Amber Harrison alert for Seven West Media team

Illustration: Rod Clement.

Friends and foes of Seven billionaire Kerry Stokes should put next Tuesday, February 21, in their diary.

That will be the day the army of lawyers from Stokes’s Seven West Media empire will, once again, storm the Supreme Court of NSW. This time the Seven army is waging legal war against Amber Harrison.

The former Seven executive assistant Harrison — previously the mistress of Seven CEO Tim Worner — will fly up from Melbourne to contest the injunction. We understand Harrison will also speak in front of cameras out front — all the better for the bulletins on the networks of Hugh Marks’s Nine and Paul Anderson’s Ten.

Amber Harrison and Tim Worner

It will be the first appearance Harrison has made since she stunned the media industry in December with racy details of her relationship with Worner. She went nuclear after being frustrated by more than two years of nasty legal conflict with Seven.

The Tuesday Supreme Court showdown is the result of Seven’s latest legal effort to ­silence Harrison, who — like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: A New Hope — has spectacularly breached the armour of the Stokes empire. Where Skywalker used an X-Wing Starfighter against the Death Star, Harrison has used a Twitter ­account.

Seven was clearly rattled by what Harrison was going to ­release ahead of Worner’s “business as usual” half-year results presentation tomorrow morning.

The dramatic injunction seemed to have halted Harrison’s account by yesterday afternoon — although not before a few, choice shots were fired.

Seven’s hired gun Ruveni Kelleher and the gang at Johnson Winter & Slattery even sent a letter our way to make explicit that the sensational tweets should not be republished. Or else.

After announcing its latest legal action, Seven’s stock lost its early gains to close down 0.6 per cent. Seems there is reason for investors to be rattled for a while yet.

Mystery departure

Moving from one executive level crisis to another.

Let there be no doubt: strange things are afoot at John Neal’s insurer QBE. And we’re not talking about the mooted $20 billion takeover offer by German giant Allianz.

QBE’s John Neal Picture by Renee Nowytarger.

Although you can bet your last bratwurst that the Germans and their advisers are closely studying the shock departure of QBE’s now former group chief operating officer, Colin Fagen.

As we understand it, the circumstances around Fagen’s departure would excite even the most serious German.

Fagen was something of a golden boy at the insurer. Some believe QBE chairman Marty Becker was considering him as a successor to Neal.

In further evidence of the messiness of all this, Fagen has also stood down from his position as president of the board of the Insurance Council of Australia after only four weeks in the role. That’s a great way to spread the word among the industry.

We can also reveal that QBE has over the weekend hired one of Australia’s most experienced crisis managers to help Neal and the gang. It’s a signal that there’s probably more to come on this one.

The Germans will be hoping so. Weakness at the top level of QBE could undermine the defence plans as chairman Becker and his board prepare for a Teutonic swoop.

More on that in our sister column DataRoom.

Goodsir taps out

The news went off like a bomb in the federal parliament. Seems it’s a whole new world in the Fairfax Media Canberra bureau.

Out is Sydney Morning Herald editor-in-chief Darren Goodsir, who has done something of a Mike Baird.

After a skiing holiday that was later extended with “long service leave”, the well-regarded Goodsir told staff yesterday that he was tapping out. He’d been in the role for almost four years.

Goodsir’s departure follows that of his former trusted deputy Judith Whelan, who left Fairfax late last year to run radio over at Michelle Guthrie’s ABC.

Many will remember Goodsir as the enthusiastic editor of the “Treasurer for sale” front page story that so angered the then treasurer Joe Hockey.

Joe Hockey near the Supreme Court.

The subsequent grubby defamation case cost Hockey and his investment banker wife Melissa Babbage more than $500,000 in legal fees.

The new person with responsibility for the SMH and The Age’s federal political coverage is James Chessell, who was yesterday made national editor.

Chessell — our former boss and a reformed Diet Coke addict — was once a political staffer to, of all people, Hockey back in his Nickelback-loving ministerial days at the cigar-butt end of the Howard government.

Labor pollies and Greens MPs, a nervous bunch at the best of times, are hoping the changes won’t change the tenor of Fairfax’s often sympathetic Canberra coverage. They’ll find out soon.

Goodsir’s graceful in-person departure was a happy change from that of Mark Forbes, the former editor-in-chief of The Age, who resigned ingloriously in December amid sexual harassment allegations.

We understand the Melbourne-based Forbes is still to return to work. He may just be busy preparing for his wedding, which we gather is on track for later in the year.

Awkward moments

Staying with Fairfax. It will be interesting to see if Domino’s chief executive Don Meij turns up at the Fin Review’s Business Summit, to be held in Melbourne in three weeks.

Don Meij, CEO of Domino’s. Picture: Steve Pohlner.

Meij is down to give a keynote about technology and pizza on day one of the event.

After that, he’s fronting up for a journalist-led session alongside Transurban boss Scott Charlton. Will Meij have a change of mind about turning up after AFR columnist Adele Ferguson broke the news about apparent wage abuse and visa rorts at the pizza chain? Stock in Dominos was down almost 5 per cent yesterday amid investor concern over the fallout.

These sorts of clashes are inevitable in the world of business media conferences. For example, former Hawke-Keating minister John Dawkins was a marquee guest at the Fin’s higher education summit last November.

Thankfully, that time the conference didn’t clash with Dawkins’ legal obligations from his time as the chairman of fallen training outfit Vocation.

The Fin’s conference organisers may not be so lucky this time around. The four-week hearing for that ASIC-prosecuted case starts on October 9. One to work around.