Stephen Conroy set to take the baton from Matildas

The Women’s World Cup party is over, and it appears Stephen Conroy will have a big role to play in ensuring the good times keep rolling on for Australian football.

The former minister is set to become the new chair of the Australian Professional Leagues, the body that runs the A-Leagues and he is hoping to carry on the momentum of the past month into the start of the new season in October.

Conroy, who was born in England and supports Sam Kerr’s Chelsea, is no stranger to Aussie soccer politics. He was in the mix to join the board of what was then known as Football Federation Australia in late 2018, when the Lowy family was being squeezed out of the game amid a club-led revolution.

He didn’t make it, but his relationship with certain APL powerbrokers has made him the leading candidate to become the organisation’s new independent chair and to take over from Western Sydney Wanderers owner Paul Lederer.

Conroy’s Labor ties would have been helpful a few weeks ago, when the APL was pitching for a share in the recently announced $200 million fund for women’s sport. But his lobbying nous – he chairs TG Public Affairs, and was called in by PwC when the tax scandal broke – surely can’t hurt the game’s ambitions to unlock more government support.

Conroy did not return calls, and sources say it’s not quite a done deal. His appointment as APL chair is subject to formal approval by the board, which includes representatives from Football Australia and Silver Lake, the private equity firm that has invested $140 million into the A-Leagues.

Let’s hope the APL can do a little better than the last time it tried to capitalise on Australian success at a World Cup. It’s only eight months ago that Melbourne Victory fans stormed the pitch and assaulted an opposition goalkeeper, partly out of anger at the league’s pig-brained decision to controversially sell future grand final hosting rights to Destination NSW.

LAW PARTY

When Mark Leibler joined Arnold Bloch decades ago to partner in a small Melbourne law venture, he “knew full well that, being a Jewish lawyer, none of the establishment firms would have taken me on”, Leibler told an audience at the Grand Hyatt Melbourne’s Savoy Ballroom on Monday night.

The guest list at the glittering event, Arnold Bloch Leibler’s 70th anniversary, is evidence the firm is small no longer. Anthony Albanese was the guest of honour, in a room stacked with political heavies, including Labor ministers Bill Shorten and Mark Dreyfus, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and his Coalition rival John Pesutto.

It’s a testament to the firm’s influence that many of the gathered rich-listers are ABL’s clients – including billionaires Anthony Pratt and Solomon Lew. A posse of other business figures in attendance included Ruslan Kogan, Seek co-founders Paul and Andrew Bassat, ACM boss Antony Catalano, Labor minister turned TPG lobbyist Stephen Conroy, Latitude Financial’s Ahmed Fahour and property developer Rino Grollo.

Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon, satirist John Safran and Melbourne Lord Mayor Sally Capp were also in the room. With key Voice to parliament architects Noel Pearson and Marcia Langton in attendance, much was made of ABL’s longstanding support for Indigenous constitutional recognition.

The firm’s Voice stance might have made it too uncomfortable for Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to accept his invitation.

Pearson was an articled clerk at ABL, where he impressed Leibler on the similarities between the Jewish and Aboriginal peoples.

“Noel has often described our two peoples as sharing a land-based identity, historical and spiritual,” Leibler said Monday.

“Noel also says that Indigenous Australians can and must resist victimhood, as the Jewish people have done, even in the face of persistent racism and victimisation.”

Leibler was there in 2017 when the Uluru Statement from the Heart was endorsed calling for a voice to parliament.

“The hope, the joy, a sense of having reached a turning point in our shared history – all those feelings were palpable. My vote will be a resounding Yes vote; not just because of my absolute confidence in the legal underpinnings of the constitutional change being proposed but because I know it’s the right thing to do.“

ECONOMICS CLASS

It’s fair to say the Reserve Bank has had to cop its fair share of unfriendly media coverage as the cost of living pressures rose and its successive rate rises put the squeeze on mortgage-holders around the country.

The RBA responded to some of that criticism the way only wonky economists can – by offering offending journalists a special re-education session, as a few of The Guardian’s pinko hacks discovered earlier this year.

According to emails released under Freedom of Information, the bank wasn’t too pleased about a video starring off-platform and newsletters editor Antoun Issa titled “Corporate profits are driving inflation ... and the RBA can’t do much about it”.

The day it was released, the RBA’s head of communications emailed editors of The Guardian complaining about the video and offering a one-hour briefing with assistant governor Luci Ellis.

“There are a couple of fundamental premises that are not supported by data, namely that inflation is being driven by corporate profits (outside mining and banks) and not by demand (as well as supply),” the bank said.

The Guardian defended the video, claiming it “fairly reflects the various factors contributing to inflation” but it accepted the bank’s offer for a private briefing.

The video cited an Australia Institute report suggesting corporate profits were responsible for 69 per cent of inflation beyond the RBA’s target of 2 per cent to 3 per cent. That report triggered a bit of a stoush between the progressive think tank and the bank, whose own analysis claimed the institute’s findings were based on misleading methodology.

But subsequent research by the OECD on the relationship between corporate profits and inflation published well after The Guardian’s lesson seemed to challenge the bank’s view.