By Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell
It’s been a big few days for Australia’s power players. First, senior pollies, corporate titans and assorted spinners gathered for the Business Council of Australia’s annual dinner in Sydney on Wednesday night to hear Prime Minister Anthony Albanese deliver a fairly safe speech about how you could be pro-business and pro-worker.
The lucky passengers.Credit: John Shakespeare
Joining him was a handful of senior lieutenants: Treasurer Jim Chalmers, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus and Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones. A few state premiers made it too: Queensland’s Annastacia Palaszczuk, the “Adelaide Adonis” Peter Malinauskas and Tasmanian Jeremy Rockliff. Even high-profile US ambassador Caroline Kennedy scored a ticket.
From the Liberal side, only deputy leader Sussan Ley and opposition infrastructure spokeswoman Bridget McKenzie got an invite. No such love for Stuart Robert, who was spotted eating Chinese food around the corner in Angel Place.
But this was all but an entree to the main event – the government’s much-trumpeted jobs and skills summit in Canberra.
The luckiest few who attended from Sydney, among them Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce and BHP’s Mike Henry, even managed to land a seat on the prime minister’s plane – nicknamed Toto 1 – to jet them to the capital.
These fortunate chief executives did have to pay their own way to cover the cost of the flight though. Then again, our back-of-the-envelope calculations – about $6400 to fly a KC-30A plane from Sydney to Canberra and there were about 20 souls aboard – show it would’ve still been cheaper hitching a ride with Albo than copping Qantas’ inflated rates.
And even if the RAAF price-matched a standard business class seat, as is often the case, with no chance of delays, lost bags, or interminable airport queues, it’s certainly a way better deal than flying commercial.
Things went smoothly for the most part on the summit’s first morning, apart from someone managing to fly the Aboriginal flag upside down in the Great Hall, prompting Northern Territory Country Liberals Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price to take to the socials.
“With all the virtuous expression of respect for Aboriginal Australians … and … strategically placing the flag prominently to express this deep virtue you’d think that this Albanese government could actually hang it the right way up?” she wrote.
Liberals too woke?
A $115-a-head Dymocks lunch featuring former prime minister John Howard at Sydney’s Four Seasons hotel this week went down more or less without incident – socialist alternative types were perhaps busy chasing Malcolm Turnbull.
The only raised eyebrow moment came, as it so often does, during audience question time, when one woman asked Johnny whether the Liberal Party had become “too woke,” certainly a view held by some of the Coalition’s more conservative elements.
The octogenarian Howard handled the curveball like a pro, reaffirming the need for the Liberals to remain a “broad church” (even if, at a federal level, it’s lost its more moderate pews).
He also reminded the faithful of the big task at hand – working together to re-elect Dominic Perrottet’s Liberal government in NSW. Not such an easy task after the turbulent, scandal-ridden past few months.
Premier in a spin
Speaking of turbulent times for the NSW premier, Perrottet’s media director Miranda Wood finishes up on Thursday. She’s the second spinner to quit his media team recently, after Kathy Lipari departed last month.
In return, team Perrottet has picked up two blokes fleeing the gloom of opposition – Ben Wicks, formerly of Scott Morrison’s office, is set to join imminently, reuniting with Benn Ayre, who ran media for former finance minister Simon Birmingham.
Victory for Marg the builder
NSW Governor Margaret Beazley resides in a sprawling gothic revival mansion a stone’s throw from the Opera House. But everyone must plan for retirement and, with that in mind, the former NSW Supreme Court judge went to North Sydney council mid-last year with a $2.6 million proposal to bulldoze and rebuild her three-bedroom Lavender Bay home.
As is so often the case, the neighbours kicked up a stink, unhappy that Beazley’s planned additional floor would obstruct their prized harbour views.
“Views should be shared and not taken,” came the snarky submission from one neighbour. A decision was meant to be reached in December last year, but the council deferred for further analysis, thanks in part to the weight of neighbourly disgruntlement.
Beazley’s architects rather cheekily dropped a series of amended plans just days before Christmas. What followed was more complaints, and further amendments until at last, happily for the governor, the council approved the development last month.
Vale Allen Hawke
People in Canberra and beyond are mourning the death on Wednesday of Australian Public Service legend Allan Hawke.
The 74-year-old was born and raised in Canberra and had done it all in the nation’s capital; chief of staff to Paul Keating during the Bankstown bruiser’s prime ministerial pomp, secretary of the departments of Defence, Transport and Veterans Affairs, High Commissioner to New Zealand, Chancellor of the Australian National University and chairman of the Canberra Raiders rugby league club.
Hawke was respected by both sides of politics – he was sent on the New Zealand posting in 2003 by then Liberal foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer – and revered by many of those who worked for him in the public service where he forged a reputation for the “frank and fearless” approach that is supposed to the APS ethos.
More than a few among the present crop of Canberra mandarins could take a leaf out of Hawke’s book.
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