Budget 2016: Scott Morrison appears without a crease

What a day. Treasury officials had to drag us out by our feet — we just didn’t want to leave the lockup for Scott Morrison’s debut budget.

That said, and between us, there were a few disappointments. Unsubstantiated reports about an exciting behind-the-scenes role by Communications Minister Mitch Fifield proved to be exactly that: unsubstantiated.

We had heard the now cabinet minister Fifield might reprise the pre-budget speech shirt-ironing role he perfected in the early years of the Howard government, back when he was a staffer for treasurer Peter Costello. But it wasn’t to be.

On Tuesday night that important job went to Morrison’s director of strategy and communications, Sasha Grebe. And fair play to the man — we couldn’t spot a single crease on either the Treasurer’s shirt or his well-fitting suit.

Keep your eyes on this one. Give Grebe a few years and he’ll be following Fifield into cabinet.

Treasury cheer

Our tete-a- tete with Treasury Secretary John Fraser in the budget lockup was going brilliantly until we asked whether the department’s newish Melbourne office sits on the “Paris end” of Collins Street.

Drawing on the decisiveness honed in his previous life as a London-based UBS investment banker, the conversation was over. His immaculately tailored figure retreated to the ministerial blue carpet.

But thankfully not before we found out about — and secured an invite to — the opening party for Treasury’s new Melbourne digs at 120 Collins Street.

There ain’t no party like a Treasury officials’ party.

Fraser tried to lower our expectations, claiming it would be a “low key” affair. We’re not convinced.

While the department’s officials moved in a few months ago, they have saved the knees-up for the caretaker period. Looks like a classic move by the famously hard-partying Treasury.

ASIC’s vague future

There was not a lot in budget 2016 for our investment bankers.

Despite our best attempts at extracting information from Budget Paper No 2, the future of ASIC’s registry remains as vague as that of Sir Sidney Kidman’s pastoral empire.

Roger Feletto’s Greenhill is advising Mathias Cormann’s finance department on the possible privatisation or outsourcing of the registry. But as the budget reiterated, no decision has been made on what could be the biggest privatisation since the $5.6bn Medibank Private float.

There were a few investment banking crumbs. The budget revealed that the government has committed $9 million in total to pay for scoping work.

It’s not the whopping fees that would come with a full privatisation. But Greenhill’s cut of that $9m should at least cover a few new table tennis bats for its offices.

Three’s company

ANZ boss Shayne Elliott was doing his best yesterday to be Mr Nice Guy, acknowledging the bank had let down its customers and expressing his desire to overhaul its culture.

The 52-year-old Kiwi even offered to personally help analysts who had gathered at his profit announcement to sign up for Apple Pay before they left, with ANZ the first Aussie insto to do a deal with the tech company.

But behind the scenes at home in Toorak, Elliott’s Saudi Arabian-born wife, Nagla Khattab, was beavering away on the couple’s personal affairs, just in time perhaps for ScoMo’s changes to super tax provisions for high-income earners.

The couple’s Edwardian home is in Khattab’s name, as is the corresponding (ANZ) mortgage over the property.

In recent weeks, Khattab, who is a former international diplomat, has established three companies solely in her name, the first two, Elliott Pty Ltd and Elliott No 2 Pty Ltd, in mid-April. But the third, Elliott No 3 Pty Ltd, was established only yesterday as a “superannuation trustee proprietary company”.

Coincidence on budget eve? Maybe.

Low interest

Meantime, it’s approaching three months since Elliott’s predecessor in the top job at the Melbourne institution, Mike Smith, kicked off the campaign to flog his Toorak mansion on the wide leafy boulevard that is Hopetoun Road.

Sadly, Smithy, who famously features on Google Maps outside the home loading what appears to be Christmas presents into the boot of his Jag (actually, his driver is doing the loading) can’t shift the redundant real estate.

Here’s hoping yesterday’s interest rate cut by Glenn Stevens’s RBA board helps a sale along.

In October, Smith bought Kevan Gosper’s luxury South Yarra apartment, with other residents in the building having included former Ford boss Jacques Nasser and Bank of Melbourne chief Scott Tanner, to complement his waterfront Spray Farm winery and vineyard on Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula.

Politics, Moi?

Of course French company DCNS is the best shipbuilder for the $50 billion job of knocking together 12 new submarines and South Australia is the best place for the job.

It’s just a great deal, no politics in that.

Still, it took only a few days for the Turnbull government to knock up a billboard featuring the PM and local member Matt Williams en route from Adelaide airport to the CBD crowing about what the Libs had managed to deliver to the fiscally challenged state.

Yesterday in question time, Williams, the member for Hindmarsh, asked his co-operative colleague Foreign Minister Julie Bishop (sporting a luxe tuxedo jacket towards budget night) about the subs contract.

She didn’t mention the billboard.

Moving right along

Like a well-worn RM Williams boot (now almost half-owned by French luxury behemoth Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy), the Kidman sale didn’t disappoint on budget day.

Ahead of the traditional purgatorial press lockup, this paper revealed that Shanghai Pengxin — the twice-jilted bidder for Sir Sidney Kidman’s property portfolio — had picked up one of Brazil’s biggest agricultural businesses.

In an amazing coincidence, the Chinese group paid $US290m ($378m) for the business — which is almost exactly what Kidman would have collected for its 77,000sq m of land had Sco “Jobs and Growth” Mo not quashed the sale last week.

And in a second amazing coincidence — which seems to underline the mobility of international capital — we’re told the deal was agreed to the day after the Treasurer announced his “preliminary view” of the Kidman deal.

An entourage that included Pengxin’s billionaire chairman Jiang Zhaobai settled on the sale on Friday in Brazil (Saturday, AEST). What are the chances? And apparently Pengxin is still interested in the Kidman empire.

Go set and ready

Bauer Media boss Marina Go has leadership on her mind.

That might not be a good sign for under pressure Wests Tigers coach Jason Taylor.

Go has been chairman of the NRL club since November 2014, with her board now pondering the possibility of another season outside the top eight.

Taylor joined as head coach in 2015 and is now in his second season at the club, with his chair this week putting pen to paper about her past mistakes in “waiting too long to move on underperforming team leaders”.

Contact Will Glasgow or Christine Lacy