Awkward moments in the lap of luxury

It’s a nightmare scenario for our big four bank bosses: One Nation’s senators have been issued their passes to Leigh Clifford’s Qantas Chairman’s Lounge.

Awkward encounters are guaranteed, as former ANZ boss Mike Smith found out at Kerrie Mather’s Sydney airport yesterday, in what is supposed to be a refuge of privilege and calm.

On his way back from a business trip to China and on his way home to Melbourne, Smith was spotted by bank-loathing One Nation senator Rod Culleton near the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge food bar.

ANZ is the bank that Culleton holds responsible, rightly or wrongly, for much of his business grief, as he outlined at length in his recent maiden speech.

According to witnesses, it was about as uncomfortable as would be expected.

Living his mantra “the hunted has become the hunter”, Culleton made right for the ANZ’s $88 million man.

They exchanged business cards. Culleton pointed out his new position in the federal parliament and hit Smith up for his successor Shayne Elliott’s details.

Then Culleton said: “I’ll see you at the royal commission”, or so he told us when we called to ask about the encounter.

Whatever happened to “have a nice flight”?

Illustration: Rod Clement

Key to the kingdom

As it happens, WA senator Rod Culleton was on his way north to Armidale in northern NSW.

Peter King, the Liberal Malcolm Turnbull rolled in Wentworth ahead of the 2004 election, will today appear in the Armidale Court House to defendCulletonover the alleged theft of a $7.50 tow truck key.

It’s one of a number of cases that the new addition to the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge is fighting and which his enemies — particularly the banks — hope will remove him from the Senate.

A conviction for a criminal offence punishable by more than a year in jail, or bankruptcy, would disqual­ify Culleton from parliamentary office.

The key on which today’s case turns belonged to a tow truck driver whom Culleton got into an altercation with at Guyra in northern NSW in 2014. The tow truck driver was attempting to repossess a car leased by Culleton’s equine performance company.

Senator Culleton contests the NSW Police charge and has argued the case over a “seven dollars fifty” set of keys is a huge waste of time and money.

To really undermine that point, we hear — inspired in part by Culleton’s close reading of the Australian Constitution — King will ask the local court to abandon the scheduled full-day hearing and request a 12-person jury.

All part of a strategy to make it an even bigger waste of money.

Rod Culleton’s favourite book, The Constitution.

Till debt do us part

Former Wesfarmers director Dick Lester is the man, and the money, behind what looks to be the most ominous threat to Rod Culleton’s future in the red house.

Dick Lester.

Through his lawyers King & Wood Mallesons, Lester is pursuing a $205,536.50 debt (plus interest) from Culleton — although, on this one too, the new Qantas Chairman’s Lounge member denies the charge.

“Mr Lester is obviously politically driven,” he told us.

That’s one way to characterise Lester’s six-year long pursuit of the debt, which has apparently cost him multiples of the outstanding debt in legal fees.

Still the case grinds on.

Culleton has launched a fresh challenge in the Supreme Court of Western Australia’s court of appeal.

“COC is prepared to take Dick head on,” says Culleton, embracing The Australian columnist Richard Gluyas’s Culleton Oversight Committee (COC) terminology.

It seems this action will take the case into 2017.

Qantas Chairman's Lounge members, you have been warned.

Manny Stul with his small toys

Northern exposure

The title deed is on the $25 million sale of Scott Perrin’s extravagant Gold Coast beach house.

And the buyer? Melbourne-based billionaire Manny Stul, 67, the chairman of toy manufacturer Moose Enterprises, and the very man we flagged as Perrin’s white knight a month ago.

Stul bought it with his wife and co-worker Jacqui Tobias through their eponymous company Manjac.

Stul’s new property “Tidemark” — with six-bedrooms, six-bathrooms and 11 carparks right at the front of Mermaid Beach — will make for a useful retreat when winter next descends on Moose’s headquarters in Moorabbin, about 15km southeast of Melbourne’s CBD.

The trophy purchase — the second-highest price ever paid for a Gold Coast property — is another marker of Stul’s arrival among Australia’s uber rich.

This year the toy mogul was pronounced a billionaire, his fortune valued at $1.24 billion. That’s thanks to the craze for Shopkins — small plastic figurines made by Moose, enjoyed by kids and eaten by dogs the world over.

Life has been less fortunate of late for Perrin, a former Chevron Island lawyer who was instrumental in the public float of surfwear company Billabong.

In August, he abruptly became the former head of Racing.com — the joint venture between Kerry Stokes’s Seven West Media and Racing Victoria.

Manny Stul’s slightly larger toy, Tidemark on the Gold Coast.

And it took more than 18 months for the Tidemark sale to be finished. At least it’s done now.

Hastie’s shine for gold

The gold bug is spreading through our political class.

Andrew Hastie now holds gold bullion worth more than $7500.

Former Australian Army officer Andrew Hastie has revealed on his register of interests he now holds gold bullion worth more than $7500. Hastie, the member for Canning in WA, joins One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts who has also gone long on the doomsday asset class.

Also on Hastie’s register: proof he’s been stamped one to watch by our American allies. Phil Scanlan’s Australian-American Leadership Dialogue paid for his trip to AALD’s recent Honolulu Dialogue.

Scanlan’s group also paid for Honolulu flights for Jim Chalmers, Labor’s shadow minister for finance and Wayne Swan’s former chief of staff.

Justice Party senator Derryn Hinch declared a Hawaiian connection: the Human Headline has a savings account with the Bank of Hawaii.

Also just declared: the entrepreneurial member for Moore, Ian Goodenough, has sold some land to Aldi (the sort of commercial expertise that has made him the Coalition’s Rolex expert), while Alan Joyce’s Qantas sponsored Mark Butler’s flights to Britain to attend the British Labour conference in September. Would you pay your way to catch up with Jeremy Corbyn?