Christopher Pyne plays both sides of AUKUS divide; Liberal HQ’s charity to Mark Speakman’s office
One person absolutely feasting on the spoils made available by the AUKUS partnership is former defence minister Christopher Pyne, chairman of lobby shop Pyne and Partners and a right cheerleader on LinkedIn for the western military alliance.
He’s in Washington and just finished hosting the firm’s third annual AUKUS discussions with Ambassador Kevin Rudd, Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy, and a line-up of top dogs, including Abraham Denmark and Matthew Steinhelfer, both key advisers on the defence pact to the US government.
These discussions would have undoubtedly made reference to the People’s Republic of China and the risk posed to Taiwan, which China likes to periodically taunt with the threat of invasion. Sorry, not invasion, ‘reunification’.
Pyne’s concern for a war with Taiwan has been longstanding, going back to his time as defence industry minister in the Turnbull government, which means it only makes sense that he would sign the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office as a client, as he did earlier this year.
Remember, this is a guy who gave a speech to the University of Adelaide in 2021 naming Taiwan as “the most likely next flashpoint” for an all out war, a remark among many other tentative forewarnings of Chinese military might.
Anyway, Pyne and Partners were listed as lobbyists for the TECO on January 25, and this fact would be entirely unremarkable but for the signing of something called A&C Culture Group less than three months later.
What is the A&C Culture Group? Its website is nothing but stock images and motherhood. “We are optimists who love to work together,” reads one of the pull quotes. No mention of a board or an executive.
Papers filed with the corporate regulator say its sole director is a 22-year-old fellow from South Australia named Andy Xing, but he’s not mentioned anywhere on the website. The firm’s description of itself is that it’s “a cultural company deeply engaged in communication between China and Australia”.
For some reason the website claims it was incorporated in 2016 despite the business papers saying it was registered in February, or one month after TECO was signed as a client with Pyne. No biggy, mistakes happen. In any case, weeks after being stamped by ASIC the business had cuddled up to Pyne for assistance.
Margin Call made enquiries with Pyne and Partners about A&C Culture Group and the nature of its engagement but received no response. And, look, no suggestion from us that this hastily constructed “cultural company” is linked in any way to the CCP’s United Front Work Department, or its global influence network. No suggestion of that at all. Really, none at all.
The real point here is merely that it’s jarring to see Pyne’s outfit shilling for this obscure Chinese friendship mob while also repping the Taiwanese government on the other side of the strategic divide – all while playing himself off as Mr Alliance on Western interests and claiming to care so deeply about Taiwan’s future.
Or maybe it’s just that he’ll take a sly renminbi from anyone?
Man of many hats
The NSW Liberal Party isn’t exactly rolling in dough at the moment, as we made clear this month. Yes, the cash reserves are healthy but membership fees are $19,000 below the YTD target of $887,000. Meanwhile, donations are nearly $30,000 short of the $117,500 supposed to have been fundraised already.
So the struggle is real, and yet a spirit of charity weirdly prevails under newly appointed state director Richard Shields who’s been tossing work at his predecessor Chris Stone to help push-along his second act. Stone retired last year and set up an advisory firm in January, except it looks like the Liberal Party might be his only clients, work being hard to come by in this economy. We know he’s on the party’s books courtesy of leaked financial accounts that said Stone is still owed $5500 for the insights and perspective he’s been providing post-retirement. It needn’t be said a second time, but why bother retiring at all?
And actually it looks like the donations have gone further than we realised, with Liberal HQ even going so far as to gift a media adviser to the office of NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman. So stretched is Speakman’s budget, apparently, that instead of hiring a flak on their own they’ve recruited the party office’s Ian Zakon to do the job for free.
Well, part of the time. We hear that HQ is paying Zakon’s wage to help Speakman but the funding only covers some of the hours that he works in the leader’s office – whatever else he agrees to provide on top of that is done for free. Truly, not even Doug Stamper would display such levels of loyalty.
Where it gets tricky is that Zakon’s roster with Speakman isn’t formally laid out, so it’s all a bit fluid as to when he’s on for the party and when he’s on for the leader. You can see how the lines might blur under this hat-switching arrangement.
Not that it’s worrying anyone in the Department of Premier and Cabinet, to whom Zakon had to declare this secondary employment; the paperwork was all in check, so no actual conflict to report.
But there’s still a wrinkle of untidiness here, especially when Zakon is openly assisting with pre-polling work in the seat of Cook, an act of service that’s forbidden for staffers while they’re on the job. And we know Zakon’s doing it because he keeps turning up in the background of Sky News reports coming live from the scene.
Zakon told us there’s nothing to be concerned about because he’s handing out the how-to-vote cards (for Liberal candidate Simon Kennedy) while working for HQ, not for Speakman. Oh really? In one image seen by Margin Call, a suited Zakon in a camera shot can clearly be seen with a parliamentary tag visible at his belt, ye olde switcheroo-of-hats arrangement clearly at play.
But whatever. That’s only half his trouble. The real strife is an unwritten rule in Speakman’s office saying that anyone caught on a television news report, anywhere, must buy a case of beer for colleagues to atone for encroaching on the shot.
Zakon, a sucker for punishment, has already tallied up three or four cases, we hear.
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