By Stephen Brook and Kishor Napier-Raman
Banned from conducting operations in Australia, disgraced neurosurgeon Charlie Teo has settled for the next best thing – the corporate speakers’ circuit.
He’s set to provide the headline entertainment at the Insurance in Super Summit this month, in a Q&A session with Conexus Financial boss Colin Tate. “Who dat?”, we hear you ask.
Charlie Teo back in 2011. Credit: Steven Siewert
The company is a publisher and events planner for the superannuation sector, with Tate well-connected on the Labor side of politics. Which might explain Teo’s co-star for the morning session at the Intercontinental Double Bay – former West Australian emperor premier and border shutdown warrior Mark McGowan, who we’re shocked to see over east given the fiery vitriol with which he spoke of the great city of Sydney during the pandemic from his isolationist Western Australia.
Both men will be talking about the subject of … leadership.
Thanks to a heady mix of surgical talent, public relations charm and media credulity, Teo built a cult of personality and a vast network of celebrity supporters. Many of those stood by him even after this masthead revealed concerns about his judgment, narcissistic behaviour and charging financially stressed people exorbitant fees when some surgeries could be done for free in a public hospital.
And many stood by still when, two years ago, Teo was found guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct, and the Health Care Complaints Commission’s professional standards committee placed restrictions on his practising certificate.
Teo has been operating overseas, running black-tie fundraisers for his brain cancer charity (where celebrity guests include Melbourne cleanskin Mick Gatto), engaging in a spot of vegan activism and, of course, the odd speaking gig.
Before the HCCC made its findings, this masthead revealed Teo had signed up with celebrity speakers’ bureau Saxton and was believed to be commanding a fee of $10,000 a speech.
McGowan reportedly charges about $15,000 a pop.
The conference organisers didn’t reveal whether, or how much, they were paying Teo. But Tate told CBD he would interview Teo in the spirit of Conexus’ commitment to “hosting challenging and powerful conversations”, and promised the surgeon wouldn’t get a free pass.
“We will not shy away from the legal and regulatory issues Dr Teo has faced, and believe his experience with increasing media and public scrutiny and crisis management will be relevant for our audience of senior financial industry leaders,” he said.
Teo has used past interviews to cry foul about a “vexatious vilification” by people out to destroy him. We can’t wait to see what story he has to tell the finance bros.
On again, off again
On June 30, senior reporter Clementine Cuneo published a story in The Daily Telegraph headlined “Victims of terrifying home invasion issue brave warning to the public”, and then seemed to disappear from the paper. No more bylines.
The very next day, Cuneo, a veteran tabloid crime reporter, filed legal proceedings in the Federal Court against her employer under the “breach of general protections” provisions of the Fair Work Act. About what, we don’t know.
It takes a fair amount of chutzpah to take on the might of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp empire, and few journalists from among the burgeoning ranks of redundancies over the years attempt it.
Notable exception must go to Bruce Guthrie, who was sacked as editor-in-chief of the Herald Sun in 2008. He sued for breach of contract, winning more than $500,000. His Man Bites Murdoch remains a classic of the workplace grievance genre.
General protections is the section that protects employees from adverse action taken against them, including unfair termination. Neither Cuneo, her legal representatives from Thrive Workplace Consultancy & Legal nor the Tele responded to CBD’s questions.
So we thought we would settle back until the Fair Work Registrar handling the case management scheduled for August 8 offered more detail.
But no. One day after we started asking around, Cuneo’s peeps filed a motion of discontinuance at 11.22am. We would not want to imply in any way that this was in reaction to our inquiries.
The legal system moves at a glacial pace, after all. So barely a week after launching her claim, the matter has now been resolved. Happy days.
Mushroom books grow … like mushrooms
Last week we told you about what we thought was a mushroom trial podcast project involving OG true crime authors Helen Garner and Sarah Krasnostein.
The pair had been spotted around the Supreme Courthouse in Morwell, as had true crime author Chloe Hooper.
As we reported: “CBD hears that the pair have been all about the chat on the long drives from Melbourne to the Supreme Court location in Morwell, recording their dialogue two-handers for a planned podcast series, we imagine fuelled by $1 Foodary coffees and Mentos Chewy Fruit.”
OK, some of that might have been creative licence, but we hope we caught the vibe of the thing.
We had – mistakenly and despite our unsuccessful attempts to reach out – supposed this was going to be a podcast, but late last week Text Publishing announced it would be publishing a book, The Mushroom Tapes: Conversations about a Triple Murder Trial, written by Garner, Krasnostein and Hooper. It will hit bookshelves, as will other trial-related books, in November.
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