By Kishor Napier-Raman and Liam Mannix
In his valedictory speech to parliament in 2019, Christopher Pyne remarked that he didn’t have a rags-to-riches story like many of his fellow MPs. “Although I once did have to get my own lemon for a gin and tonic,” he added to howls of laughter.
Christopher Pyne wanted to prove his working-class credentials with a shoey.Credit: John Shakespeare
Now reborn as a lobbyist making a motza in the lucrative defence sector, the former defence minister vowed to go one better on Tuesday night at Toppi Bar and Restaurant in Martin Place.
Standing atop a plastic milk crate – “I need some elevation!” he exclaimed in that unmistakable South Australian squawk – Pyne vowed: “To prove my working-class credentials I think I’ll do a shoey later on!”
The fixer, as he dubbed himself, may be a tribal Liberal, but he was wining and dining denizens of the NSW Labor Party in a bid to beef up his lobbying shop Pyne and Partners’ centre-left bona fides.
Among those in attendance at the bar, across the road from NSW parliament, were state Labor MP Greg Warren, legendary factional boss Graham Richardson (pushing a walking frame) and Meryl Swanson, the federal Labor MP with a name befitting a Hollywood star.
Liberal powerbroker Michael Photios was also there to stop things becoming too bolshie.
“There’s nothing wrong with being nice to people because if you’re nice to people on the way up, I can assure you that you see them all on the way down,” Pyne advised the crowd.
This approach is certainly proving successful for Pyne, whose firm now has outposts in Paris and Washington D.C as well as Adelaide, Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne.
Along with the Prosecco, beers and nibbles, guests were offered copies of Pyne’s political memoir The Insider which he said had sold 22,000 copies, a figure he humbly described as “eye-wateringly high” by Australian non-fiction standards.
Swanson followed Pyne’s speech by hopping on the milk crate and praising him as “one of those rare creatures that is actually able to bring people together”.
The Hunter Valley MP’s advice to the various flacks and influence peddlers in attendance: “Just get to know someone a little bit better because you never know when they might be able to do you a solid favour on a deal that you absolutely need.”
HENSKENS’ HOLIDAY
NSW shadow-attorney general Alister Henskens took a break from the Euro summer to speak at an event organised by a group of European anti-immigration MPs linked to controversial French nationalist parliamentarian Marine Le Pen.
In Strasbourg last month, the senior Liberal addressed two events organised by Identité et Démocratie, a group of far-right and nationalist members of the European Parliament, where he spoke about Australia’s immigration policies and the “consequences for the European Union” of China’s influence in the Asia-Pacific.
Photos show Henskens shared a stage with Patricia Chagnon-Clevers, an MP from Le Pen’s National Rally Party, and met MPs from an Italian nationalist party. He also posed for a photo with Andre Rouge, a key Le Pen ally.
An invite to the event published by Identité et Démocratie shows its organisers included members of the far-right Alternative for Germany.
But Henskens told the Herald the two speaking events were open to the entire European Parliament, and that he had received correspondence from members of the German Greens Party before attending.
“I was invited to speak at an event open to the whole of the European Parliament and I expect that a wide range of political views were represented by the MPs in the audience,” he said.
“I was not there to endorse any particular party’s views. I was asked to speak about Australia’s policies on migration, from the Howard, Rudd/ Gillard and Abbott governments which continue today under the federal Labor government.”
Henskens, whose father was a member of the Dutch resistance against the Nazi Party during World War II and who has been a keynote speaker at the Jewish Board of Deputies Holocaust Remembrance Day event, strongly denied he had endorsed the views of the organisers by attending, and we’re not suggesting otherwise.
““I also spoke at another event as a former NSW trade minister about relations between Australia and China. It is entirely reasonable for an MP from NSW to share information about Australian government policies, which is what I did.”
Henskens had been holidaying in Europe when he was invited to the event and said he hadn’t used taxpayer funding.
Among the MPs Henskens met with during the trip were Susanna Ceccardi, a member of Italy’s populist right Lega party, who has opposed the construction of mosques in her region.
Ceccardi wrote on social media that they had discussed “migration policies, the fight against the woke culture of political correctness and to have confirmation of the fact that the whole world is watching the work of the Italian government with great interest”.
NO FAKING
The revelation that the venerable Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre had discovered an experiment in a study by former top researcher Mark Smyth was probably never performed set plenty of tongues wagging across the research sector – particularly after it turned out Smyth had already been investigated and cleared over earlier research misconduct allegations.
““That got a lot of people talking today. [It was] news to us,” a senior Peter Mac source told CBD.
Smyth authored or co-authored more than 150 papers while working at Peter Mac – leaving plenty of other science heavyweights sweating.
In an effort to calm the horses, the Mac’s director of cancer research Ricky Johnstone sent out an all-staff email on Monday – reminding his scientists to please not make anything else up.
“It is a clear reminder to all of us of our obligation to produce and appropriately record the best quality research, based on the best quality data,” Johnstone wrote.
“I cannot reiterate how important it is to ensure that your mandatory research integrity training is up to date and that you use appropriate data recording processes such the electronic lab notebook system to track research projects in real time.”
That should fix it.
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