By Stephen Brook and Samantha Hutchinson
Big week in Canberra this week for the Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and the Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese.Credit: Illustration: John Shakespeare
It is budget 2021 on Tuesday and a packed roster of events will see both of the main federal political parties hard at work rattling the tin ahead of the next election. So it’s good to see the national carrier Qantas is doing what it can to ease some of the logistical burden.
The airline has pushed back its last Canberra-to-Melbourne flight on Thursday to 8.35pm so that MPs and corporate types can stick around to hear Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese’s budget reply speech, while still making it back to Melbourne for Friday morning fundraising events. The route – which CBD has dubbed the Frydenberg Express and has run for about four years – makes particular sense for Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who is a compulsory attendee at the budget reply but also has to make the tight turnaround of headlining the Liberal Party’s Higgins 200 breakfast in Melbourne at 7am on Friday. While sources inside Qantas deny the route was scheduled specifically for the Treasurer’s benefit, it’s well known inside Alan Joyce’s HQ that Frydenberg’s team is very supportive of the service – as are some of Labor’s Victorian heavyweights who have also booked seats.
Factional stew
After former premier Jeff Kennett very publicly flirted with running for the Victorian Liberal Party state presidency, then decided not to run in the name of “unity”, making him 2021’s answer to Jana Novotna at the 1993 Wimbledon singles final, it looked like smooth sailing for incumbent Robert Clark.
That vote will be held at the Liberal’s annual state council meeting next month.
But a new challenger has thrown his hat into the ring. He is Dinesh Gourisetty, standing in a high-profile protest vote against what he says is the targeting of Indians by the party in the wake of the KordaMentha report into branch stacking, which recommended revoking the memberships of 170 members.
Gourisetty is not regarded as likely to succeed against Clark. But he does understand the need for a good clean-up.
His old restaurant in Hoppers Crossing was fined $25,000 by Wyndham Council after rat faeces and grease, oil and grime were found in the kitchen and storage of Indi Hots Catering. Gourisetty had pleaded guilty to 11 charges under the Food Act.
Nought from four
On Friday night at Liberal state assembly, moves to expel four party members failed miserably.
Sol Green, who called the police to the Prahran state electorate conference annual general meeting at the Toorak Bowling Club in a failed attempt to have state party treasurer Owen Guest thrown out, told delegates he was taking medication for a mental health condition and had acted out of concerns COVID-19 restrictions were being breached. The motion against him failed to get the required two-thirds majority.
The motion against Peter Adamis, “on account of his repeatedly sending to large numbers of party members newsletters defaming, denigrating and harassing a wide range of party members”, failed to get the requisite majority by a single vote.
The vote against party member Fred Ackerman for refusing to disclose the identity of people connected with an anonymous derogatory email and website campaign also failed, while the vote against Jack Sullivan was not held.
The faction led by Clark and containing state MPs had proposed the motions, which were broadly defeated along factional lines by the federal faction party led by Michael Kroger, Michael Sukkar and Josh Frydenberg.
The meeting was a shocker. Outgoing vice-president Ian Quick, who chaired the meeting, had to restore order several times. One party veteran described it as the “worst meeting I have ever been to”.
Whatever have you done?
A technical snafu at Opera Australia’s first Melbourne performance in 16 months sure put the Aiii into the company’s hi-tech production of Aida.
As the lights dimmed in the State Theatre in the Arts Centre Melbourne, audiences eagerly awaited the start of Verdi’s classic, which uses enormous spinning digital LED screens to enrich the tale of grand passion in ancient Egypt, with computer-generated serpents, panthers and the shimmering Nile.
Alas, the coronavirus community transmission up in Sydney had cancelled all drinks functions and kept executives who had travelled down to Melbourne confined to their hotel rooms, otherwise they would have spent a long first act squirming in their seats given what was to follow.
The surtitle screen above the stage, which translates the sung Italian arias and recitative into English, stubbornly went blank.
After about five minutes of incomprehensible high-volume singing, some words abruptly appeared: “Whatever have you done? Oh you poor man”, leaving the audience wondering if this was a genuine passage from the opera or a passing judgment on the tech crew.
Working surtitles were restored at last. Among those looking on awkwardly in the audience were Melbourne Symphony Orchestra managing director Sophie Galaise, chairman David Li and wife Angela Li, Arts Centre boss Claire Spencer, patron Maureen Wheeler, ABC News Breakfast host Michael Rowland and former Real Housewives of Melbourne star Pettifleur Berenger. Rhonda Burchmore and husband Dr Nikolai Jeuniewic took in the music, as did Casey Donovan and partner Renee Sharples, Tom Gleisner, Lisa McCune, Katrina Holmes a Court and Shaynna Blaze. She’s not just about selling houses, folks.
Opera Australia top brass were left welcoming the return to Melbourne but ruing the irony that they could stage an opera with extraordinary computer animations of two storey-high buff half-naked Egyptian gods wandering across the stage, but they couldn’t pop the lyrics on a screen.
Starting over
Long-serving staffer Daniel Ward (son of legendary TV journalist Jana Wendt) has announced plans to leave Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s team. The well-regarded legal adviser, who formerly worked under then attorney-general George Brandis, has been largely credited for coming up with a constitutionally viable structure for the same-sex marriage postal vote. He is off to pursue a new career as a barrister. He’s been admitted to Sydney’s prestigious Sixth Floor of Selborne Wentworth chambers, where a young Malcolm Turnbull once practised.