Rupert “Dick” Hamer and owns several properties – immediately doubled down on the day.

As we reported, after the preselection she staged a victory photo at Eden Espresso in Malvern with new (youthful and female) party leader Jess Wilson.

But eagled-eyed readers of The Age noticed something was amiss. Hamer had rocked up to the preselection at Caulfield Racecourse earlier on the Sunday wearing a short string of pearls.

But by the time of the victory photo, said pearls had dematerialised.

There is no doubt that the organic gemstones formed inside molluscs are popular on the conservative side of politics. If only ex-leader Brad Battin had remembered to wear his pearls before he lost his leadership spill last week, things might have been ever so different.

We were reminded of conservative political icon Margaret Thatcher who once said: “I may be persuaded to surrender the hat. The pearls, however, are absolutely non-negotiable!”

Oh, hold on. That might have been a quotation purely dreamt up for Meryl Streep to say on her way to Oscar glory in the Thatcher biopic, The Iron Lady.

Curious as to the fate of the dematerialising jewellery, we contacted Hamer direct.

“Hi Stephen, Here you go: The people of Victoria are more concerned about the state’s debt growing at more than $2 million an hour than they are about female politicians’ fashion choices.”

That put us firmly in our place.

Party quake

Canberra’s chi-chi Paperchain Bookstore in Manuka was bursting at its elegant seams on Tuesday night for the Canberra launch of Niki Savva’s book, Earthquake. Political living legend and long-time friend, Laurie Oakes, did the honours, lauding Savva’s importance to political discourse.

Attendees included ex-Insiders host Barrie Cassidy, his ABC presenter wife, Heather Ewart, savvy pollsters Kos Samaras and Tony Barry, former federal speaker Tony Smith (along with Savva a former staffer for Peter Costello), CBD favourite author Lech Blaine, ALP national secretary and two-time election winner Paul Erickson.

Not present: Sean Kelly, like Savva, a columnist for this masthead, who was off holding his own launch at ANU for his Quarterly Essay, presenting a diabolical social conundrum for Canberra’s political glitterati.

Savva had long sworn there would be no fourth book in the unofficial political leadership series, but the 2025 election made a return irresistible. But what about a fifth? Savva riffed off Mick Jagger: “This could be the last time. Maybe the last time. I don’t know.”

Sitting pollies were absent from the launch due to the sitting week, but plenty fronted a private reception at the Commonwealth Club later, including Treasurer Jim Chalmers, Minister for Finance Katy Gallagher, teal independent Allegra Spender and plenty of other “fedpol” groupies.

And the bookshop is not without a sense of humour. Next to Savva’s book in the front-window display was Tony Abbott’s Australia: A History.

Many hats

Spotted: News Corp’s Penny Fowler on Tuesday at Parliament House, Canberra. Why? Well, the vastly connected chair of the Herald & Weekly Times wears very many hats. Apart from the HWT gig, Fowler is also chair of Tourism Australia, the Royal Children’s Hospital Good Friday Appeal and the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria.

Plus, she is a board member of the National Gallery of Australia and digital firm Tech Mahindra and is on the advisory board of Visy/Pratt USA.

As one comms exec told us: “There is no room that Penny walks into in Melbourne that people don’t know her.”

Now she has an extra gig: Fowler, who was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) last year for her work with artistic and charitable organisations, has signed up to be a director on the advisory board of marketing and communications agency Bastion. But did this mean Bastion, founded by brothers Fergus and Jack Watts more than 15 years ago, has gone all in on News Corp? A clear conflict of interest, we hear you cry.

“It couldn’t be further from the truth,” explains Bastion co-founder Fergus. “It is not even close to the point of working with Penny. Penny has been very clear … she does a lot of things. It is not in our thought process.”

And the Parliament House caper? Fowler, as News Corp Australia community ambassador, was accompanying the winners of the 5th Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee to meet Anthony Albanese. Which we found out about by reading page 12 of the Herald Sun.

Joyce returns

When Alan Joyce abruptly departed Qantas in 2023, he kept a low profile, seeking shelter from the storm of public opprobrium that had battered his final years as chief executive of the airline.

In fact, Joyce was a hard man to find for many months, quietly stepping down as chair of the Sydney Theatre Company as it was engulfed by debate over the war in Gaza.

Now, Joyce is slowly inching back into the public glare. On Wednesday morning, he spoke at the launch of a new book – Sydney Seaplanes: Honouring Heritage, Embracing the Future – written by Carolen Barripp, on the Rose Bay foreshore.

The wealthy harbourside enclave hosted Australia’s first international airport in the 1930s, a fact that clearly thrilled Joyce, a keen student of aviation history, who wrote the foreword to the book, and who addressed the small crowd gathered at the Sydney Seaplanes lounge.

That included folksy entrepreneur Dick Smith who chewed Joyce’s ear off after the formalities, and multimillionaire hotelier-cum-suspended cosmetic surgeon Jerry Schwartz, who took over Sydney Seaplanes this year.

CBD was, of course, more interested in another upcoming tome, Joyce’s own tell-all memoir, to be published by Hardie Grant next year, in which the former high-flying CEO promises to set the record straight.

Schwartz let slip that Joyce’s book – title TBD – is set for a September 2026 release.

And while CBD has been getting enthused by the prospect of former AFR scribe Joe Aston, best known for haranguing Joyce into an early retirement, burying the hatchet and helping out as ghost writer, we hear Alan is writing the whole thing himself.

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