Jacinta Collins feels the timely hand of God

Rod Clement Margin Call cartoon for 31-01-2019.Version: Business Cartoon (1280x720 - Aspect ratio preserved, Canvas added)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.

It seems even the Catholic Church is preparing for the election of Bill Shorten’s Australian Labor Party.

A fortnight ago, days before Kelly O’Dwyer kicked off a series of Morrison ministerial departures, Labor’s longest-serving female Victorian senator Jacinta Collins called time on her career in the red house.

The departing 56-year-old social worker turned union official has had a fair stab at parliamentary life. She assumed office in 1995, back when Paul Keating was prime minister and Liam and Noel Gallagher were saving rock and roll.

The Labor right senator’s 24-year run came with the blessing of her former employer, the SDA (or “shoppies’’) union. Collins’ former staffer turned shoppies official, Raff Ciccone, has been flagged as her replacement.

In the twilight of her political career, Collins has been a strong defender of religious schools.

In October she told the Senate to “respect the right of religious schools to be run in accordance with their beliefs”.

Collins was also a resolute advocate of the deal that pumped $4.6 billion more funding into the Catholic school sector, one of Scott Morrison’s first acts as Prime Minister.

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young accused her of running a “protection racket” for the Catholic sector.

It looks like their sparring will continue in Collins’ life after politics. Margin Call has learned Collins will be the next executive director of the National Catholic Education Commission.

That God-fearing advocacy group was instrumental in securing the improved funding deal from Morrison and his Education Minister Dan Tehan.

Shorten — an alumnus of the prestigious Melbourne Catholic school Xavier College, as was the deal-cuttingTehan— championed the Catholic school funding cause throughout the Turnbull era.

The appointment of Collins, who will replace acting executive director Ray Collins, should keep the relationship on track.

Catholic Education boss Stephen Elder. Picture: David Geraghty.

Church Elder moves on

It’s been an eventful summer in the world of Catholic education lobbyists. A week before Christmas, former Victorian Liberal state MP Stephen Elder parted ways with the Catholic Education Commission where he’d been serving as its Victorian executive director.

After 13 years in the gig, Elder left amid an investigation by KordaMentha into a workplace complaint. Following a period of “rest and renewal”, we gather Elder will soon rise again.

Word is he will shortly be appointed an adjunct professor at his buddy Greg Craven’s Australian Catholic University.

The honorary gig won’t pay the bills, but a title’s a start.

Time right for Liberals

Today’s a $37 million day for the Victorian Liberal Party.

Two months after it was announced by Michael Kroger in his triumphant last act as party president, the sale of Victorian Liberals HQ today settles with luxury watch group Rolex. After a few years at the mercy of its banker NAB, Robert Menzies’ former division is officially rich again.

Not that they are going to splash the cash around.

The loot — $37.1 million all up — will be locked up in an investment vehicle which Kroger dubbed “The Harold Holt Foundation”.

The Libs are confident their investment team — still to be appointed — will be able to outperform the rental yield they were getting on the handsome, if tired, art deco tower, whose current tenants include Flight Centre, 7 Eleven and Subway.

Margin Call can’t find any records of a Harold Holt Foundation but we gather newly restored Victorian state director Simon Frost and his team are on the case.

The new investment vehicle will join the Liberal-aligned, $75 million, Charles Goode-chaired Cormack investment vehicle, which was created in the late 1980s during Kroger’s first stint as party president and which — after a bruising legal battle — now includes former PM John Howard and Richard Alston on its board.

In the days before Australian Open finals weekend we spotted Rolex’s international CEO Jean-Frederic Dufour (in Melbourne as a sponsor of the tennis) and two of his lieutenants at the Paris end of Collins Street, closely inspecting the shopfront windows of luxury peers Hermes and Prada.

The well tailored trio then ducked around the corner for the boss’s first visit to his new Victorian property acquisition.

We gather Dufour — who despite the 42C heat was impeccably dressed in suit and tie — will open Rolex’s flagship store in 80 Collins, the under-construction QIC-owned tower across the street.

Meanwhile, the Liberals’ current Victorian HQ — a building that also includes as a tenant the Tolarno Galleries — is going to be repurposed as the Swiss luxury watchmaker’s Asia-Pacific headquarters.

A suitably blue-blooded replacement for Menzies’ flock.

Staffers eye the exits

Should I stay or should I go?

It was the decision on the mind of every federal Coalition staffer after many of their bosses had their “moment of madness” last August.

Communications minister“Mad” Mitch Fifield’s then chief of staff Luke Coleman chose the escape slide.

And, after a five-month break, Coleman’s just emerged as the head of government affairs at Vocus. Nicely done.

The challenger telco is currently well into a rebuilding phase under its newish chair Bob Mansfield (the former Telstra chair) and CEO Kevin Russell (a former Optus and Telstra executive).

Unlike rival TPG, Vocus isn’t tangled in any way with telecommunications bete noire Huawei, which incidentally was Coleman’s pre-Fifield employer back in the Chinese giant’s less controversial past. Another age.

Senator Mitch Fifield.