By Stephen Brook and Kishor Napier-Raman
So farewell to 2024. That was the year that was, or for so many of us who endured it, that was the year that wasn’t.
Historians will no doubt mark 2024 up as a historic year: Syria’s al-Assad regime fell, Donald Trump rose again, the war in Gaza hit the home front, and er, Charles visited us for the first time as King.
Credit: Matt Davidson
But for the rest of us, 2024 just seemed rather a dull grind, a year of brain rot and enshittification, as the dictionary wizards put it in either an encapsulation of the zeitgeist or a cheap marketing ploy.
And CBD gives thanks to the higher powers for people with big houses, in what became a mainstay of this column. Without other people’s houses to write about, vast swaths of the media ecosystem would be starved of content and shrivel away.
Even Prime Minister Anthony Albanese seemed a little too distracted by the property market – he’s a Sydneysider after all – buying that NSW Central Coast clifftop home, and finally offloading (after much struggle and a price drop, as we reported ) his (by comparison) unsightly investment property in Sydney’s Dulwich Hill.
Only this week we told you that fun guy Andy Lee’s popularity among neighbours had taken a dive due to the “horrendous noise” from his tunnelling a 7.7-metre drop on the site of his historic crumbling mansion, Ravenswood, on the banks of the Yarra in Hawthorn.
Neighbours are not happy with Andy Lee and Rebecca Harding’s mansion renovation.Credit:
It was in May that CBD was proud after a months-long investigation to reveal that Herald & Weekly Times chair Penny Fowler (who’s also Rupert Murdoch’s niece) and AFL commentator Hamish McLachlan had secretly bought each other’s South Yarra houses in an upper-class property swap. Only in Melbourne, folks.
And the old school chums behind prestige property reality series Luxe Listings had a spectacular falling-out that ended up before the NSW Supreme Court.
Then there was the Point Piper mansion where Bruce Lehrmann was spotted hanging out just days before the Federal Court found, on the balance of probabilities, that he’d raped Brittany Higgins.
The former Liberal staffer’s failed multimillion-dollar defamation lawsuit against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson ended with Lehrmann “the most hated man in Australia”, as his new lawyer Zali Burrows told CBD, and Seven West Media again an industry-wide joke.
Only Justice Michael Lee emerged unscathed from the trial, with numerous requests for conference appearances, etc, as we dubbed him a newfound media celebrity.
Over in Canberra, the Albanese government sputtered its way to the end of the year with enough fumbles to make Peter Dutton look like a contender.
But before Dutton gets too big for his Gina Rinehart-owned Rossi Boots and starts thinking about The Lodge, he’ll have to overcome the Liberal Party’s women problem. We’re not sure hosting $5000-a-head fundraisers in male-only clubs is going to help that cause.
Party time
Political types took to the catwalk for the annual meeting of political, media and business creatures that is the Midwinter Ball at Parliament House in June.
The theme of the ball was “love is in the air” – topical for the debut of politics’ newest couple, Victorian Jewish Labor MP Josh Burns and pro-Palestinian Animal Justice Party Victorian state MP Georgie Purcell.
Federal Labor MP Josh Burns and Victorian Animal Justice Party MP Georgie Purcell at the Midwinter Ball.Credit: James Brickwood
NDIS Minister Bill Shorten was a proud dad as he accompanied his daughter Georgette, also known as Gigi, to the ball, proudly describing her as a “stunner”. Gigi returned the favour, regaling hacks with stories about her embarrassing dad.
But our favourite moment was when prime minister Rachel Griffiths (well, if you watch the TV drama Total Control) late in the proceedings grabbed a mini-bottle of vodka from the wine bucket in the middle of the table and poured herself a neat vodka before noticing your columnist and putting a finger to her lips. Don’t you know who we are, PM?
Actor Rachel Griffiths (left) and the then minister for home affairs, Clare O’Neil, at the ball.Credit: James Brickwood
The PMs past
Scott Morrison finally quit politics, only for the Liberals to cancel his farewell party because nobody wanted to come. Meanwhile, his one-time vanquished nemesis Bill Shorten is heading for the vice chancellor role at the University of Canberra. Shorten’s farewell public event is on December 18 in Thornbury, where some items of memoraBILLia will be auctioned, as the program puts it. Still bringing the zingers!
Morrison at least had plenty of jobs to keep him busy, notably getting hired by billionaire cardboard box king Anthony Pratt along with former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews, as CBD brought you in an exclusive copied immediately by our rivals.
As for the other former PMs, when he wasn’t playing the part of globe-trotting conservative intellectual, Tony Abbott was getting enlisted to fight a bike path in North Sydney. Julia Gillard finally saw the theatrical adaptation of her political life, Julia, on closing night in Adelaide.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and former prime minister Scott Morrison shake hands after Morrison’s valedictory speech in February.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Kevin Rudd turned the new Washington embassy into a kind of glitter-strewn frat house. But only Malcolm Turnbull got to share a TV set with adult entertainment industry figure Stormy Daniels, as part of a UK TV panel for the US presidential election.
That same night, Gina Rinehart was popping champagne at Mar-a-Lago to celebrate Donald Trump’s victory. It was another banner year for Rinehart, who has played art connoisseur, fashionista and even model for her own Driza-Bone raincoats in an advertising campaign we certainly didn’t see coming.
Not to be outdone in the eccentric billionaire miner stakes, Clive Palmer kept on fighting arcane legal battles and kept on promising to rebuild the Titanic.
The quintessential Queenslander and secret Victorian showed us his softer side by buying his old Melbourne childhood home for $4.5 million, well above the market rate.
CBD TOLD YOU
We don’t want to blow our own trumpets here at CBD Towers. We just feel it is our duty to remind readers of our soothsaying abilities when it comes to prominent jobs.
It was CBD that first brought you news that former investigative reporter of this parish Linton Besser would be the new host of Media Watch.
ABC investigative journalist Linton Besser has been named the new host of Media Watch.Credit: Dallas Kilponen
Similarly, we picked that Jillian Segal would be appointed as the nation’s special envoy to combat antisemitism, before she actually was.
More recently, we tipped that James Glenday would take over as host of ABC News Breakfast to fill the gap left by departing legend Michael Rowland.
We’re still waiting in the case of our prediction that former Nine boss Hugh Marks will replace David Anderson as managing director of the ABC. We maintain eternal vigilance.
In August famed artist Vincent Fantauzzo, spouse of actor Asher Keddie, found that while man’s best friend is his dog, friendship can be costly, after his “Staffordshire terrier type”, Sandro, cost him more than $7000 in fines and legal costs after a dog-eat-dog melee on the streets of St Kilda.
Actor Asher Keddie and her artist husband, Vincent Fantauzzo. Inset: Sandro.
The year came to a close with the sad news that former federal cabinet minister Marise Payne and former NSW cabinet minister Stuart Ayres had quietly split after first meeting on the 2007 federal election campaign trail.
But just this week Josh Burns and Georgie Purcell told us that their love match was still going strong despite trying political times: “We are still very much happily together, spending time between our communities and supporting each other every day.”
If only more of the political, business, sporting, media, celebrity, cultural and influencer creatures we spend far too much time hanging around could be “very much happily together” the world would be a better place. But sadly, we would have nothing much to write about and would unhappily be out of jobs.
Just space left to thank all those aforementioned creatures, as well as colleagues, tipsters and you, the readers, and wish you a very happy Christmas and New Year before we return in mid-January with some exciting changes to delight and torment you all.
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