By Stephen Brook and Kishor Napier-Raman
Everyone has to follow the road rules. Even the cops can’t escape them. Just ask assistant commissioner for road policing, Glenn Weir, who apologised and copped a fine after he was caught clocking 58km/h in a 50km/h zone earlier this year.
So it’s fascinating to learn that the brothers who created the comedy Superwog have gained a green light from the Victorian government to break the road rules while filming their third series around Melbourne.
Nathan and Theo Saidden, the bros from Superwog.
Superwog is a hit created by Australian Greek-Egyptian brothers Theodore and Nathan Saidden now so popular it has jumped from the ABC to Netflix. Production company Princess Pictures says the brothers play “codependent best friends struggling to make the leap from adolescence to young adulthood. The boys spend their time watching porn, fighting with their parents, and obsessively chasing chicks with little to no success.”
No doubt Roads Minister Melissa Horne and Premier Jacinta Allan are keen binge watchers.
Now the Victoria Government Gazette S.269 has allowed the production to disobey most of the major road rules during certain filming periods, except exceeding the speed limit or ignoring a direction from a police officer.
Netflix sources have played down the gazette, saying it is a standard agreement for TV productions and would involve little more than the brothers scooting around on a small 50cc motorbike on closed roads in the middle of the night.
The gazette lasts until July 14 and allows filming in locations as diverse as Sunshine North, Altona North, Docklands and Little Bourke and Collins streets. Unaccountably, Chapel Street is not included, so there ain’t going to be any chap laps. Such an omission is a dead giveaway that the Saidden lads hail from Sydney.
Union is strength
Nobody puts the FU into CFMEU quite like John Setka, the controversial secretary of the construction union’s powerful Victorian branch.
John Setka has been one of the most powerful unionists in the country for a decade.Credit: Michael Quelch
At least that’s how CBD interpreted it this week, when 500 southern unionites held the inaugural CFMEU Victoria Delegates Conference at Crown. Quite the power flex considering it was on at the exact same time as the ACTU National Congress in Adelaide.
Setka and ACTU secretary Sally McManus are not besties, dating back to 2019 when McManus politely called for Setka to step down following a string of controversies.
Setka survived, and in February indicated he would not stand for re-election this year.
The two-day conference for the branch, which has more than 37,000 members and 640 delegates, had “some truly powerful and emotional speeches ... with mental health being a major focus”, a spokesman said.
“The conference was scheduled independently, without any deliberate intention to coincide with the ACTU conference.” All good, mate.
State MP Luba Grigorovitch’s CFMEU birthday hat at the conference gala dinner.
Proceedings culminated in a gala dinner at Crown Palladium (dress attire: neat casual, tattoos optional) attended by CFMEU officials, plumbers’ union boss Earl Setches, TWU official Mem Suleyman, Deputy Premier Ben Carroll and Labor MPs Tom McIntosh, Anthony Carbines and Natalie Suleyman.
Labor MP Luba Grigorovitch clearly got her priorities right and fronted the dinner on her birthday, delighted to find the movement had left a birthday present on her table – a bespoke CFMEU hardhat adorned with the signatures of Setka and other officials.
State of indifference
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was in State of Origin spirit on Wednesday morning, but wasn’t able to make it to Accor Stadium for the NSW Blues’ meltdown. Instead, the prime minister hopped over to Adelaide to deliver a speech to the ACTU conference.
Albanese’s deputy, Richard Marles, was spotted at Canberra’s Eastlakes footy club with a few of his Victorian comrades. But they all assiduously ignored the Origin spectacle.
Deputy PM Richard Marles is more of an AFL man.Credit: John Shakespeare
They included local Labor MPs Sam Rae, Carina Garland and Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah, the first-term MP for Higgins, which the electoral commission proposes to dump off the political map.
But the Marles squad better sharpen up. The State of Origin is returning to Melbourne for the first time since 2018. Nothing short of extreme sporting fervour will be required of all political representatives come June 26 at the MCG.
Rights fight
The addiction that local members of Amnesty International have to letting it all hang out has provided CBD with years of massive entertainment. But this year AI leadership took no chances after last year’s annual general meeting descended into an intemperate, nine-hour affair. Human Rights Watch indeed!
Saturday’s AGM lasted a mere several hours because all speeches were canned after just a minute. And last year’s chaos agent, the anti-Chinese Communist Party activist and Wimbledon finals ejectee Drew Pavlou, who had towelled the group over its controversial report on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, squibbed on his threats to again seek board election, withdrawing at the eleventh hour.
It wasn’t a great day for Pavlou. Motions he supported to explicitly condemn Hamas over its October 7 terror attack, and another calling for Amnesty to retract that controversial Ukraine report, which had delighted Kremlin propagandists, were both defeated overwhelmingly. The board elections were a tepid affair. The current leadership’s two candidates, Ajoy Ghosh and Anne Wright, were both elected. But Sophia Tsai, backed by colourful former Labor MP Belinda Neal, whose “night at Iguana Joe’s” incident now has folkloric political status, was not. Neal scored a three-year board term last year, after four previous unsuccessful attempts. So there’s hope for the equally tenacious Pavlou, who we are told might consider a board tilt when he has finished his university exams.
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