It’s a huge CBD shout-out to Peter Goad, who turned the milestone age of 100 on Tuesday.
For 22 years, Goad has fought his good fight as the longest-serving president of Save Albert Park, the group which opposes the Australian Grand Prix Corporation takeover of Albert Park for the Formula 1 race each March.
Save Albert Park president Peter Goad has just turned 100. Credit: Wayne Taylor
And now both parties are heading back to a legal tribunal. The community group will front a VCAT hearing on January 22 that could force the AGPC to reveal how it calculates its attendance figures for the four-day event, which this year it said stood at 452,055 people.
Last year the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner ruled it was in the public interest to release the information. But the corporation disagrees strenuously.
“We had a big party over the weekend,” Goad told CBD.
“The grand prix race event is a financial and economic loser and does absolutely nothing for our reputation.
“It is a matter of principle. If nobody is standing up for the park, that is a reflection on the whole community.”
AGPC declined to comment on the latest legal stoush with Save Albert Park.
Since the dispute started, former AFL boss Travis Auld replaced longstanding Andrew Westacott as AGPC chief executive, while former Labor government minister Martin Pakula replaced billionaire businessman Paul Little as chair, with former governor Linda Dessau stepping in as deputy chair.
It hasn’t been a great year for Auld since he took over and inherited a few thorny issues.
In August, a Supreme Court judge ordered the corporation to pay $2.84 million in compensation after a Robbie Williams concert was cancelled at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.
And on Tuesday, 2025 F1 ticketing sales didn’t even get over the start line when sales were abandoned for a day after a computer outage.
As for Goad, he had a happier day, receiving birthday letters from the King, the governor-general and prime minister to mark the centenary of his birth.
MEETING OF MINDS
As foreshadowed by CBD, the Rt Hon Liz Truss graced the nation’s capital on Tuesday and experienced all the Canberra highlights: question time, a meeting with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, dinner with a group of like-minded Coalition MPs and an interview with The Australian Financial Review.
Truss slipped into question time, with a seat on the sidelines of the floor of the chamber as befits her former British prime ministerial status.
She was warmly greeted by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. But much like her premiership, she didn’t last the distance, and escaped the chamber after about half an hour.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese greets former UK prime minister Liz Truss.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Truss met Dutton at his Parliament House office where the opposition leader deployed an appropriate boss move, displaying the painting Cap D’Antibes – painted by the one and only Sir Winston Churchill, one of Truss’s more notable predecessors.
Churchill gifted it to former prime minister Robert Menzies in 1955, and Menzies’ estate bequeathed it in turn to the Australian parliament in 1982.
The painting has had several homes over the years – at Old Parliament House and other galleries. But it has found favour in the offices of some but not all Coalition leaders in that time: John Howard, Tony Abbott and Dutton.
Last night, it fell to a group of Coalition MPs (not, it must be said, the opposition leader) to take Truss out for some good old Canberra hospitality, in the salubrious confines of the Parliament House private dining room. Chairman and Yip probably doesn’t stack up to London’s culinary offerings.
As CBD went to press ahead of the dinner, guests were set to include deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley, shadow treasurer Angus Taylor, and fellow Coalition frontbenchers Bridget McKenzie, James Paterson, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Keith Pitt.
Who knows if Truss managed to furnish them with a copy of her new book, Ten Years to Save the West.
But if they front up in Sydney on Thursday evening and pay $29.95, they will get a signed copy at the official book launch, presided over by Truss friend and former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott.
“Yes, that’s right! Two former prime ministers together discussing perhaps the most important issue of our time,” CPAC founder and event host Andrew Cooper told his members, who can attend the shindig for free.
TIME OUT FOR THE TONSILS
Talkback radio veteran-survivor John Laws has announced his retirement. Again.
John Laws in the 2SM studio in 2014.Credit: Janie Barrett
Known as the “Golden Tonsils”, Laws, 89, casually told listeners of his Morning show on Tuesday that he will retire on November 8, saying with atypical understatement it was “time for a rest”.
“I’ve done it for a very, very, very, very long time,” Laws told listeners on the 2SM Super Radio Network.
“First week of November it’ll be 71 years since I started on radio. So I think, you know, I don’t want to be greedy. I’ve had 71 fantastic years, fantastic years.”
Laws said he still feels young and healthy, but that this time his retirement – after his most recent 13-year stint – is final, unlike his previous retirement in 2007. He returned to radio four years later.
One of Australia’s most recognisable voices in talkback radio, he started his career at Bendigo’s 3BO in 1953.
In 1999, Laws and rival broadcaster Alan Jones were the subject of the infamous “cash for comment” affair in which announcers editorialised for brands without disclosing payments.
With Calum Jaspan
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