Is George Christensen the new Member for Moscow?

After Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a few hundred Australians, including business leaders, all federal MPs and Senators, state premiers, and even a few journalists including one of your humble columnists, were sanctioned by Russia.

The retaliation against the Australian government’s military and economic support for Kyiv means all those on the naughty list are banned indefinitely from entering Russia. But it turns out someone knows how to get un-sanctioned – the conspiracy-curious former Nationals MP George Christensen.

Will the Member for Manila become the Member for Moscow?Credit: John Shakespeare

The former Member for Manila, who now describes himself as a “blogger, podcaster, journalist and theologian”, claimed on his Telegram account that he’d managed to get allowed back to Russia after making a special plea to ambassador Alexei Pavlovsky.

“Wikipedia is false. An article currently went up on it claiming I am sanctioned by Russia,” Christensen told his 25,000-odd Telegram followers. “However, I appealed to the Russian ambassador to Australia, disassociating myself with anti-Russian rhetoric rife in Australia. As a result, the sanction against me was lifted.”

Christensen didn’t return CBD’s calls about what exactly he’d said to the ambassador, so we didn’t get to ask how he felt about the invasion. But in a series of now-deleted 2017 tweets, Comrade Christensen defended the invasion of Crimea three years earlier and claimed Russia was “demonised unfairly” in the West.

Opera Australia’s Exxon, stage right

There’s been a bit of hubbub recently about fossil fuel companies and their sponsorship of artistic, cultural and social events. Amid all that, it looks like a decades-long arrangement between Opera Australia and multinational oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil has quietly been scrapped.

As late as last month, ExxonMobil still appeared on the company’s website as a silver partner. That logo is now gone. Disappointingly, Opera Australia didn’t respond to CBD’s requests for comment by deadline. But some activists from Extinction Rebellion, initially planning on staging a protest outside the Sydney opening of the Phantom of the Opera last month, had written to the company about their Exxon deal. In correspondence seen by CBD, Opera Australia confirmed Exxon was no longer a sponsor.

All this was done with decidedly unoperatic fanfare.

Starting lineup

Channel 7 executives are feeling chuffed with themselves after the network’s coverage of Saturday night’s barnburner AFL preliminary final between Sydney and Collingwood smoked the opposition, pulling nearly 1.1 million metro viewers.

Seven will be feeling good about its audience for Saturday’s grand final – as will Rupert Murdoch’s Foxtel, which hoovered up more than 450,000 of its paying punters for its coverage of the Swans and the Pies – with finals fever going some way toward calming jitters over the behemoth $4.5 billion deal Foxtel and Seven inked this month for seven years of footy broadcast rights.

And while the Geelong and Sydney team sheets for the big game are far from finalised, CBD’s informants tell us Seven’s commentary team for Saturday is settled, with the network’s Friday night callers all getting a guernsey. It’s Brian Taylor and James Brayshaw with the main call, while Daisy Pearce – shrugging off attempts to cancel her for refreshing straight talk on royal memorialising at the footy – will be on special comments with Luke Hodge. Richmond legend Matthew Richardson will be riding the boundary.

Blame it on Rio

It’s fair to say mining giant Rio Tinto has had a few reputational issues to grapple with over the past few years. The company’s destruction of an Indigenous sacred cave at Juukan Gorge in WA two years ago led to widespread outrage, a shareholder revolt and an internal purge that claimed chief executive Jean-Sebastien Jacques and other senior figures.

But it looks like one big Aussie company saw Rio’s desperate attempts to make amends and wanted in. Biotechnology company CSL has just nabbed Rio’s global head of reputation and brand Bernadette Murdoch, who joined to lead its reputation management centre of excellence last week, a move which caused a few raised eyebrows among some shareholders.

While Murdoch only took over the reputation and brand side of things in April last year, well after Juukan, she’d been the company’s chief adviser on brand, communication and communities since 2017, the area which covers cultural heritage and relations with First Nations communities.

It almost makes us wonder what skeletons, if any, CSL might be hiding.

Royal buns

Canberra’s National Press Club loves to make its food a little more palatable with the addition of topical references to current affairs in lieu of spice. And the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II on Tuesday was no exception, with the NPC spruiking “the M’amburger” – a venison patty, cucumber and cranberry sauce over iceberg lettuce – as its tapas special.

A creation fit for a queen! But not an original thought – Sydney burger hotspot Bar Luca unveiled their own Ma’amburger (also featuring venison and cranberry) yesterday.

It made CBD recall the time, back in 2020, when, in an act of culinary trolling following Beijing’s tariffs the club served Chinese diplomat Wang Xining Australian beef and barley. Or when it marked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with “chicken Kiev [sic]” balls.

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