It was Johnny Carson, hosting the Academy Awards in 1979, who described the yearly ritual as “two hours of sparkling entertainment spread out over a four-hour show”.
Not that anyone would be daft enough to seriously compare a cultural signifier like the Oscars to the Business Council of Australia’s annual networking dinner, held on Tuesday night at Sydney’s Hyatt Regency hotel. Perish the thought.
For a start, the BCA does not confer awards on its guests. It lasted three hours, not four, and there was no red carpet, no highlight reel, no live band, no jokes, and with the exception of newly-minted billionaire Robin Khuda there were definitely no celebrities to be spotted, unless you count TV’s Deborah Knight.
Sparkling entertainment? Maybe for a moment during BCA chief executive Bran Black’s speech – and it wasn’t in anything witty that he said but actually when the hotel’s fire alarm suddenly went off, interrupting the proceedings and briefly enlivening the whole affair.
Joke as we may, it is however true that seats to this dinner were in remarkably short supply. Of the many pseudo-spectacles and chores on the corporate calendar, people do actually want to attend this one, except for Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, who spurned his invitation for reasons which remain unclear, just as he did with a Minerals Council dinner held in Canberra last week.
Selfish, really. He could have gifted his spot to Erin Molan; the television presenter was tardy with her RSVP and still couldn’t make the guestlist after three attempts.
With Dutton at home, the Coalition was represented only by Paul Fletcher, Senator Bridget McKenzie and – if we’re to be charitable, to beef up the numbers – former Liberal Party director Brian Loughnane, fresh from ordering a flamethrower to the slurry that’s become of the NSW division. Labor, meanwhile, showed up with a swag of cabinet ministers, among them Claire O’Neil, Chris Bowen, Michelle Rowland, Stephen Jones and Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who looked comfortable chatting with Woodside chair Richard Goyder and Seven’s Director of News Anthony De Ceglie.
With much of the evening spent seated, every table was its own power bloc, the arrangements delicately organised by the BCA’s back office folk so the spheres of influence would spread outwards, concentrically, from the PM’s table in the centre to the nosebleeds where we spotted former Link Group chair Michael Carapiet.
At the winners’ table this year, with Anthony Albanese, was Coles chief Leah Weckert, Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes (hatless, nursing a red wine), CBA’s Matt Comyn, Wesfarmers CEO Rob Scott, Telstra’s Vicky Brady, Rio’s Kellie Parker, the aforementioned Khuda and BCA president Geoff Culbert, whose impassioned speech took equal aim at Coalition divestiture plots and Labor price-gouging allegations. “The scapegoating of business has to stop,” Culbert demanded.
MCB made the PM’s table because he’s a billionaire, but maybe also because Atlassian is a BCA member. Co-founder Scott Farquhar stepped away from the business in April so he was seated separately, not too far away. Rich enough to wear whatever he wants, Farquhar moved about in sneakers and appeared to enjoy some animated discussion with Potentia Capital’s Tim Reed, the former BCA president having spent the evening at a table with Sydney Airport’s Scott Charlton and Nine publisher Tory Maguire.
The Prime Minister clearly steeled himself for a hostile reception. He must have expected to have his skin blistered off, for a second time, after Minerals Council CEO Tania Constable (seated with PwC chair John Green, Graincorp director John Maher and former AMP chair Debra Hazelton) let fly at the government during her dinner in Canberra a week ago.
But it wasn’t quite the same. Black’s speech was pointed on its message but still soft at the edges; there was jab and thrust, but no intention to inflict real pain on the PM. When Albanese got to the mic, he said that he thought there’d be fire.
“I guess some people thought there was,” he joked, and the hard part was knowing if was having a sly dig at Black’s speech or if he was merely calling back to the fire alarm that went off.
His formal duties over, Black returned to a table with Lendlease’s Tony Lombardo, DFAT secretary Jan Adams and Dow Australia and New Zealand MD Karen Dobson.
Also in the house was RBA deputy governor Andrew Hauser, Ampol chair Steven Gregg, Deloitte chair Tom Imbesi, Mirvac director Rob Sindel, UWS chancellor David Gonski, former PM&C secretary and Macquarie University chancellor Martin Parkinson, Cisco VP Ben Dawson, and BoA in Australia chief Joseph Fayyad, who’s $21m richer after selling his house in Bellevue Hill last year (price guide $14.5m). Coincidence that Fayyad was at a table with Labor backbencher Andrew Charlton? The Parramatta MP definitely knows a thing or two about buying mansions.
Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy attempted to beeline his way back to Canberra as the dessert plates appeared, asking Margin Call if flights were still available at 9pm. Unlikely, was our suggestion, to which Kennedy said he’d glady drive out to Badgery’s Creek if only the airport was open.
Far more to say on this topic, but a gregarious Ord Minnett chair Warwick Smith bounded over, followed by Rothschild Australia chair and FIRB director Carolyn Kay, to whom Kennedy warned (jokingly) not to raise any foreign investment discussions (if only because journalists were in earshot).
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