By Stephen Brook and Samantha Hutchinson
A helluva lot happened around the Melbourne Cricket Club’s heavyweight committee table on Tuesday night if president Michael Happell’s update to members is anything to go by. Former Tabcorp chief executive Paula Dwyer – tipped as a potential director at Crown Resorts – has joined the committee, as has MCC Netball chair Kalpana Ramani.
The two appointments were inked on Tuesday night in a bid to plug holes left by a slew of resignations. Ad man and 3AW breakfast host Russel Howcroft resigned after less than two years – a nanosecond inside the buttoned-up and famously change-resistant MCC. No wonder Happell was keen to explain why their “much-loved” media man was splitsville.
“Russel joined the committee prior to taking up hosting duties on breakfast radio, and has unfortunately decided he simply does not have the time,” Happell said. Curiously, he made no mention of Howcroft’s other Very Time Consuming engagement – sitting as partner inside his former PwC boss Luke Sayers’ Sayers Group (and no doubt spruiking the Dees chances for the year ahead against Carlton director and footy tragic Sayers).
Howcroft isn’t the only one heading for the door. South32 chair Karen Wood has resigned as a vice-president after almost 12 years on the committee. Goldman Sachs’ Australian chairman Christian Johnston will take Wood’s position as vice-president, and has handed his treasurer’s post to the good-with-numbers Geoff Roberts, Seek’s group financial officer.
Front row
Melbourne Fashion Festival took democratisation of fashion to an extreme at the Runway 4 show at the State Library of Victoria on Wednesday night by blowing up the catwalk.
But before the audience could reach the library’s famed domed reading room, they had to navigate the library’s strict COVID-19 protocols which included compulsory masks. “50,000 can go to the footy but the library is some kind of hotspot?” said one.
The collections featured structured tailoring, flowing white dresses and autumnal hues from the home-grown designers including Bassike, Aje, White Story, Oroton and Scanlan Theodore whose names were showcased on the famous white octagonal walls alongside inspo library quotations from James Joyce, Wordsworth and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The models moved through the hub and spoke rows of wooden desks, guaranteeing everyone a front row seat. No one was told to shhh.
Former premier Jeff Kennett was to attend to celebrate 25 years of the festival he had helped to found, but cancelled. That morning, CBD had spotted him on Balmain Street, Richmond, revealing the Kennett concept of street style was a vivid blue polo T-shirt.
CBD swept into the exclusive after-party in the slip stream of Launa Inman, the former boss at Officeworks, Billabong and Target. She was briefly halted by a waiter asking if she was a guest of the Fashion Festival chair David Briskin. Inman responded: “I am the incoming chair” and ordered two flutes of champagne. She was soon joined by SLV chief executive Kate Torney.
By the end of the night, fashion’s essential untruth was exposed: no one ever gets that dressed up to go to the library.
Super crusader
Indefatigable MP Tim Wilson is still crusading about giving Australians access to super to fund a house deposit. He reckons he is on to a winner.
Hands off the piggybank.Credit: Shakespeare
“It is just warming up!” Wilson has been telling people with his trademark brio.
Labor, the unions, industry super funds and others disagree. Now there is a new agent pushing back on the idea: and it comes in the substantial form of Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.
Remember the inquiry into franking credits? Wilson undertook his inquiry into Labor’s policy to scrap franking credits with such zeal that it left some scratching their heads as to where the inquiry ended and where the politicking began.
Wilson sought the testimony of high-profile fund manager Geoff Wilson, who turned out to be a distant relative and manager of the MP’s investments. The headlines were not kind.
Wilson, as head of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, decided to request a public inquiry into his super for homes scheme. The house economics committee requested a referral from the Treasurer to stage it.
But Frydenberg said no dice and refused to grant a referral. Somehow, CBD thinks it won’t be the end of the campaign.
In good spirits
Former president of the Senate Stephen Parry has just followed in the footsteps of Peter Slipper, David Gonski, Frank Lowy, John Laws, Maggie Tabberer and Kylie Minogue.
That is, had his portrait painted by artist Paul Newton.
It was with some fanfare that MPs and parliamentary fans gathered in the Members’ Hall in Parliament House on Thursday morning for the unveiling of Newton’s official portrait of Parry.
Turns out politics is just one of the Tasmanian’s exploits. Before politics, Parry worked as a cop and an undertaker. And now, he’s living his dream as a distiller of gin which he tells CBD is so good it “doesn’t need tonic to mask the taste like other gins do”.
Parry’s 13 years in Canberra ended with a screech in 2017 when he was forced to quit Parliament over Section 44 concerns and a lingering British citizenship. Reflecting on the experience, Parry has called his exit so swift it “left a funny taste in my mouth”. Nevertheless, he emerged with a sense of humour. “I’ve called the gin Section 44 for obvious reasons,” he said, adding that it will be stocked in APH gift shop. “My only wish is that certain High Court justices will buy a lot of it.”
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