Annette Sharp: Lizzie Buttrose’s son tells court she gave him ice when he was 14
Sydney socialite Lizzie Buttrose’s son, Gold Coast real estate agent, Andrew Spira has told a court his mum introduced him to methamphetamines at the age of 14. Read his parents’ reactions to the allegation.
Police & Courts
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One-time Sydney socialite Lizzie Buttrose was uncharacteristically evasive during the week following her son Andrew Spira’s shock statement to a Darwin Court that his mother had introduced him to methamphetamines at age 14.
Spira, 24, made the claim while defending himself from a raft of charges, including using and possessing false documents to allegedly fraudulently obtain a new passport to flee the country, possessing or using an unlicensed firearm, failing to store a firearm correctly, possessing trafficable quantities of testosterone and nandrolone, and obtaining property by deception.
Desperate to avoid lockup, Spira told the court: “My error of judgment was completely flawed due to drugs, unfortunately.
“I started using drugs when I was 14, I managed to get clean when I was 17.
“My mother was the first person to give me ice when I was 14.”
Ex-party girl Buttrose denied knowing anything about her son’s ice allegation when this column managed to get her on the phone.
“I don’t know anything about that,” she said when asked about the ice allegation.
She chose instead an unrelated soliloquy about some missing clip-on earrings she believes former friends have stolen.
“My earrings are very important to me and have been stolen!” Buttrose complained, before sending a volley of wild text messages accusing this writer of being “bored” and “desperate”.
In contrast Buttrose’s former partner John Spira, Andrew’s father, gave this column a brief statement.
“I am completely devastated,” he said, refusing to comment further on the raft of charges his son now faces in the Northern Territory, as well as separate ones brought in NSW earlier this month when he was charged with attempting to use a fake passport and false name to travel overseas for business.
Spira Sr was formerly the owner of Diamond Press, one of the nation’s three biggest commercial print businesses, when he began his torrid on-and-off love affair with Buttrose.
The relationship would end around the same time Diamond Press went belly up in 2001, leaving creditors $171m out of pocket.
Buttrose, who had a second son to the printing boss before the couple split following a short marriage, moved on with a string of boyfriends including, briefly, “Aussie John” Symonds.
Spira, meanwhile, relocated to the Gold Coast where he later married, and opened a real estate agency with wife Helen.
The picture Andrew Spira painted to the court of his troubled teenage years as a former drug-abusing student from elite Sydney boys school Cranbrook, who grew up in his mother’s tatty bungalow on an unkempt battleaxe block in Vaucluse where Buttrose’s various brawny boyfriends and dogs ran amok, is vastly at odds with the image the professional lender has cultivated in recent years after setting up his loans brokerage business, Pineapple Funding, in 2019 at the tender age of 20.
Company records also tie him to companies Pinnacle Funding, Bizbuck Pty Ltd, Barney Acquisitions, Royal Pineapple Holdings, AJS First Management, Sparkling Winners and Sparkling Rivage.
Some believe his life turned around when he became romantically involved with Julia Maguire, a former Kambala school teaching assistant with entrepreneurial drive who is 15 years Spira’s senior and a former friend of Buttrose’s who, it’s said, introduced the couple. Since partnering with Maguire, the couple have built a Sydney property portfolio worth upwards of $15m.
The court last week heard Andrew Spira, who, his lawyer also confirmed, has a Diazepam (Valium) problem, owned as many as 17 investment properties which the accused was “willing to forfeit … to the court in return for bail”.
Spira and Maguire, with whom he recently split, are already in the process of selling down the couple’s investments.
Records reveal a recently listed 1930s manor home in Village Lower Rd Vaucluse, jointly owned with Maguire, has been listed with a $9m guide for the property the couple purchased 18 months ago in December 2021 for the same price.
Then there’s a four-bedroom house in Mermaid Beach, Queensland, purchased in January for $1.72m in January and newly listed for sale.
A question mark hangs over a one-bedroom apartment with Sydney Harbour views in Vaucluse, which settled last week for $985,000 and is in Spira’s name alone.
On Saturday Maguire said she is keen to hang onto a recently refurbished art deco block of apartments in Elizabeth Bay called Glenbrae, purchased jointly in December 2020 for $3.4m through the company Royal Pineapple.
She is also not selling a jointly purchased house in Horace St, Shoal Bay, bought in September 2020 for $670,000.
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