Bug brings Damien Mantach judge unstuck

Illustration: Peter Nicholson.

The gods seem to be in the ­corner of Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberals.

They have struck down Victorian County Court’s judge Liz Gaynor, who is sick and therefore again postponed the sentencing of former Victorian Liberal Party director Damien Mantach. It will now take place on July 19, comfortably past the federal election on July 2.

Mantach, who stole $1.5 million from the Victorian Libs, has pleaded guilty to 15 charges of obtaining financial advantage by deception relating to a complex scheme of issuing fake invoices.

Damien Mantach, former Victorian Liberal Party director. Picture: Nicole Garmston.

Mantach had originally been scheduled for sentencing last Monday, which was pushed out to tomorrow — before Gaynor was struck by a lurgy.

The delay leaves Mantach — whose schoolteacher wife Jodie has pulled the plug on their marriage as a consequence of her husband’s fraud — to languish a littler longer on remand. The former Liberal employee has not sought release on bail.

And it also means the sentencing will no longer coincide with judge Lucy McCallum’s sentencing tomorrow of a fellow — somewhat more sartorially refined — white collar criminal, Oliver Curtis.

You can imagine how much that confluence had excited us.

Doctor’s orders

There must be something going around.

Wesfarmers numbers man Terry Bowen had to miss his own strategy day in Sydney yesterday. He was grounded at home in Perth with a stomach infection.

The lurgy strikes again.

Bowen had been intent on boarding the plane, but his boss Richard Goyder insisted the finance director give the briefing at the Westin Hotel a wide berth.

Wesfarmers boss Richard Goyder at his strategy day. Picture: AAP Image/Dean Lewins.

Dr Goyder decided it was best not to infect 100 or so of the conglomerate’s closest friends.

That left Goyder to handle Merrill’s feisty David Errington solo. Merrill’s pugnacious analyst — an endangered species in integrated banking land after the departure of UBS’s foot shooter David Leitch — got stuck into Wesfarmers’ foray into the British hardware market via Homebase, which he fears may become to Wesfarmers what Masters is to Woolies — a sinkhole.

In-house advisers James Graham and Neville Spry from Gresham were on hand for moral support, although the firm (half-owned by the giant) didn’t work on the UK deal.

That fee went to Lazard. Turns out one of Goyder’s classmates when he did the Advanced Management Program at Harvard was Lazard UK boss William Rucker, so that when things started getting hot and heavy with Homebase, Goyder put his hardware chief John Gillam in touch with the London banker.

After yesterday’s talkfest the Wesfarmers crew were off for dinner at Bentley, a restaurant some argue boasts the best wine list in Harbour City.

CEO sleepout

The dreaded lurgy has also gripped our snotty-nosed leader Malcolm Turnbull, who for the first time in five years has to give tonight’s CEO sleepout a miss.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull arriving at Avalon Airport. Picture: Peter Ristevski.

With the overnight temperature forecast to be down to six degrees tonight and the PM nursing a bad cold, it’s been left to the likes of Crown’s Aussie resorts boss Barry Felstead to bring in the big bucks for the Vinnies.

Top of the tally heading into this evening is BankSA chief Nick Reade who has raked in $141,000-odd, compared with Felstead’s $118,000.

Nine director Holly Kramer might have to work a bit harder rattling the can, having raised only $12,000 by last night. A quick minute to midnight call to Aussie Post’s Ahmed Fahour or Gordon Cairns at Woolies, on whose boards Kramer also sits, might be in order towards a respectable total.

The boss of The Australian, Nicholas Gray, is doing his bit too, so far raising $55,000.

Gone, not forgotten

Sad news for party people. “Huddo”, the star of the highly produced video tribute to his “flirty thirty” birthday party, is no longer working at John Kenny’s real estate services firm Colliers International.

“Matt Hudson has left Colliers to pursue new employment opportunities,” a Colliers spokesperson told us late last night.

One spy said the departure of the amateur filmmaker was mutual.

Huddo wouldn’t comment last night when we got on to him. He mumbled something about his twin brother.

His departure makes a trifecta for Kenny after the exit of chief financial officer Sean Unwin (who appeared to make a cameo in Huddo’s video and was accused of sexually harassing his secretary) and former sales manager Sam Kandil, who claimed the firm’s “toxic workplace culture” forced him out.

Forgive and forget

An update on yesterday’s story of the curious cameo role by Andrew Forrest’s land rights nemesis Michael Woodley in the Curtis-Hartman insider trading saga.

Fortescue Metals Group chairman Andrew Forrest. Picture: Colin Murty/The Australian.

At first we wondered if we had discovered a proxy war when we saw that Woodley — the chief executive of the Yindjibarndi Corporation — had written a glowing character reference for Oliver Curtis.

But it turns out Woodley had no idea that Hartman worked for Forrest, the billionaire founder of Fortescue Metals with whom Woodley spectacularly fell out during land rights negotiations (that are more than five years old and still unresolved).

Woodley only twigged to the link when he was reading the coverage of the trial in The Australian a few weeks ago, and saw that John Hartman now works for Forrest’s private company Minderoo.

“I had a bit of a chuckle over that,” he told us yesterday.

“At least we have something in common.”

It seems that rather than fighting a proxy war, the iron ore billionaire and the proud Yindjibarndi man are almost on a unity ticket in the forgiveness stakes. “People do silly things but we must not hold judgment forever and a day,” Woodley told us.

Folly of youth

Oliver Curtis’s 81-page defence submission to the NSW Supreme Court towards his big day tomorrow is a glowing read on the 30-year-old.

Stockbroker Oliver Curtis arriving at court last week. Picture: AAP Image/Joel Carrett.

A clutch of his 18 character references put Oli’s actions down to his youth and highlight his remorse.

“I believe Oliver will be defined not by this sad incident of his youth,” dad Nick Curtis wrote, “ ... at the time of the events described at the trial, Oliver was a brash youth”.

“I can only understand his behaviours as being a significant error of youth,” said Marist priest Gerald Arbuckle.

“Oliver is not the callow youth he was in 2007,” said wife Roxy Jacenko’s aunty Beryl Davis. Roxy’smum Doreen Davis said: “I believe that the Oliver that was the 21-year-old and the Oliver today are two completely different people.”

Family friend Susan Ingham was on the same track: “Over a period of time Oliver has shown a lot of remorse”, while family friend and lingerie exec Michael Rosenfield declared, “Oliver Curtis … is a totally different person than the immature, inexperienced, young boy who was lured into these activities years ago.”

Lovely words. But did they all forget Oli pleaded not guilty?