By Noel Towell and Kishor Napier-Raman
If CBD received the VVIP treatment from the autocratic Qatari government, we too might not be shouting from the rooftops about it.
Anika Wells and Anne RustonCredit: John Shakespeare
So perhaps it was a forgivable lapse for Sports Minister Anika Wells’ four nights’ accommodation in Doha during last year’s World Cup – courtesy of the Qatari foreign ministry – to have only been declared on her parliamentary register of interests last week, outside the officially mandated 35-day time limit.
An “administrative error” was to blame, Wells’ office told us.
The Qatari sportswashing machine certainly treated foreign dignitaries well, with Wells and company being put up in Doha’s Ritz-Carlton, alongside mega delegations from the United States, Saudi Arabia and Turkey (who didn’t even have a team at the tournament).
We’re sure there was ample time for those discussions, which Wells promised to have before her departure, about much-needed human rights reform in the petro-state.
But the Labor minister isn’t the only register of interests transgressor brought to our notice. Her Coalition counterpart Anne Ruston only declared this week, following inquiries by CBD, her attendance at last year’s Melbourne Cup as a guest of Pernod Ricard winemakers. Sounds posh.
Again, we were told the omission was down to “an internal administrative oversight which has now been corrected” – spinner-speak for “a young staffer is in a lot of trouble”.
But there’s no sign on Ruston’s register of her own trip to Qatar – she accompanied Wells on the World Cup jaunt. We hear Ruston believed the Australian government was stumping up for her travel and accommodation and is currently making inquiries.
NEWS BLUES
The opinion pages of Wednesday’s Herald Sun, Melbourne’s US-owned tabloid, had a comfortingly familiar feel, with the usual suspects writing the usual things. There was Jeff Kennett, banging on about the state’s debt and deficit like he’s been doing for, oh, more than 30 years now.
Perennially outraged Andrew Bolt-wannabe Rita Panahi was warning yet again of the grave dangers to all of us from Dan Andrews’ state Labor government, and Andrews’ ALP colleague Theo Theophanous was pushing his all-too-familiar nuclear power barrow.
But there was a problem. Theophanous was the subject of an Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) report, tabled in state parliament on Wednesday, which found the former minister had acted improperly, in lobbying – undeclared – for the Chinese-backed Australian Education City scheme while sitting on the board of the Victorian Planning Authority.
Theophanous, for the record, denies any wrongdoing and rejects the entire IBAC report, which he says is full of “damaging false assumptions and foregone conclusions in pursuit of IBAC’s own agendas”.
Now, with the report being tabled on Wednesday, about 9.30am, you’d think it would be impossible to remove the piece from Wednesday’s opinion pages, right?
But IBAC had sent copies of the report around to news outlets on Tuesday evening, embargoed until such time the government got around to tabling the document in parliament, so the Herald Sun might have seen the commission’s verdict on Theophanous’ conduct coming.
We asked News Corp just what the hell happened and whether it would continue to publish Theophanous’ column.
Theophanus told CBD that he would be happy to continue writing for the Herald Sun and repeated his rejection of IBAC’s conclusions.
“There is not a single example where I have had a commercial lobbying relationship where it was not declared,” he said.
PRIME TIME
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is about to unveil a familiar face from the small screen as his new press secretary: former Channel 7 and Network Ten foreign correspondent Emma Dallimore.
CBD’s informants in Capital Hill – it’s a real suburb – tell us Albanese’s office has been looking to bolster its firepower for some time, and Albo could do worse than the well-respected Dallimore.
And there’s this. The hiring of Caitlin Goddard from Mark McGowan’s WA government to the Albanese spin machine with a brief to focus on the west – a long-term problem state for Labor until recently, and a place where Albanese shows up a lot – is generally considered to have gone all right.
So it is hoped that bringing in Dallimore, who cut her teeth at Seven’s bureau in Mackay, north Queensland, won’t do the ALP any harm in a part of the country that has given Albanese’s party nightmares these past few elections.
Also being deployed to the battlefront from Albanese’s office is long-time Labor activist and staffer Josh Lloyd, who has been sent south to help out with the byelection campaign in Aston in Melbourne’s east.
That’s being seen as a sign that Labor is in it to win it. Or maybe to not lose it too badly. Time will tell.
POLI-FLICKS
The Liberal-aligned Robert Menzies Institute at Melbourne University is out to smash the tired old trope that conservative student politicians – young fogies, some unkind souls call them – don’t know how to have fun.
And what could be a bigger hoot than kicking off the academic year with a movie night featuring the Foxtel doco The Menzies Movies.
“A tribute to Australia’s longest-serving prime minister, Sir Robert Gordon Menzies – intimately told through Menzies’ personal collection of restored home movies, which he captured with his own 16mm camera,” the blurb promises.
With popcorn, soft drink and lollies provided, the night sounds like a thriller.
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