By Noel Towell and Colin Kruger
A long-running legal brawl between strip club owner Maxine Fensom – the Melbourne sex industry stalwart most famous for her Maxine’s strip club in Brunswick – and bitterly estranged former business partner Geoffrey Williams has had the Federal Court transfixed for years.
Fensom sued Williams, alleging his industry awards night, the Adult Industry Choice Awards, was passing itself off as the original night of nights, the Australian Adult Industry Awards – “just like the Logie Awards, only very different” – which remains under her control.
Fensom says the acronym AAIA is trademarked and alleges Williams was engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct.
After several false starts and changes of legal counsel by Fensom, the whole thing was thrown out of court this month after she failed on three occasions to comply with court orders to file evidence that would allow the case to be heard next month.
Justice Helen Rofe made clear in her judgment dismissing the case that she was not impressed by the conduct of the matter.
“To describe this proceeding as a ‘train wreck’ is an understatement. It has dragged on for almost two and a half years without any meaningful progress,” the judge wrote.
Rofe mentioned failed mediation attempts – “that is unsurprising – there is certainly no love lost between Ms Fensom and Mr Williams. Their personal animus was apparent when both appeared in person at the November case management hearing.”
But it is Fensom who has been ordered to pay Williams’ court costs after the judge found she had failed to comply with three court orders that would have got the stalled case moving.
“The applicants have continued to prosecute this proceeding but refused to comply with the court’s orders or take their obligations seriously. In these circumstances, it is a waste of the court’s resources and the respondents’ time and resources for this proceeding to continue,” Rofe wrote.
The good news is that it means the adult industry will still get to celebrate two separate awards nights, with Fensom’s big night going ahead on June 13 at Melbourne’s Rydges Hotel.
Voting closes at the end of this month on categories, with Best Gentlemen’s Club House Mum, whatever that is, probably the only one we could be confident of getting past the editor.
Fensom told us from Vegas that she was considering appealing the court’s decision.
Williams also confirmed his awards are returning this year.
“We’re going ahead this year and will keep delivering the awards that the industry deserves,” he said.
SANS SAM
Remember Sam Aziz? We certainly haven’t forgotten the former City of Casey mayor accused by the state’s anti-corruption authority of trousering about $600,000 in extracurricular payments from disgraced local developer John Woodman.
Controversial former City of Casey mayor Sam Aziz appears on a list of speakers at a local government conference.
So imagine our surprise when we flicked open the glossy brochure for an “ANZ sustainable resilient cities” forum – which is not connected to the ANZ bank – in Melbourne later this year.
There was Sam, who denies taking bribes, grinning out at us from the page listing the conference’s “thought leaders”, right beside an official City of Casey logo.
That might be awkward, we thought, for Casey, the conference organisers and the state government, which had a couple of its big cheeses – one of them a director in the Planning Department – also on the conference bill.
Maybe less so for Aziz, who shows an imperviousness to embarrassment that we – not gonna lie – kind of envy.
But not long after CBD began making calls around town, a new version of the brochure appears to have been hastily published, sans Sam, so to speak, in the best disappearing act we’ve seen from this bloke since he took off to Egypt just after the anti-corruption people raided his home back in 2019.
Turns out that Casey wasn’t a bit happy to see Aziz next to its logo and the council had made it clear to conference organisers that the former mayor, who was sacked along with the rest of the council by the state government in 2020, had no business using Casey branding.
The state government, which has removed its two officials from the conference bill, was also approached for comment, and we “reached out” to the Independent Broad-Based anti-Corruption Commission, which has gone awful quiet on the question of charges over the Casey scandal. We have a bunch of phone numbers for Sam Aziz. He didn’t answer any of them on Tuesday.
THE REED THING
Now for the latest instalment in our series on the post-politics lives of members of Dan Andrews’ all-conquering political machine, with one of Dan’s digital whizzes becoming the latest member of the team to use his skill to turn a quid.
We brought news of course on Monday that the big man himself had scored a no-doubt lucrative gig helping mining billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest make his “green” iron dream come true.
And sharp-eyed readers will recall that Andrews’ ex-chief of staff Lissie Ratcliff, her deputy Jessie McCrone, former director of strategy Ben Foster, and former director of media Adam Sims hung out their shingle over the door of a new advisory firm last month.
Now a key player in what was Andrews’ formidable social media operation – which made Dan Australia’s most-followed politician – has declared his gun is for hire.
Reed Fleming, director of digital comms for the former premier, is setting up his own digital agency called Good to Go. Fleming also spent way too much time in front of screens for ex-New Zealand Labor PM Jacinda Ardern and described his time in Andrews’ office as “impersonating a 51-year-old man on the internet for three years”.
So we asked young Reed if he was looking forward to being himself after all that. “It’s more about helping other people to be themselves, because this stuff has got to be authentic,” he told us.
With lines like that, the lad will go far.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.