By Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell
In these trying times, make sure to check in on any monarchists in your life. That includes former prime minister Tony Abbott, a bloke so smitten with the royals he requested an audience with her majesty after being dumped from The Lodge, and who described himself as “sad and numb” at the Queen’s passing.
Abbott was meant to be speaking at a private dinner for the Australian Monarchist League in Sydney next week, which now joins the long list of events that have been cancelled because of the Queen’s death. It’s not a complete shutdown for the league, with a gala dinner at the University of Queensland still going ahead. Perhaps it’s just that Abbott is still too deep in mourning.
Tony Abbott could be mourning a while.Credit: Shakespeare
But once the misty-eyed pageantry wears off, and Australians grow accustomed to the reign of a charmless King Charles III, there’s every chance Tony will be needed on the frontlines, fighting hard to keep Australia a constitutional monarchy. It’s no time for sooking.
While we’re still on her majesty’s death, the office of Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus writes to take issue with any suggestion in Monday’s column of tardiness on the first law officer’s part in updating his title from Queen’s Counsel to King’s Counsel, which we reported as occurring “over the weekend”.
The changes were made on Friday afternoon, Dreyfus’ people assure us.
Mask Off
You’d think that Australia’s most hawkish, pro-restriction COVID experts wouldn’t be seen dead at an indoor event without an N95, especially after years of calling for tougher mask mandates and hectoring anyone who might dare try and live like it’s 2019 again.
So CBD was shocked to see UNSW global biosecurity professor Raina MacIntyre appear maskless on the stage of the Sydney Opera House at an Antidote Festival event on Sunday.
An admission, from the most cautious of experts, that it’s time to move on and enjoy life in spite of the virus? Not quite. Macintyre said she’d only taken off her mask because it didn’t fit her mic on stage. In something of a cautionary tale, it seems that brief window was sadly enough for COVID to come calling – she tested positive this morning. We wish her a swift recovery.
Robert Writes
CBD brought word last month about Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Scott Morrison prayer buddy Stuart Robert’s side-hustle as a self-published author of what we’ll politely term “military history for Christian dads”.
We were particularly blown away by Robert’s ability to churn out two tomes in an election year, the first few months of which he spent holding an additional ministerial portfolio. And we’re even more impressed after Robert dropped another release last week, with straight-to-Amazon classic The Hidden Purpose: Unlocking the twenty-two obscure books referenced in the bible.
Clocking in at nearly 200 pages, and according to the blurb, the result of “an exhaustive search of archaeological and historical documents,” it’s Robert’s third release in less than a month. Seems like it really does get less busy in opposition.
Independents of Public Affairs
The battle for the Victorian state seat of Caulfield got underway in earnest on Sunday with teal independent hopeful Nomi Kaltmann launching her campaign with an event that attracted a politically eclectic crowd.
Most commented-on attendee was surely Gideon Rozner, director of policy at The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), the conservative think tank that launched the careers of Liberal Senator James Paterson and former Goldstein MP Tim Wilson, who of course was knocked over by another teal, Zoe Daniel, at the federal election in May.
Before accusations of disloyalty to the conservative cause are levelled at Rozner, his wife Ilia is one of Kaltmann’s oldest and closest pals and we’re reliably told that it was friendship, not any sympathy with the teal cause that brought Rozner to Sunday’s event.
Besides, Kaltmann herself was in the Labor Party until August, so is no stranger to reaching out across political divides.
Also in attendance on Sunday was Simon Holmes a Court, whose Climate 200 political fundraising vehicle played such a key role for the teals in May. Turns out Holmes a Court is a mate of Rozner’s as well as a fully paid up member of the IPA. Strange bedfellows indeed.
Bar boys
Keith Wolahan the new rising star Liberal MP for the Melbourne seat of Menzies got through a world of name-checking in his well-received maiden parliamentary speech in Canberra last week.
But Liberal circles were wondering about the absence of Wolahan’s great mate and fellow barrister Eddy Gisonda, whose last brush with fame was a member of Israel Folau’s legal team in the former Wallaby’s battle with Rugby Australia.
Neither Wolahan nor Gisonda were willing to comment for CBD, but we’re assured by people who know that there was nothing sinister in the omission. Gisonda himself, following his longstanding preference for staying out of the media and parliamentary processes, asked his mate not to mention his name.
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