Card sharp Pritchard is no busted flush

Peter Nicholson Margin Call cartoon for 08-03-2016 Version: (650x366) COPYRIGHT: The Australian's artists each have different copyright agreements in place regarding re-use of their work in other publications. Please seek advice from the artists themselves or the Managing Editor of The Australian regarding re-use.

Sydney’s crushingly high house prices don’t seem to have stopped ANZ potty-mouth Jason “F Bomb” Pritchard from building a multi-million-dollar dream home in leafy Mosman, overlooking the water.

Pritchard, who was head of balance sheet trading at ANZ from 2008 onwards, popped up in phone call transcripts released by Greg Medcraft’s ASIC on Friday as part of its rate-rigging case on Friday.

In a 2010 phone convo filed with the Federal Court by ASIC he was caught ending an obscenity-laced spray wanting the benchmark BBSW rate “set as high as f..kin’ possible”.

At the same time, he was moonlighting as a poker player, with records of wins stretching as far back as 2008.

Even when you’re daily dealing billions in bonds, every little bit counts — especially when you’ve got a builder to pay.

Land title records show that in 2010 Pritchard and his wife paid $3.6 million for the Mosman property, which was described as a “unique family sanctuary” boasting “elevated Middle Harbour water views to provide the ultimate entertainer’s haven in a secluded blue-ribbon address”. Apparently you can walk through the park out the back down to the beach.

The Pritchards then asked Mosman council for approval to put a dozer through and build a new $2.09m residence, complete with pool — although Margin Call understands works actually came in cheaper at $1.6m.

Meanwhile, poker player Pritchard was at the baize table, occasionally collecting cash — or, as he eloquently put it in one ANZ call, “f..kin’ income”.

Pritchard left ANZ, which denies doing anything wrong, last year.

Art attack

It’s been a week of firsts for Malcolm Turnbull. After being the first sitting PM to turn up to Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras on the weekend, PM T wiped off the glitter and yesterday became the first sitting PM to visit the Islamic Museum of Australia in Melbourne hipster haven Northcote.

Patron and Australia’s highest-paid public servant, Aussie Post boss Ahmed Fahour, was on hand to show Turnbull around the museum, founded by Fahour’s brother Moustafa.

“You are our first prime minister to come to the museum and for that we are very very grateful,” Ahmed told PM T.

“This museum was put together for one purpose only, which is to showcase in a very positive way, the positive contribution Muslims have made to Australia and it is focused primarily through the arts.”

While Turnbull’s best-known foray into the arts might be owning works by controversial snapper Bill Henson, it turns out he’s also keen on the Islamic variety. “I’m really looking forward to it,” he told Ahmed.

He also admitted to “a very deep interest in history” — perhaps because that’s where he’d like to consign the man he knifed, a resurgent Tony Abbott.

Just the tonic

As he gears up for May’s budget, Treasury secretary John Fraser has revealed the secret of his success: forgery and three quick gin and tonics.

Fraser, who got his start at Treasury before a stint in the private sector that included running Swiss bank UBS’s global asset management business, laid out his winning ways at a dinner in Melbourne last week.

“I went from one of the poorer students at Monash to one of the better off because I got a scholarship — my dear dear late father who was the total opposite of me forged my application, it’s still in the files of Treasury,” Fraser told the Melbourne Foundation for Business & Economics dinner.

Fraser said his dad ordered him on to his first ever plane flight — “on a Fokker, pronounce it carefully” — to Canberra on a Saturday morning for the interview.

“He woke me up one Saturday morning when I was trying to get ready to play rugby and said ‘you’ve got an interview with Treasury’.”

“The weather was appalling and this rather nice lady next to me said, ‘You look terribly troubled’ and I said, ‘Well, is this going to crash, and I’ve got an interview’ and I was in a suit, which I hadn’t worn for years, so she began to feed me the first of three gin and tonics.”

By the time he got to Canberra, he was on fire. “If it didn’t clear the boundary, it hit the pickets and I walked out ... apparently it went rather well.

“Rod Sims had a go at me tonight that I’d had two glasses of red wine before I came up here. I have never seen an inconsistency between alcohol and speech making.”

[e-mail]

[e-mail]