By Colin Kruger and Noel Towell
We’ve chronicled more than our share of post-politics career moves over the years, but former foreign minister Julie Bishop’s star turn at Australian Fashion Week in Sydney in recent days goes down as the first time we’ve seen an ex-polly reinvented as bona fide style influencer.
Julie Bishop rocks the frock at Australian Fashion Week.Credit: James Brickwood
Leggings for breakfast courtesy of PE Nation, a voluminous dress for Acler at dusk, and a sacrum-revealing number by Michael Lo Sordo for dessert – no easy feat, given the show kicked off in a vault in the CBD after the original location of Bennelong restaurant at the Opera House fell through.
Probably not a bad thing in the end, given how much the Lo Sordo set loves to party.
Maybe the Opera House Trust didn’t like the idea of caviar bumps and sponsored vodka shots being served as “dinner”.
But this is fashion week, after all, where square meals are the stuff of fantasy.
A caviar bump is (cue Google) “similar to a shot, but instead of using a plate or spoon, you bump caviar off your hand”.
But back to the Bish and living your best life.
While her former political colleagues were trudging into freezing Canberra on Monday for a gruelling budget week, Bishop was stepping out at Australia’s premier fashion event in a chic black cocktail dress with Dior slingbacks and a Louis Vuitton bag.
On Wednesday, she dashed to Melbourne to speak at an event, before returning to Fashion Week in time for the Anna Quan show.
Clearly in her role as a “friend” – code for brand ambassador – to David Jones, the ex-Liberal deputy leader is doing all she can to keep the department store in her good graces – bare-backed dresses and all.
David Jones is not the only corporate friend, of course.
Bishop has another side hustle, as a strategic adviser to $15 billion miner Mineral Resources – which had the former pollie starring in an employee induction video a few years back alongside minor celebs such as Hugh Jackman.
She’s also on the advisory board of privately owned Brisbane miner, Controlled Thermal Resources, and let’s not mention the little black spot on her resumé that is the failed financier Greensill Capital where she was a senior adviser.
I’M WITH THE BLAND
Ex-News Corp boss Kim Williams looks to be off to a flyer in his first months as ABC chairman – as in there have not yet been any disasters on his watch.
And he certainly picked up a warm-ish reaction from ABC Friends, usually a tough crowd, after he hosted the group’s vice president, Carol Stuart, and national president, Cassandra Parkinson, for a meeting in Sydney last month.
Kim Williams had a sit down with ABC Friends recently.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
All sounds very nice, and Stuart, in the report-back to her fellow friends she posted on the group’s website, was very forthcoming about the chat that was had.
But it’s not clear to us that Williams would have been keen for the world to know that he told the friends that the broadcaster had become “too bland”.
Or that he considered the corporation’s five-year plan that caused such a kerfuffle last year to be a “PR statement”. That would be the not yet one-year-old plan touted as the first step towards the ABC’s digital future.
There were a couple of other bits in there that we would have paused for thought before making public, including Williams saying he didn’t believe the ABC would get more money out of government until it “changed the conversation with Australian people”, according to Stuart’s account.
Makes you wonder what he reckons has been going wrong up until now.
We also wonder if Williams has shared with the city slickers on his board his desire, reported by Stuart, that half their meetings be held outside of Sydney, and indeed how directors reacted to the news.
But, y’know, people can get the wrong end of the stick sometimes, so we gave both Williams and Aunty’s mighty publicity machine a hoi on Wednesday evening to ask if he really said all those things and, if so, did he expect Stuart to put the whole thing on the internet. The ABC replied with a “no comment”.
HARD LABOR
Brendan Fevola and PM Anthony Albanese.Credit: John Shakespeare
CBD had to stifle a guffaw when we heard Treasurer Jim Chalmers claim that Tuesday night’s big spending budget is not an election pitch.
Why, the man is already acting like he’s in campaign mode, with his boss Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher aiding and abetting with, well, some gusto.
Just take a look at the trio’s media schedule, helpfully passed out by the PM’s office, which wants the world to know how hard their man is working on selling the budget.
So let’s see … the prime minister was up with the larks on Wednesday for a 2SM radio slot at 6.20am, he was on Sky News at 7am, and Nine’s Today show at 10 past. By 7.30am, Albanese was showing his mug on ABC News Breakfast and on Seven’s Sunrise just 10 minutes later, Fox FM Melbourne at 8.05am, KIISFM at 8.35am, Triple M Adelaide at 8.50am, and then Nova in Perth at five past nine.
Albo then did Channel Ten news at midday, and Triple J’s Hack at 5.30pm.
Our favourite moment in all of that was Fox’s former Carlton footy oaf Brendan Fevola proving that he was still, well, Brendan Fevola, by asking the PM if the national debt couldn’t just be wiped away? “Can’t you just wipe it and everyone start again?”
Anyway, Chalmers was not to be outdone by the boss, notching up 10 radio and TV appearances by 9.15am and going on Channel Ten news, addressing the National Press Club – those gigs can be tough – and then going on The Project in the evening.
Chalmers, interestingly enough, stuck to the AM stations while Albanese braved the forensic questioning of the likes of Fevola and KIIS FM’s chief economic brains, Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O. That tells us much about what Labor planners think of the respective electoral appeal of their two frontmen.
Now, we’re loath to talk about leaners and lifters – not after what happened to poor old Joe Hockey when he tried that one out on a memorable budget evening in 2015 – but Gallagher’s workload on Wednesday looked comparatively light, with four morning radio slots and a speech in the evening.
But even half that effort would send either one of your workshy CBDsters straight to the knacker’s yard.
WOMEN OF THE HOUSE
That speech we mentioned from Gallagher on Wednesday night was delivered in the Great Hall of Parliament House to a budget dinner put on by the Future Women advocacy group and sponsored by LaTrobe Financial.
Future Women managing director Helen McCabe had assembled an impressive crowd for the evening, with Nine’s very own Tory Maguire moderating the panel, with a bunch of Canberra’s big hitters present, and held for the first time in the prestigious space.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil and Sports Minister Anika Wells were also representing the Albanese front bench, sitting down to dinner with some of the Australian public service’s high-flyers; Finance Department Secretary Jenny Wilkinson, Employment Department boss Natalie James, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Alison Frame and Australian Secret Intelligence Service chief Kerri Hartland.
Joining Gallagher at the podium was Queensland’s first female premier, Anna Bligh, and at the tables were crossbench MPs Zali Steggall, Zoe Daniel and Kate Chaney.
Now, this affair – more than 400 powerful women in the parliament’s biggest space, where most events are a sea of grey men in grey suits – has to be noted as a breath of fresh air around the joint and hopefully a sign that things are finally changing up there.
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