The Sauce: French twist in Kristina Keneally story after potential Paris sighting
Was KK on a top-secret official visit to France to suss out a potential posting in the ambassador’s office? Or was it a lookalike?
NSW
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After failing to claim the seat of Fowler, former senator Kristina Keneally hotfooted it over to the US to spend time with her family.
That was where The Sauce thought she was until an eyewitness sent us photographs of a woman resembling the former NSW premier in Paris.
Dressed in work rather than vacation attire, “Keneally” looked to be on an official visit with multiple black cars and a well-dressed entourage.
Was KK on a top-secret official visit to France to suss out a potential posting in the ambassador’s office?
While having never seen KK smoke – although, when in France – we decided to investigate further.
According to federal government sources, Keneally was not – and had not been – in France.
Our eyewitness has declared it a “cover-up”.
“Senior Liberals are furious that Labor have spent the week criticising the aborted Barilaro appointment while secretly working on Keneally’s new overseas gig,” the source said.
“She promised to live in Liverpool regardless of the election result. She went from Fowler to foie gras at lightning speed!”
Will the real Kristina Keneally please stand up.
PERROTTET’S MUM PENS “TELL-ALL” BOOK
IT must be hard being the Premier of NSW and having a public speaker and writer mum release a warts-and-all book about raising her 13 children.
Especially when The Sauce messages you with a copy of Anne Perrottet’s book, Thriving and Surviving Raising Thirteen.
“Where did you get that?” Premier Dominic Perrottet asks at the same time – we imagine – as breaking out in a cold sweat.
Unlike elder brother Alexander, who edited the publication, the Premier has yet to read the final draft.
But while there is a tantalising chapter entitled “Birds Bees and Penguins”, there was no need for the Premier to panic – probably thanks to legal adviser Alexander, all names are suppressed.
This means the public is left wondering about which of the young Perrottets quizzed their mum on the way home from school about a “new word” they’d heard in the playground.
“What was the word?” Anne asks her son.
“Orgasm.”
Anne wrote how she imagined a bunch of kids gathered around a dirty magazine, thinking: “I was going to be in for quite a conversation.”
“I very calmly inquired, what was the name of the magazine?”
“Amazing Facts,” her son replied.
“It said that penguins only have one orgasm a year.”
Anne wrote how her son looked confused when she exclaimed how she “felt sorry for penguins”.
“I’ll explain this another day, darling!”
Another anecdote describes a trip to an artificial limb factory.
Perrottet later tells The Sauce how Anne loved organising family excursions during the school holidays to “interesting places” such as “a power plant so we could see where energy comes from” and “a fridge manufacturing place”.
Anne wrote how she thought a visit to an artificial limb factory would not only be interesting but educational for her children.
“Now all I had to do was convince my kids that this was a cool way to spend part of their holidays,” the Masters in Applied Positive Psychology scholar wrote.
Alas, not all the Perrottet kids thought the trip was “cool”.
“My kids were starting to become quiet and pensive,” Anne wrote.
Another trip to an oven factory “wasn’t half as interesting as the artificial limb factory”.
Showing that even the most patient of parents have their moments, Anne describes the “exhilarating time” she threw the kids’ Nintendo 64 into the pool after a request for some simple chores she had asked to be done were ignored.
“I was cranky and frustrated and I needed something new and extreme to get my message across,” Anne said.
“It was exhilarating watching it sail through the air across 5m of lawn. I was impressed with my effort.”
Anne, who also has degrees in education, psychology, community welfare and counselling, is understood to be launching the book in the US in the coming weeks.
LIBERALS REVOLT
ANGRY Liberals are not holding back in demanding major changes ahead of the upcoming state and next federal elections following the May result.
And if there is one theme emerging from the scores of motions to go before the NSW State Council Annual General Meeting on August 6, it is how and when candidates are chosen for seats.
The proposed constitutional changes branches are demanding include hard deadlines on preselections, such as “36 months after the last state election” and “24 months after the last federal election”.
The Artarmon branch wants candidates to be able to nominate three years after the last state election and 25 months after the federal election.
There is also a motion addressing the absence of former prime minister Scott Morrison’s party representative Alex Hawke from candidate vetting committees – which delayed the preselection of candidates – with demands for whoever the next leader’s rep might be to be immediately replaced upon not turning up.
Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg, who has been pushing for a preselections timetable and for candidates to be chosen without the leader’s representative in the nomination review process, said: “A genuinely grassroots movement must always ensure the members’ voices are heard.”
NO VACANCY
IT is one of the most exclusive clubs in the country and among the toughest to join.
With a membership list featuring former prime ministers, sporting greats, surgeons, judges and other VIPs, it is no surprise everyone wants to be part of the Australian Club.
The word on the street last week was that among those who sent in an application was former NSW arts minister Don Harwin.
A source close to the club said Harwin did not make the cut.
Neither Harwin nor The Australian Club responded to our queries.
CRYING FOUL
LABOR operatives over the border thought they had a scoop after being sent a photo of Premier Dominic Perrottet walking out of the NRL box after NSW lost the lead in the State of Origin decider on Wednesday night.
Was the Premier really bailing early because his team was losing?
Upon being presented with the photo, Perrottet confirmed he walked out of the NRL box before the game was over – after being invited by Wayne Pearce to head out to the grass to watch the rest of the match.
Once the game was over, the Premier did a TV interview from the ground with 9News Queensland before heading in to the Blues’ dressing room to have a beer with the players.
The Sauce was told he also shook the hand of every team member, with NSW great Benny Elias also telling Fox Sports how the Premier spent half an hour in the room.
“See this is such a great game that the Premier, the most powerful man in NSW, comes in there and spends half an hour in the room really commiserating with the blokes,” Elias said.
As for when Perrottet did leave, we were told it was long after Queensland Labor Premier
Anastasia Palaszczuk – whose supporters are under suspicion for sharing the photo – had left her home-ground.
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