The (Stan) Grant that keeps on giving

It’s not easy to avoid Stan Grant these days. The ABC presenter is holding down the permanent gig at the broadcaster’s weekly Q&A binfire, pops up all over Aunty’s radio and TV shows as international affairs analyst, and publishes a lengthy weekly column on the corporation’s website.

Chuck in various academic and think-tank gigs as well, as all those books he writes, and it’s a wonder Grant can find the time to join his fellow ABC stars Leigh Sales, Michael Rowland, Annabel Crabb and a bunch of others on the lucrative corporate speaking scene.

Stan Grant: See him here, see him there.Credit: John Shakespeaer

So if you’re as keen on the sound of Stan’s voice as the man himself appears to be, then do yourself a favour and get hold of a ticket to the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) conference kicking off in Brisbane on Wednesday where Stan has been hired for the official welcome to the Brissie Exhibition Centre, ably assisted by ASFA’s independent chairman Gary Dransfield, but don’t expect to hear too much from him.

Delegates will be hearing more from Grant a little later in the morning when he joins researcher Troy Hunt and PwC’s Philippa Cogswell for a natter about cybersecurity.

But wait, there’s more. He returns to the stage after lunch to talk to the Financial Times′ Robin Harding and KPMG’s Merriden Varrall about geopolitical instability.

Now we don’t blame ASFA for getting their money’s worth – although they wouldn’t tell us how much they’re paying him – but that’s a whole lot of Stan.

Grant was kind enough on Tuesday to help ease any worries CBD might have over his workload. “I love to work. It isn’t hard,” he told us. “Lots of things to do and only one life to do it.”

PAYING THE PRICE

Firebrand Country Liberal Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has emerged as a key opponent of an Indigenous Voice to parliament and winning a host of conservative admirers,few more than UNSW mathematician-cum-philosopher Jim Franklin. Our eyebrows were raised when Price’s most recent parliamentary register of interests noted that a payment had been made to a legal firm on her behalf by Franklin.

Helping hand: CLP Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.Credit: James Brickwood

In July last year, Franklin spent more than $6000 sponsoring travel between the Northern Territory and Canberra for Price’s family to witness the senator’s first speech, in which Franklin got a special shout out. And in 2019, he donated $15,000 to Price’s unsuccessful attempt at winning a lower house seat.

“As a long-time family friend of the Price family I have been a proud supporter of both the senator and her mother Bess Price in their political careers,” Franklin told CBD.

BRANCHING OUT

Former associates of Victorian Labor’s former branch-stacker extraordinaire Adem Somyurek continue to build new lives for themselves after being, well, relieved of their political careers after the factional warlord’s implosion.

The latest is Robin Scott, part of the group of Somyurek’s Moderate Labor empire while holding down the day job of multicultural affairs minister, and who stood aside from the ministry following IBAC revelations of the faction’s activities and subsequently lost pre-selection for his seat of Preston.

But Scott has reemerged at the Alfred Deakin Institute (ADI) at Deakin University where he has been hired as an “industry professor”.

“Robin … has considerable experience influencing public policy and delivering strategic evidence-based decision-making,” enthused ADI director and Professor Fethi Mansouri. It’s true that Scott was known around Spring Street as a “thought leader” in Somyurek’s faction.

We can’t imagine where the institute might deploy Scott’s expertise in the dark political arts, but his experience as finance minister will come in useful, so Mansouri might have made himself a handy hire.

CULTURE COUP

Federal arts minister Tony Burke has had a stroke of luck for that National Cultural Policy he’s been banging on about, snapping up one of the nation’s up-and-coming arts administrators from under the nose of Dominic Perrottet’s NSW Liberal government.

Heading to the country? Andy Warhol, Campbell’s Soup series could be part of the travelling exhibition.

Former Sydney Living Museum chief Adam Lindsay was looking the goods to land the big job at the top of a new entity over there called the Museums of History formed from the merger of 12 museums and the state’s $1 billion archives. But then the state government pulled the pin on the recruitment process, with Lindsay walking away from his Living Museum’s role just days after.

But National Gallery of Australia’s Nick Mitzevich has swooped on the opportunity and hired Lindsay to lead the NGA’s $12 million plan to share some of its $6.9 billion worth of treasures with Australia’s regional and suburban galleries, a key plank in Burke’s cultural revolution.

Mitzevich could benefit from Lindsay’s contacts in Sydney philanthropic circles at a time when the gallery is asking federal Treasury for $265 million to make its lakeside landmark building secure and watertight.

Lindsay confirmed the change of city, saying he was hoping to bring the beauty of Brancusi’s Birds in space or Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans to audiences unable, or unwilling, to go to Canberra to see the NGA’s collections.

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