By Kishor Napier-Raman and Stephen Brook
When the Albanese government announced former prime minister Kevin Rudd would be our next ambassador to the United States, CBD feared for embassy staff forced to work under one of Canberra’s notoriously hard taskmasters.
We shouldn’t have worried. Now living his best life in the DC swamp and no longer mourning his prime ministership like a miserable ghost, Rudd has become Australia’s biggest party animal since Corey Worthington.
CBD recently revealed the extravagant bill for Rudd’s 2023 DC Pride Party – the $US3000 balloon arch seemed particularly extravagant – which drew a babble of diplomats, journalists, and even a few Republican staffers to hang out with drag queens at Rudd’s White Oaks mansion.
It was such a roaring success the Ruddster was back for more this year at the swanky new embassy building. According to receipts revealed under freedom of information laws, Kevin from Queensland partied even harder.
Our back-of-the-envelope calculations show the embassy spent around $US43,000 ($64,303) on this year’s Pride Party, more than $10,000 above the 2023 bill. Inflation and all that. Maybe.
Fresh from Eurovision, and mid-US tour, electronic duo Electric Fields entertained guests, at a cost to the taxpayer of $11,000. Rudd’s two favourite drag queens, Kitty Glitter and Crystal Edge, returned for this year’s event, at $US2000 and $US400 a pop.
The canapes alone cost $US12,400, with DC caterers trying their best to bring a dose of Australiana to the event with a menu featuring “mini chicken parmas” and something called a “lammie”, which we assume is what the Yanks call a lamington.
For $US4000, guests were treated to an incredibly mid drinks list – Yalumba, Coopers pale – a sorry representation of this country’s booze producers we may add. Hiring a stage crew, sound and lighting technicians cost $US14,600.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is clearly getting sick of all these FOIs because we were hastily directed to a statement on their website saying the Pride Party was an integral part of the embassy’s public diplomacy.
“In 2024, the Embassy’s Pride event again hosted by the Deputy Chief of Mission was deliberately designed to mark the handover from Sydney WorldPride to next year’s WorldPride host, Washington DC, and included hundreds of guests from Congress and across government, media and the private sector,” was the official word.
Rudd, who before becoming PM once got drunk at a New York strip club with Rupert Murdoch’s lieutenant Col Allan, is clearly a different man in the Land of the Free, doing his diplomatic best to maintain Australia’s reputation for looseness abroad.
FRIENDLY LOCALS
Liberals north of the bridge can’t catch a break.
Weeks after the council nomination epic fail, Pittwater MP Rory Amon was charged with child sex offences (which he denies) and quit parliament, setting up a byelection that independent Jacqui Scruby has a good shot at winning.
At least the party settled on a seemingly competent candidate for the seat in Northern Beaches deputy mayor Georgia Ryburn, who could’ve been mayor had the nominations not been botched.
But Ryburn has a problem. She lives in Frenchs Forest, in the neighbouring division of Wakehurst. And on the insular peninsula, that’s a big no-no.
Scruby certainly wasn’t thrilled, telling CBD that Pittwater deserved a local representative, “not a candidate imposed from outside by the Liberal Party machine”.
“I’m a local. I drive through the Mona Vale Road construction site every day and get diverted when the Wakehurst parkway floods,” she thundered.
“I listen to this community and I will report to them, not to the broken NSW Liberal Party,” she said.
But Ryburn told us her family had lived in the northern beaches for four generations, and Pittwater for three. She plans to move to Pittwater if elected.
“It’s no secret I was devastated about not getting to run for council, but as deputy mayor I’m across the local issues in Pittwater, and want to continue delivering for Pittwater,” she said.
“I’m so excited to be the Liberal candidate and continue serving the community I’ve been part of my whole life.”
PUT OUT YOUR LETTUCE
We told you so.
Last week, this column predicted that former British prime minister Liz Truss, who spent just 44 floundering days in Number 10 Downing Street and was outlasted by a lettuce, would be coming to Brisbane to address the Australian edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference.
And on Thursday morning, CPAC boss Andrew Cooper finally confirmed Truss would indeed be joining the fun, describing her as “a leading voice in British and global politics”. Truss’ constituents certainly think otherwise, turfing her out of her Tory safe seat in June.
Speaking of TERFs, in other news from the brain-rot faction of the Australian right, anti-trans keyboard warrior and failed Liberal candidate for Warringah Katherine Deves is the latest to join Alan Jones’ media outlet ADH TV (financially backed by James Packer) with a new weekly show called “straight talk”. We shan’t be watching.