The Sauce: NSW reopening gets awkward for Liberal duo Stuart Ayres and Marise Payne
NSW’s ambitious announcement is likely to have made for divisive dinner conversation between NSW Liberals deputy leader Stuart Ayres and partner federal Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne.
NSW
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Chit-chat between NSW deputy Liberal leader Stuart Ayres and his long-term partner, Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne, must have been awkward on Friday night after Prime Minister Scott Morrison reined-in the state government’s reopening announcement.
In a move that we imagine was to hurry the feds up in lifting the international travel ban, Premier Dominic Perrottet and Ayres declared the state open after scrapping the mandatory quarantine requirements.
Ayres, who is NSW Tourism Minister, said the move was not only to enable Australians to come home without having to quarantine, but also for people from “another country who want to visit or work in Australia”.
“This is a huge pick-up for our tourism industry and a huge pick-up for our economy,” he told journalists.
If the PM was unhappy at the state dictating when the country should open to the world he didn’t show it, although he carefully clarified how only Australians stranded abroad would be prioritised.
A timeline for the return of tourists remains unclear.
Given Payne heads up DFAT, which is responsible for updating travel advisories, we can only assume the conversation over dinner would have been interesting.
ELL OF A BATTLE FOR LIBS IN GILMORE
He might be the “captain’s pick” for the federal seat of Gilmore, but Canberra is far from a done deal for NSW cabinet minister Andrew Constance.
While Prime Minister Scott Morrison had been personally wooing the Bega MP to have a shot at the seat, this has not dissuaded young local lawyer and Liberal conference president Paul Ell from throwing his hat in the ring when nominations open on November 1.
And Ell’s backers reckon he has the numbers to beat the high-profile Constance to become the next candidate — that is, of course, unless the PM intervenes.
So who is Ell? We know from a tweet posted by Kiama MP Gareth Ward in 2019 that he is the youngest person in the area to take on the role of Gilmore conference president.
We also know that he was raised by his grandparents in East Nowra, became dux at his local high school, and completed a law degree at the University of Wollongong, where he is a council member.
He also helped Ward in two successful election campaigns, and has references from Mackellar MP Jason Falinksi and Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg, among others.
The Sauce has been told Ell intended to run at the last election, but was talked out of it — by whom, we don’t know.
What we do know is that the last Gilmore preselection turned into a bin fire, with local candidate Grant Schultz dumped to allow Warren Mundine to be parachuted in, only for Schultz to run as an independent and the seat heading over to Labor.
Should Ell have the majority of the local vote, insiders say Constance will need 90 per cent of the NSW Liberal state executive to secure his candidacy.
Watch this space.
WHERE’S DARYL?
The lights were out in Ivanhoe this week — just as they were at the North Wagga Wagga agistment property owned by former Liberal MP Daryl Maguire.
With the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) set to resume its highly anticipated hearings into what role former premier Gladys Berejiklian may have played in a questionable grant Maguire, who was her then lover, gave to a local shooting organisation, it’s no surprise he took cover.
In the days before ICAC announced its terms of reference, which triggered the shock resignation of Berejiklian, Maguire is understood to have taken cover at his Ivanhoe property.
Just where he was last week no one knows, but it is understood he has since returned home to North Wagga Wagga, where he is refusing to go outside.
“He’s had drones flown over, media camped out, he’s not going anywhere,” a source close to Maguire said.
NEW STRUCTURE
He was the state’s first building commissioner, but David Chandler’s three-year contract is soon to expire.
Appointed in August 2019, Chandler took on the job as part of a NSW government overhaul of building laws following the collapse of the Opal Tower at Sydney Olympic Park.
More than 3000 people had to be evacuated from the tower, which last year underwent remedial works and has since been declared by Planning NSW to be “structurally sound”.
Since taking on the job, Chandler has blasted incompetent builders, private certifiers and — only last month — the Australian Securities and Investments Commission over the time it was taking to investigate a property developer’s collapse.
With Chandler’s contract up next year, succession planning is under way. NSW Customer Service Department consumer building and property director Matthew Whitton is among possible names to step into the role.
Got some Sauce? Contact linda.silmalis@news.com.au
Originally published as The Sauce: NSW reopening gets awkward for Liberal duo Stuart Ayres and Marise Payne
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