Australia Post head of human resources Catherine Walsh departs

Illustration: Peter Nicholson

Mail just in: the nation’s chief postie Ahmed Fahour is down an executive.

Australia Post has lost its head of human resources, Catherine Walsh, who is off to a new executive gig. Staff were informed of her departure yesterday.

A search for a replacement for the former Clayton Utz lawyer — who joined the Post as a lawyer back in 2001 — will get under way shortly.

Between us, we might rejig the old resume and apply ourselves. As its multi-million-­dollar-salaried chief executive Fahour might tell you, that place pays through the nose.

Someone who might be able to spin this story is Jared Lynch, who until last week was a Fairfax journalist but starts today as OzPost’s new national media and communications manager.

Even so, Walsh was a regular figure at Senate estimates. Indeed, we passed her the other week while roaming the corridors of Parliament House, the night before the 44th federal parliament was dismantled.

But we didn’t stop to chat. We were too distracted — first by ­Fahour’s schmoozing of Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, and then the sight of the millionaire postman eating a sorry-looking cling-wrapped sandwich in the parliamentary food trough. We all have to eat.

Surprise visit

John Griffin’s first day in the Liberals Victorian campaign office at 104 Exhibition Street was overshadowed by another visitor, former prime minister Tony Abbott. Surprise!

Although now just a humble backbencher, we gather Abbott’s visit yesterday was run by all required party officials. Emails and calls flitted from Sydney to Melbourne to Canberra and back again.

The requisite nods were given by president Michael Kroger’s Victorian division and federal director Tony Nutt’s Canberra HQ.

And why not? It’s one big happy family in the Liberal Party.

By all reports, Abbott gave a classy speech to the Victorian troops — many of whom worked on his two federal campaigns when he was Liberal leader.

The old pro also worked the phones, cold-calling the marginal seat voters. He even made it out to campaign with his close ally and Member for Menzies, Kevin “Schwarzkopf” Andrews, who amazingly, appeared to have a few grey hairs. Surely it’s a trick of the light.

And what of the debut of Griffin, the experienced political operative? We’re told while the Barton Deakin managing director wasn’t quite running the division, he certainly wasn’t licking stamps either. As is so often the case, the truth was somewhere in-between.

Incredible Credlin

We couldn’t tell you if Abbott caught up with his former chief of staff Peta Credlin during his Victorian sojourn.

Credlin was certainly in town on Monday night. She joined Andrew Bolt in the Melbourne Sky News bunker for her regular commentating duties, which we hear have fast become a favourite with Liberal federal director Tony Nutt.

With her Sky News commentating hat on, Credlin learned something we’ve known for years. Sometimes people in the media make mistakes.

During her Monday appearance, Credlin told off her once boss and our Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, for snubbing two Liberal candidates: Nicolle Flint in the South Australian seat of Boothby and Chris Crewther in the Victorian seat of Dunkley.

A great serve. If only it was correct.

As it happens, Crewther was with Turnbull on Thursday at a Mornington Peninsula brewery (there are pictures on our website to prove it), while Flint made a cameo in The Australian’s video of Turnbull’s tour of Boothby. Yet another reason to become an Oz subscriber.

Justice delayed

Almost a decade after the alleged insider trading began with a trip to an Optus shop to buy a BlackBerry, the highly anticipated testimony of John Hartman at the trial of his former best friend Oliver Curtis was delayed. Again.

Seriously, there are rainforests in Brazil younger than this saga.

The juror who called in sick on Monday was also sick yesterday. There were suggestions at the St James Road Supreme Court that the juror should be right to go today. Here’s hoping.

If not, the juror may need to be replaced. And who knows — if the lurgy is contagious, the whole lot of them might need to be replaced and the trial begun from scratch.

At least it is freeing up time for Curtis’s wife Roxy Jacenko to go to Fashion Week.

It’s also extending the Sydney visit of Hartman, who now works for Andrew Forrest in Perth.

The iron ore billionaire hired the son of Sydney obstetrician to the stars Keith Hartman to help manage the philanthropic investments at his Minderoo Foundation.

Bolton blues

You know a deal’s gone sour when you sue your lawyers.

Fashionista Nicholas Bolton’s 2009 raid on stricken toll road maker BrisConnections — a cunning play involving snapping up lots of partly paid shares — squeezed $4.5 million out of its builders, Thiess and John Holland.

But sadly the victory party came with a nasty hangover, in the shape of a $600,000 bill from the tax office, which said GST should have been charged.

Bolton’s Australian Style Investments, which at the time looked after his family trust, challenged this at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal but lost.

ASI went broke, becoming one of 13 Bolton-related companies that went down the gurgler, owing creditors $25m. In December, Bolton was banned from the boardroom for three years by Greg Medcraft’s ASIC.

It can’t have helped that BrisConnections apparently also never paid more than half a million in legal costs to Australian Style Investments — despite court orders.

The family trust is now in the hands of a different company, Australian Style Holdings, run by Nicholas’s dad. And last Thursday it sued law firm Lander & Rogers for failing to notice that GST was due.

And just in the nick — so to speak — of time. The six-year period in which a claim could be lodged over the ATO’s tax bill expired two days later.

In addition to the $600,000, ASH wants legal costs in running the AAT case returned. And interest.

Lander & Rogers have yet to file a defence to the Victorian Supreme Court lawsuit.

Love’s largesse lost

We can’t tell you his name but a Melbourne businessman with a multi-million-dollar fortune has found himself with both a broken heart and wounded wallet after his marriage to a Balinese bride went kaput.

The groom in question is an Australian citizen — now aged in his 60s — with assets both here and in Bali.

His bride is Indonesian and a lot younger.

Under the terms of the prenup — signed, rather romantically, on their wedding day — the unhappy couple agreed not to go after each other’s assets in the event of a split.

He’s since spent the last three-and-bit-years trying to get permission to claw the money back through the Denpasar District Court but — because he handed it over before he tied the knot — the court says it’s hers.

Intriguing aside: according to court documents, the prenup was signed not because the married couple thought they’d ever break up, but to “promote harmony between them”.

Evidently, that didn’t work.