The Victoria Racing Club has hired more ambassadors than you’ll find on a Friday wine and cheese night in the Canberra suburb of Yarralumla.
They include Hall of Fame trainer and icon of Australian sport Gai Waterhouse, AO, champion jockey Jamie Kah, two-time Australian Paralympian Emma Booth, equestrian rider Amanda Ross and national icon and Melbourne Cup-winning jockey Michelle Payne, OAM. And breathe.
Look yes, talk no: Liz Hurley and son Damian at Oaks Day.Credit: Penny Stephens
Then we come to the star attraction. She came, she saw, she looked glamorous, but she said not a word. Guests of the Victoria Racing Club for this year’s Melbourne Cup carnival, Elizabeth Hurley and son Damian Hurley have proved to be a picturesque but silent addition to the Birdcage.
Hurley and son have been happy to pose briefly for photographs but have constantly refused to talk to the media, apart from one brief interview with rights holder Nine. They attended the races on Cup Day, the Oaks club lunch at Crown, and Oaks Day. However, a planned question and answer session at the Oaks club lunch was cancelled when Hurley made an early exit.
As one journalist said, “She literally grimaced in disgust when asked by the VRC representative to speak to media on the red carpet.”
At the media wall on Oaks Day, journalists were strictly instructed to call her Elizabeth, not Liz, if they were to have any hope of talking to her.
Sadly, such precautions were to no avail, with just one journalist managing to ambush Hurley A Current Affair-style to get a benign question in while the rest were left hanging.
CBD contacted the VRC for comment, who cantered away faster than Knight’s Choice at 3pm on Tuesday.
The goss was that Hurley had no commercial media arrangements for her Cup gigs, so did what interviews she felt like – which turned out to be barely any.
There’s always next year
Much has been made about federal MPs missing the Melbourne Cup due to the unfortunate clash with, you know, their actual day job of turning up to parliament.
There was Stephen Ferguson, chief executive of the Australian Hotels Association, telling guests at his luncheon this week that Cup Day was the “most culturally important day outside Anzac Day”. Guess he’s not a January 26er then.
There was the federal Coalition politician who messaged CBD to explain their Cup Day absence: “Thanks Albo for scheduling a sitting – so NSW!”
Cry me a river. Truly.
Now we hear that in private, Anthony Albanese did pay attention to the Cup and the sport of toffs. But our-man-of-the-people PM didn’t back a winner.
However, several in the PM’s office did, hailing as they do from Newcastle, where the NRL team is the Newcastle Knights. And the Cup was won by Knight’s Choice. Did you see what they did there? On such tenuous word associations fortunes are made – and not the fortunes of punters, let us tell you.
Chief executive of the Victorian Chamber of Commerce Paul Guerra, on a lightning visit to Canberra between Cup Day on Tuesday and Oaks Day on Thursday, was able to get in the PM’s ear to lobby a change to next year’s parliamentary sitting calendar to dodge Cup week.
Undoubtedly, that will do it.
Win some, lose some
AFL celebrity can be a funny thing. Over in the Crown marquee, Demons captain Max Gawn was already in attendance at 12.01pm on Oaks Day. The marquee opened at 12.00pm.
But on Derby Day earlier in the week, Mason Cox was rejected from entry to the Mumm marquee after the PR team did not recognise the towering Collingwood footballer. How unlucky. The issue was rectified by Cup Day, with the tall man getting on the invitation list.
Florida days and nights
For Democrats, it’s mourning in America. Again.
But in West Palm Beach, Florida, some of the 72 million supporters of former president turned president-elect Donald Trump, the man whose fondness for crude, undemocratic, misogynistic, racist utterances and the odd impeachment and conviction proved no barrier for his stunning election victory, were jubilant.
Former Liberal Party vice president Teena McQueen, Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart and the leader of the conservative UK Reform party, Nigel Farage, at Donald Trump’s election watch party.
Among the crowd of MAGA-verse influencers and Republican campaign staff were a few Australians who made the pilgrimage to South Florida for Trump’s political comeback. As this masthead reported, Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart, a long-term, fervent fan of Trump, had a spot at the VVIP event at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago estate, the new seat of American political power.
And at the Republican victory party at the nearby Palm Beach Convention Centre, Sam Bjelke-Petersen, grandson of former Queensland premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, managed to score an invitation. Sir Joh, known affectionately as “The Hillbilly Dictator”, would’ve loved Trump.
Also present was a squad of Trump grandchildren, including 17-year-old Kai Trump.
Australian PR consultant James Radford told CBD: “The mood was nervous but confident. Once Pennsylvania was called, the crowd was electric and burst into excitement. President Trump spoke at 2.30am and after weeks of rallies and no sleep, he didn’t miss a mark.”
Meanwhile, NSW Libertarian Party MP John Ruddick held an election watch party for the Harbour City’s Trump-sympathetic at NSW Parliament House, and the entourage kicked onto North Sydney’s Firehouse Hotel, where the party continued.
Ruddick told us he didn’t get home until 3am.
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