By Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell
Former prime minister Scott Morrison is using the freedom of the backbench to dip his toes into the international speakers circuit. After skipping the first sittings of the 47th Parliament to address a conference in Tokyo, he’s been officially unveiled as an “exclusive” get for the Worldwide Speakers Group, a US-based agency that links global talent with interested parties.
<>Credit: Shakespeare
And what talent it is. WWSG’s stable includes former US vice president Mike Pence, ex-Republican speaker Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump’s attorney-general Jeff Sessions, conservative provocateur Tomi Lahren, pro-empire historian Niall Ferguson and his wife, Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
It’s not just leftie-baiters though. WWSG also represents NBA icon and vocal progressive Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, Watergate excavator Carl Bernstein and 2000s-era sex symbol Jessica Alba.
While Morrison’s fees aren’t disclosed, Bernstein charges $30,000-$40,000 a gig, so WWSG’s talent doesn’t come cheap!
In order to hold his own among that star-studded lot, Morrison is described as “a globalisation mastermind,” who “shares his boundless influence and experiences to audiences around the world”.
That boundless experience is detailed in a very long list of topics Scomo is ready to opine on, including the “marginalisation of faith and Christianity [and] perils of identity politics,” and “the future of globalism, including threats to the rules-based international order”.
It’s quite an about-face for a bloke who once warned the United Nations about the perils of “negative globalism”.
And while that all reads like it was created by a Scott Morrison AI-generator, CBD understands it was WWSG, not the former PM, who put together the hype track.
Vaucluse or bust
Teal independent candidate for Vaucluse Karen Freyer has the kind of CV that should spook Liberals in the blue-ribbon electorate.
She’s Ascham-educated, hails from a prominent eastern suburbs family, had a political apprenticeship helping Yvonne Weldon become the City of Sydney’s first Indigenous councillor, and boasts a pro-climate action, developer-sceptical platform that should soothe the NIMBYs of Double Bay.
There’s one small snafu so far – Freyer lives in Redfern, not in the electorate. Happily, Freyer signed a sales agency agreement to sell her terrace in June, and told CBD she’d be relocating to the east over the next two months.
At least independent-minded Vaucluse residents have a candidate to back. The Liberals are still battling between Woollahra councillor Mary-Lou Jarvis, former journalist Kellie Sloane, and Roanne Knox, deputy chair of the Ascham Foundation, which helps fund projects at Freyer’s (and Allegra Spender’s) alma mater. Final preselection is due by early November.
Bad Atomos-phere
It’s been a woeful time for video tech outfit Atomos, which has grappled with a tanking share price, millions in pre-tax losses, and a wrongful termination lawsuit brought by dumped chief executive Estelle McGechie.
McGechie claims she was fired because of her willingness “to speak up about rampant illegal conduct at Atomos”. The company says it was because the Silicon Valley-based executive refused to move to Melbourne.
But McGechie’s lawyers are pointing to a smoking gun – a $365,000 loan from the company wired through in March this year to help their former chief executive put down a deposit for a house in Melbourne, which landed in her accounts a month before she was terminated.
“Atomos claims it terminated Ms McGechie ‘because she has not yet relocated to Australia.’ Atomos’ claim is belied by its conduct in advancing a home loan deposit only a month prior,” McGechie said via her American lawyers.
In response, an Atomos spokesperson maintained that, despite the loan, McGechie was fired because she hadn’t moved by the agreed timeframe of January 2022, as stipulated in her employment contract.
“Ms McGechie’s move to Australia by the agreed date was postponed several times, sometimes for reasons that were unclear to Atomos,” the company said. “Primarily it was Ms McGechie’s failure to relocate to Melbourne from the US, a condition of her employment contract, that led to her being removed as CEO in April.”
The company has since launched legal proceedings in the Victorian Supreme Court to recoup that loan, action which McGechie’s lawyers say added to their client’s distress.
There’s much messy litigation to come, which isn’t great for a company whose chair, Christopher Tait, recently apologised to shareholders for a “succession of bad news”.
Republican Rules
Those modern young things at the Australian Republican Movement began casting their ballots on Monday to elect a new governing committee to try to jolt some life back into the constitutional debate after the recent changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.
But electoral nerds are scratching their heads at the movement’s use of the slightly archaic multiple non-transferable vote system - or block voting - abandoned for Australian elections generations ago, but still favoured by clubs and societies.
It allows like-minded groups to get themselves organised to dominate an election, unlike a proportional representation model where unaligned players or smaller groups might get a sniff of the 10 committee spots up for grabs.
The net result is that the highest-profile Liberal contesting the election - former Mackellar MP Jason Falinski - is probably running a losing race because he doesn’t have a crew around to help snare those crucial block votes.
By contrast, a loose grouping of former Socceroo and refugee rights campaigner Craig Foster, Thom Woodroofe, who works for Kevin Rudd at the Asia Society, former Andrews Labor government adviser Tully Fletcher, Climate 200 executive director Byron Fay, anti-violence campaigner Tarang Chawla, departing Netball Australia chair Marina Go, former Labor senator Nova Peris, and former Multicultural NSW chair Vic Alhadeff, is looking very good to emerge as the dominant force on the committee.
A very impressive group, no doubt, but where’s the ability to get the conservatives on board a cross-party push for a republic?
We sent questions to the ARM’s returning officer on Monday, but they did not respond and Falinski could not be reached for comment.