By Kishor Napier-Raman and Stephen Brook
Turns out Liz “Lettuce” Truss, famed for her 49-day reign as Britain’s PM, isn’t the only piece of rotting debris from the Conservative Party’s disastrous final years in power to wash up on these shores.
Truss’ appearance before a few hundred at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Brisbane next month will be swiftly followed by another visit from Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson in December, whose buffoonish three years in No.10 ended with a whimper in 2022 after a series of scandals.
Boris Johnson in Sydney last year … and he’s coming back.Credit: Michael Quelch
Johnson clearly loves the antipodean sun and, after addressing a sell-out crowd of Liberal Party hacks at last December’s John Howard Lecture, is back to talk about his Boys’ Own prime ministership to a few hundred wealthy friends at a lunch at Sydney’s Doltone House, and dinner the following night at the Sofitel in Melbourne.
With celebrity agent Max Markson promoting Bojo’s tour, and spruiking him to various big corporates, tickets aren’t cheap. Standard tables of 10 start at $4000, with VIP tables (you get a signed copy of Johnson’s new memoir Unleashed) costing $6000. For $10,000 a table you can get the full Platinum BJ experience, which includes a signed copy of the book and a photo with the great man.
Johnson, who recently became co-chair of a uranium company whose founder is chummy with colourful former Donald Trump aide Steve Bannon, remains a man in high demand. His time doesn’t come cheap, either. Before quitting parliament Johnson accepted a £2.4 million speaker’s fee. No wonder Markson is charging an arm and a leg.
STOP THE COUNT!
Whisper it quietly: we’re going to miss local government elections. This year the battle for the basement of democracy gave us so many invigorating moments; from the Liberals’ disastrous failure to get candidates on the ballot, to the numerous intemperate dummy spits we’ve witnessed over the past few weeks, CBD salutes everyone who made the past few weeks so much fun.
With results trickling in after Saturday’s vote we thought it time to check in on a few friends of the column. We start, naturally, in North Sydney, where veteran former mayor Jilly Gibson stormed out of her final council meeting after discovering she wouldn’t get a ceremonial plaza named in her honour.
Despite not actually being on the ballot, Gibson, whose supporters are running under the “Team Jilly” banner, has haunted the hustings in recent weeks, often accompanied by Liberal MP Tim James and anti-Voice campaigner Nyunggai Warren Mundine.
None of this has worked. At the time of writing, Team Jilly, led by Liberal member and former senate hopeful Pallavi Sinha, was running dead-last in Cammeraygal Ward.
Heading south to God’s Country, as insular locals refer to the Sutherland Shire, where former mayor Carmelo Pesce is struggling to retain a seat on council. CBD regulars will recall that Pesce was meant to succeed former prime minister Scott Morrison as the Liberal member for Cook, before getting thrashed by blow-in McKinsey man Simon Kennedy at a preselection, which triggered a mini civil war among local Liberals in the area.
In the aftermath Pesce was dumped from the party’s local council ticket, rage-quit the Liberals and chose to contest the election as an independent. Currently he’s running neck-and-neck with the Liberals for a spot on council.
Meanwhile, in the Central Coast, it looks like a very warm welcome back to politics for another CBD regular, former Labor MP Belinda Neal, whose parliamentary career never recovered from an infamous alleged altercation at Gosford nightspot Iguana Joe’s in 2008.
Some locals might not know who she is but either way Neal, who was expelled from the ALP in 2017 over alleged branch stacking, only to recently win reinstatement, looks set for a spot on council.
In Canada Bay, friendly former CFMEU boss Andrew Ferguson, of the Ferg political dynasty, is running behind his Liberal rival in the mayoral race, but could well get up thanks to Greens preferences.
And finally to Canterbury-Bankstown, where the Libertarian Party’s Elvis Sinosic looks set to become the first former UFC fighter to serve on a Sydney council.
ALL SETTLED
Sighs of relief over at News Corp’s Holt Street HQ after The Australian avoided a potentially damaging defamation battle with AMP’s former head of advice Anthony “Jack” Regan.
In June, Regan launched proceedings against the paper over a January article that he argued had defamed him by imputing that he’d misled the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and admitted to misleading the corporate regulator during the banking royal commission led by former High Court judge Kenneth Hayne.
Regan claimed the article caused serious harm to his personal and professional relationship, and substantial distress, embarrassment and hurt, calling for aggravated damages. Plus he’d briefed in-demand defamation silk Sue Chrysanthou, who you call when you mean business.
It seems like cooler heads since prevailed, with Federal Court judge Robert Bromwich ordering the case be discontinued on Friday, noting that “the proceedings have otherwise settled on mutually acceptable but confidential terms”.
That came a week after The Australian published an apology to Regan, noting that its January articles stated that Regan “had misled ASIC in relation to the issue of charging for advice that was not delivered”.
“This statement was an error and it should not have been published,” the apology continued.
“The Australian withdraws the suggestion that Mr Regan personally misled ASIC and apologises to Mr Regan for any harm or distress caused to him and his family.”
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