Climate 200 juiced up on Kremlin; MinRes shares back to pandemic-era proportions

Simon Holmes a Court surrounded by Kate Chaney, Zoe Daniel, Monique Ryan, Sophie Scamps, Allegra Spender and Zali Steggall.

Climate 200 MPs just love to talk up their commitment to the Jewish community. Yes, they were nowhere after October 7, but on and on and on they whang about protecting Jewish identity and shutting down anti-Semitic rhetoric – especially now as we’re diving headlong into an election campaign.

Allegra Spender was at it this week in Wentworth. She told voters that tackling anti-Semitism was a “top priority” and declared herself the “strongest ally for the Jewish community on the crossbench”. Have you seen the crossbench lately? Does she think Adam Bandt and Andrew Wilkie are clamouring to take the title off her?

Goldstein’s Zoe Daniel has been trying out the same schtick, telling the crowd at a Brighton synagogue that she “stands up actively against anti-Semitism”. Riiiight. Yes, the same Zoe Daniel who smeared Donald Trump years ago for naming Jerusalem the capital of Israel, saying he did it to satisfy “his wealthy Jewish donors”.

An actor depicting Scarlett Johansson drinking the blood of Palestinians from a Soda Stream.

But, OK, let’s take them at their word. Let’s imagine they’re genuine.

If they are, why on earth would either of them stand by as Climate 200 continues to warmly endorse an outfit named The Juice Media, famous for cuddling up to the Kremlin and turning out edgy, political satire, including a 2015 video depicting Jews as blood-drinking murderers. Another one, from 2014, had a good chuckle about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Real knee-slappers, both of them.

Founded by Giordano Nanni and Hugo Farrant, the mob at Juice have lately been busy producing content in support of teal candidates and minority government. These, in turn, have been shared by Climate 200 – on its website, its TikTok page, on its Facebook account and Instagram. The movement has even purchased ad space, multiple times, just to promote Juice’s videos.

But this is a company with a very colourful history. Nanni and Farrant have been open about their dealings with state-backed broadcaster Russia Today, which licensed their videos and distributed their content. That was a decade ago, around the time of Russia’s capture of Crimea. You can imagine how tough these videos were on Vladimir Putin. Love taps with a birch leaf. The 9/11 truther Abby Martin made a cameo appearance, too.

Member for Wentworth Allegra Spender. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

Independent federal member for Goldstein Zoe Daniel. Picture: Getty Images

Climate 200 founder Simon Holmes a Court has actively sought donations for The Juice Media, imploring people numerous times on social media platform X to support it financially.

These are payments that can be made the usual way, but also with cryptocurrency for anyone wanting to donate anonymously, or who lives abroad and might have an interest in seeing a destabilised Australian parliament. Any idea who that might assist?

In the meantime, teals like Spender, Monique Ryan, Sophie Scamps and Zali Steggall have all been vocal in their support for Ukraine – and some of them the Jewish community, too.

Which doesn’t exactly gel with a Juice Media skit from 2015 depicting actor Scarlett Johansson drinking the blood of Palestinians from a Sodastream. No primordial hatred of Jews in that imagery, of course, the old Blood Libel.

Inconvenient that the Juice actor who plays Johansson in the video, Ellen Burbidge, is a star of the “Honest Government” ad ­series that Climate 200 is so fond of promoting. YB

Rocky road at MinRes

Can things get any worse for Chris Ellison’s Mineral Resources? After a 12 per cent plunge on Tuesday, MinRes stock is now trading at levels last seen during the pandemic in 2020, making its $5.8bn debt pile more than double the company’s current market value.

Amid persistent rumours the company is considering raising more capital – denied by MinRes – it would probably only take one more truck crash to tip the company’s share price back into single digits.

That hasn’t happened, as far as Margin Call is aware, but whispers from Western Australia suggest the company’s fix for the outback haul road – slapping bitumen along its length – may have also had some teething troubles.

MinRes managing director Chris Ellison. Picture: Courtney McAllister

Margin Call is told that in March one local contractor with a truck load of asphalt bound for MinRes’s Ken’s Bore mine somehow took a wrong turn off the North West Coastal Highway and, rather than follow the company’s haul road, wound up hopelessly lost and broken down on a dirt road inside the Yarraloola cattle station – ultimately owned by Rio Tinto, as it happens.

A friendly pastoralist noticed the lost truckie and came to the rescue and, as a MinRes spokesman told one of Margin Call’s colleagues, “arrangements were made to recover the driver and ­vehicle the same day”.

Not entirely MinRes’s fault that a contractor got lost, to be fair. But you’d think a road built to take MinRes monster haul trucks would be pretty obvious from the highway, at least compared to a trail leading to a pastoral station. The lack of any large piles of spilt iron ore from previous crashes should be a bit of clue.

A truck rollover at one of Mineral Resources’ WA operations.

Still, any doubters among MinRes shareholders will get a chance to inspect the company’s troubled iron ore operations if they want, with the company recently circulating an invitation to visit its Onslow iron ore operations in late May. Ahead of a day trip to Onslow, guests will get a chance to have dinner with senior MinRes management – where presumably the topic of the company’s debt covenants will be a key point of discussion.

Margin Call’s mail is that the pressure is starting to tell up at MinRes’s Onslow operations, amid rising tension between the mining, road and port teams running it all.

That probably won’t be part of the show for MinRes shareholders taking up the invitation. But they’d hope to get something useful out of the trip, other than dinner with management and a day of spin. MinRes’s invitation includes a warning that travellers will be ­invoiced for “group travel costs” associated with getting them onto site, estimated at about $2000 each.

That’s not uncommon these days, to be fair, to help preserve the independence of analysts. And a MinRes spokesman told Margin Call the company had previously invoiced the costs of investor day travel for the last two years. Still, it might sting a bit for any actual shareholders – already stinging from on-market losses – wanting a look at the company’s assets. NE