By Stephen Brook and Kishor Napier-Raman
The Greens’ campaign for Melbourne’s lord mayoralty has been rocked after it was discovered that one of its electoral flyers is using a photo of the home of rival candidate Gary Morgan. A form of cultural appropriation, we guess.
“For a fairer and greener East Melbourne and South Yarra,” the flyer proclaims, before enthusing about the Power Melbourne scheme, more affordable housing and protecting open spaces.
The Greens’ flyer for the City of Melbourne council elections featuring rival candidate Gary Morgan’s house.
The photo features a magnificent tree spreading its branches skyward in front of a row of pretty houses on Powlett Street, one of the area’s most desirable addresses.
We phoned Morgan, executive chairman of Roy Morgan Research, to check out the bona fides.
Gary Morgan.Credit: Liz Ge
“Are you going to give me some publicity and run a photograph of me?” Morgan asked CBD.
Don’t mind if we do, Gary.
“Everyone in East Melbourne and South Yarra who knows me will think I am voting Green,” Morgan lamented. “I am preferencing them last.”
Morgan and wife Genevieve bought their 14-room Victorian villa in Powlett Street for $5.16 million in 2013, according to reports.
He said the flyer was a really “dirty trick” before conceding it might have been an accidental error.
“I am getting no publicity from The Age,” Morgan said. “I am the only candidate who owns and runs a significant business in the Melbourne area that employs 600 to 800 people.
“Do you want a businessman running the city – or boys in short pants?” he asked, we think rhetorically.
“Don’t call me an old man. I may be 82 but I can run 10 kilometres. I am fit and sharp.”
Morgan said his big policy was to merge the City of Melbourne council with the nearby City of Yarra and City of Port Phillip councils.
We reached out to the Greens, whose lord mayoral candidate is North Melbourne renter Roxane Ingleton and deputy lord mayoral candidate is Marley McRae McLeod.
But it seems the party has rather a lot on its plate. One of its council candidates, West Melbourne resident Karl Hessian, had to withdraw after fears he would not be able to renounce his New Zealand citizenship in time and thus would be ineligible to stand.
JUMPING SHIP
Your CBD correspondent remembers once attending a Guardian Australia staff function and revealing he was a former employee of its British version.
“Why would you ever leave?” a progressive bright young thing asked with wide-eyed, slightly patronising innocence, as if the website were some sort of journalistic Hotel California.
Which in a roundabout way brings us to Guardian Australia’s high-profile standard bearer Amy Remeikis, the latest staff member to check out from the media organisation you can never leave. Unless you’re sick of that publication’s famously meagre wages.
Remeikis has been on the ABC’s Insiders and Ten’s The Project with some pretty forthright progressive commentary, making her a target of The Australian’s Media Diary, which reckons she’s irresistible clickbait for the base. We counted 13 mentions in The Oz in the past two years, the most recent landing on Monday.
Amy Remeikis, a political journalist at The Guardian, is exiting the publication.
Remeikis has handed in her notice to The Guardian and is soon to take up a gig at progressive – there’s that word again! – think tank the Australia Institute.
It will be interesting to see if she continues to remain an object of journalistic fascination for The Australian’s media team, which appeared to be unaware of her change of job status.
The normally loquacious Remeikis declined to comment and directed us to the Guardian PR unit, which failed to get back to us before deadline.
And that progressive bright young thing at the Guardian staff party? He now works at the ABC.
WHEREFORE ART THOU?
Well-regarded media lawyer Stuart Gibson tells clients via his bio on the website of firm Macpherson Kelley that he is a “passionate defender of his clients’ brand and reputation”.
He has a “particular bent for defamation cases” and is “recognised as one of Australia’s top media and defamation lawyers and has been involved in many landmark judgments”.
So, what’s the latest?
Gibson was representing a long-standing client, the choir master Jonathon Welch AM, who rose to fame as the choirmaster for a singing group for people who had fallen on hard times featured on the ABC documentary The Choir of Hard Knocks.
Until he wasn’t, prompting the rescheduling of a Federal Court mediation until later this month.
After Welch left the program and the choir, he later trademarked and created the singing company the School of Hard Knocks.
Now Welch is taking action in the Federal Court against stand-up comedy training outfit the Hard Knock Knocks Comedy School and its founder, Morry Morgan. Welch alleges Morgan did not honour an earlier deed of settlement and rebranding undertakings.
A mediation hearing scheduled for last week has now been delayed until the end of the month.
We phoned Macpherson Kelley and were first told Gibson was on leave, and then were told someone would get back to us. But they didn’t. We reached out to Gibson and Welch but didn’t hear back.
And when we formally asked the firm’s media unit if Gibson was on leave, we were told: “In response to your enquiry, as this is an ongoing matter Macpherson Kelley feel it is not appropriate to make any comment.”
When we know, you will.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.