It is a testament to the ongoing hilarity that is the NSW independent liquor and gaming authority’s inquiry into Crown Resorts that the most cringe-worthy moment that occurred in front of a commissioner on Monday wasn’t NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s ICAC revelation about her “close, personal relationship” with disgraced MP Daryl Maguire.
No, we reckon current Crown board member and ex-AFL boss Andrew Demetriou being chided by counsel assisting Scott Aspinall for sneaking notes into the witness box takes the cake.
It had all started so innocently for Demetriou, who opened his appearance in the virtual witness box with a joke about junkets.
Margin Call of course has a well-known penchant for a junket, so our ears pricked up at the mere mention of the word.
Demetriou joked he thought a “junket” was what he was constantly accused of taking when he went on overseas trips during his AFL days. To be fair, those end-of-season trips to Ireland for that strange hybrid rules clash are the stuff of legend - for the drinking and partying, not whether Australia beat their hosts on the field of play or not.
The joke being that Demetriou hadn’t realised that junket was a casino phrase too, though the use and, well, interesting background of the junket operators Crown had previously used to get gamblers to Australia now forms a central part of the inquiry into whether the company is fit to hold a casino licence in NSW.
Unfortunately, it all went downhill from there, with Demetriou — known as “Vlad” back in his more ruthless AFL days — ending up metaphorically impaled on his own evidence by the end of the day and looking almost as bad as when he got shirt-fronted by the fearsome Leigh Matthews during his playing days in the 1980s.
Demetriou told the inquiry that since he joined the board in 2015 he saw himself as an independent director of Crown, despite his relationship with major shareholder James Packer — Demetriou had dealt with his late father Kerry when Nine Network held AFL rights — who he described as “somewhat of a visionary”.
While Demetriou may know his sport, he clearly had trouble with legal issues during an awkward moment in the hearing when he was asked about how he defined the role of an “independent director”.
Demetriou, without hesitation, launched into a word-for-word perfect definition as if he was reading from an ASIC glossary.
Aspinall was suspicious, so he interjected: “Are you reading that, are you?”
“Well no, I’ve recited that verbatim because I did so when I became an independent director,” Mr Demetriou said, before revealing he was reading from his “own notes”.
“Do you think it’s normal for a witness to give evidence by bringing notes into the witness box that they can read from without disclosing it from the examiner?” Mr Aspinall asked.
“Well, they are disclosed — they are in the charter of our board, what an independent director is,” Demetriou said, firmly missing the point.
Aspinall asked if Demetriou had any other notes on any other matter, and he did — board minutes, company notes and many other files he had already referred to throughout the day’s proceedings.
That came as a complete surprise to Crown’s QC Neil Young, who had to scramble — over video link — to identify each of the documents during a brief adjournment caused by the matter and then prepare them to be tabled.
But the embarrassment didn’t end there for Demetriou. When the hearing resumed, he was hit by a stinging accusation from the counsel assisting.
“Mr Demetriou, that was an answer you were reading,” Aspinall said before quoting Demetriou’s line about knowing the definition “verbatim” back at him.
“You understand when you give evidence that we rely upon you to abide by your oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
“And the answer that you gave me wasn’t that, was it?”
All a stunned Demetriou could say was: “I believe it was, Mr Aspinall,” before commissioner Patricia Bergin moved things along by asking a question.
It’s easy to feel sorry for Vlad. After all, he isn’t a lawyer and hasn’t spent a lot of time in the courtroom.
But as he revealed at the beginning of the day, he once completed a diploma of education and was for a time a teacher — so he should know better than to bring in notes to a test.
Demetriou has the pleasure of appearing again in front of the inquiry on Tuesday morning.
Don’t waste a crisis
There is a PR saying about never letting a crisis go to waste.
After all, Ross Thornton, the chairman of Sydney spinner Domestique, spruiks his role advising AMP during the banking royal commission as part of its spiel to attract new business. So it’s no wonder when a Senate inquiry was looming about the Morrison government allowing Australia Post to deliver every other day, that top postie Christine Holgate called in Domestique — paying them almost $120k over June and July to provide some much-needed advice.
Thornton assembled an A-team for the job, calling up former Howard government and Rio Tinto spinner David Luff — who generated a legion of admirers wearing ‘I love Luffy’ T-shirts prior to the 2007 election — former Bankers Association PR Nathalie Samia and Margin Call favourite Bryce Corbett.
Nothing but the best. There has always been something prestigious about the country’s postal service.
In response to questions on notice from Labor, we just found, Australia Post confirmed via government Senator and Defence Minister Linda Reynolds that it was Australia Post’s executive general manager for community and consumer, Nicole Sheffield, who recommended Thornton for the job and oversaw Domestique’s engagement.
“Domestique was engaged directly, in accordance with procurement policies and procedures, authorised by Australia Post’s executive general manager community and consumer,” Reynolds says.
But whether the advice was acted upon is another matter. A bipartisan Senate committee lashed Holgate and her senior executives for attempting to avoid parliamentary scrutiny during the hearing.
“The committee is concerned that some responses provided by Australia Post to senators’ questions suggest a lack of understanding of the critical scrutiny role played by the Senate, and of the particular responsibility of Australia Post as a publicly-owned entity to be accountable to the people of Australia through the parliament and its committee system,” the inquiry’s committee said in its report published late August.
Word is that Domestique is no longer retained by Australia Post, now only providing advice as needed.
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Joe Gutnick’s last hurrah is finally coming to an end, as liquidators wind up the last company in the play that was supposed to put ‘diamond’ back into his moniker.