By Stephen Brook and Kishor Napier-Raman
Following the Anzac Day Welcome to Country neo-Nazi booing controversy, there was consensus at least that this debate was not a place for glib remarks.
But Zoe McKenzie, the federal Liberal MP for Flinders, has gone her own way.
Zoe McKenzie is the Liberal MP for Flinders.
Over the long weekend, extremists, including declared neo-Nazis, disrupted several Anzac Day events by booing the ceremony, causing universal outrage, including from Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.
By the end of the weekend, Dutton was shifting his stance, arguing such ceremonies were overdone, respectful at official events such as the opening of Parliament House but divisive at sporting matches. On Monday, he was saying Anzac Day was not on the list of appropriate occasions.
Still, he didn’t go so far as to joke about them, unlike McKenzie.
As detailed in CBD on Monday, McKenzie, the first term MP for Flinders on the Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne, attended the private invite-only sunset garden talk hosted by Josephine and James Baillieu, of the prominent Melbourne family, in their clifftop garden on Saturday night.
Speakers at the gabfest, an unofficial breakaway event from the Sorrento Writers Festival run by Corrie Perkin, included former federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg, and Qantas tormentor Joe Aston, fresh from their official writers festival sessions. In a marked difference to other writers festivals, there was no Welcome to Country.
Instead, soprano Rebecca Gulinello sang Advance Australia Fair as attendees munched on chicken and cucumber sandwiches and scones with cream and jam.
McKenzie gave an impromptu vote of thanks to all speakers and loosed off a glib comment as she praised Gulinello’s singing of the national anthem.
“Rebecca, thank you for the best Welcome to Country that I am sure has been delivered,” McKenzie said, to laughter.
While the aside landed successfully on the night, such gags may not travel as well beyond Portsea.
When contacted afterwards, McKenzie told CBD she would not comment. “It was a private event.”
But not when CBD is in da house, Zoe!
McKenzie, a former industrial lawyer and Australia Council for the Arts board member, is facing a stiff challenge from local teal independent Ben Smith, who is swamping the area with volunteers and corflutes, forcing the Liberal Party to spend big, while Dutton’s unfavourability is rising in the state. One McKenzie supporter at the garden event told CBD. “I think Zoe has a fight on her hands.”
And the controversy over the fringe literary salon continues. One of the other garden party speakers, sculptor Lisa Roet, got in touch to say she did not know that McKenzie would be speaking.
“It was touted to me as a casual drink and chat in celebration of the writers festival. I am apolitical,” she told CBD.
Roet said that she had no idea the garden event was being perceived as an anti-festival or a Liberal Party event, and she remained a “staunch supporter” of the official festival.
She added: “I am an avid supporter of Indigenous rights and have always supported Welcome to Country ceremony. I believe it is an important part of our reconciliation process as a nation.”
Down Sorrento way, emotions are running hot.
Front row plus one
Governor-General Sam Mostyn’s barrister husband, Simeon Beckett, SC, has impeccable progressive credentials, with a specialisation in human rights and anti-discrimination law, and having served as a counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse.
So Beckett might be horrified to discover that he’s ended up on Donald Trump’s Truth Social, the media platform created by the US president back before big tech decided to bend the knee last November.
Beckett appears in a video of Trump attending Pope Francis’ funeral in the Vatican City at the weekend, seen in the background whipping out his phone to take a video of the passing commander-in-chief like an enthusiastic fan boy.
The Australian delegation at Pope Francis’ funeral: Ambassador to the Holy See Keith Pitt, Nimfa Farrell and her husband, Trade Minister Don Farrell, former deputy prime minister Michael McCormack, Governor-General Sam Mostyn and her husband, Simeon Bennett, and ambassador to Italy Julianne Crowley.
Although to be fair, we’d probably have done the same. We asked Government House for some more details, but didn’t hear back.
Beckett attended the Pope’s funeral along with Mostyn, who represented Australia at an event thrumming with world leaders and swiftly overshadowed, in geopolitical terms, by a brief meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, their first since that heated exchange in the White House earlier this year.
Pre-polling day
SPOTTED: At the pre-polling station on High Street, Kew, on Saturday, early voters ran the gauntlet of volunteers to enter the empty shopfront which used to be an Australia Post office.
Aspiring Kooyong candidate Amelia Hamer stood yarning with state Hawthorn MP John Pesutto, the former state Liberal leader facing potential bankruptcy after losing the Moira Deeming defamation case, which would oust him from parliament.
Reportedly, Liberal powerbrokers are lining up to replace Pesutto with Hamer if she fails to take Kooyong from teal independent Monique Ryan.
Hamer recently told The Age she regarded Pesutto as a great local member. One can only wonder what the two discussed on a dark and damp Saturday afternoon. Presumably, it’s a tad too early for handover notes.
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