By Stephen Brook and Kishor Napier-Raman
Last week we brought you news of Labor MP Michelle Ananda-Rajah campaigning for a Senate seat on your dime – legally – as her seat of Higgins will be abolished at the next election.
Now we learn that the Department of Finance is looking into it.
Michelle Ananda-Rajah’s Higgins electorate update.
A reader last week queried the point of Ananda-Rajah distributing a glossy flyer to electors in the federal seat of Higgins in the dying months of her term as the electorate will be abolished at the next election, which is imminent.
The flyer featured a header showing the one-term MP and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in front of Parliament House in Canberra and listed Labor achievements on the cost of living, Homes for Australia, supporting students and Labor for Women. There was a QR code for those wishing to peruse the MP’s farewell speech.
Now readers who don’t live in Higgins but other electorates – including nearby Kooyong and Goldstein – tell us they have received the flyer as well.
“I was really surprised to receive anything from that person as she is not the member for my area – it seemed like a waste of money to me,” said barrister Louise Duncan, who lives in Sandringham in the electorate of Goldstein.
“I just couldn’t work out why [Ananda-Rajah] was wasting money. I later found out that she was intending to be a Senate candidate.”
Yes, Ananda-Rajah says in the flyer she has more to give in public life and is standing for the Senate.
No slouch, Duncan got in touch directly with Sally Bektas, from the Department of Finance’s ministerial and parliamentary services section.
“I have sent it on to the appropriate area and asked that they consider and investigate accordingly,” Bektas responded.
This was news to Ananda-Rajah’s office when we asked. They had sought approval from the department before printing.
The department didn’t answer our questions but helpfully directed us to the “Federal elections – Parliamentarians – Ministerial and Parliamentary Services – Member of the House of Representatives – Recontesting – Redistribution – Communicating with residents outside your current electorate” section on its website. Gotta love the bureaucracy.
We still can’t tell you how much this escapade costs but heard that one of the recipients of the flyer was James Newbury, the state Liberal MP for Brighton, who we hear took great offence. Not the most targeted advertising then.
Flying commercial
SPOTTED: The cost-of-living crisis is even hitting the nation’s deep-pocket billionaires. On Monday, CBD’s spies spotted mining magnate and litigation enthusiast Clive Palmer at Melbourne Airport’s terminal three, boarding a – gasp! – Virgin domestic flight.
Billionaire Clive Palmer.Credit: Glenn Hunt
The indignity of it all! After all, Palmer owns his own private jet or two. We pondered if the legal bills from his mania for litigation or the media bills from his mania for political advertising had all gotten too much.
Or is the one percenter playing man of the people and learning how to fly economy?
Rest assured readers, Palmer will be back flying billionaire class tout de suite.
“His plane is getting serviced,” a spokesman for Palmerworld told us.
Albo v AFL?
Where would political journalists be without election date speculation? Probably in the same place showbusiness journalists would be without Melbourne architecture grad turned Kayne West-adjacent global celebrity Bianca Censori or AFL writers without Jordan de Goey’s groin: with nothing much to write about.
So it is with this in mind that we open up a hitherto unexplored can of worms about the forthcoming federal election date speculation that could put the federal government on a collision course with the most powerful economic/sporting/sponsoring/cultural/tribal vampire squid in the country: the Australian Football League.
Journalists with far more political acumen than us have long touted the favourability of April 12 as the day we will head to the polls. It’s a complicated formula that involves integers of WA election times federal budget divided by the square root of Kevin ’07 multiplied by don’t mess with Easter or Anzac Day. Or something.
But April 12 is slap bang in the middle of Gather Round, when the AFL city-state travels en masse to South Australia for a long weekend of sampling Adelaide restaurants and local wineries, while SA Premier Peter Malinauskas does about 50 TV and radio interviews.
South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas has plenty of interviews ahead of him. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
The event brought nearly 46,000 visitors to the state and $91.6 million last year, the premier said.
“People can postal vote or absentee vote,” one political type told us.
But can you really see man of the people Albanese forcing Harley Reid and Isaac Heeney et al to line up at Aldinga Community Centre and exercise their civic duty? You know the answer.
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