Confessions from the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge; Matt Comyn’s CBA sale

The Qantas Chairman’s Lounge in Brisbane. Picture: Lucas Muro

How hard is it to understand that the largesse on offer from Australia’s airlines might be worth actual money? Quite difficult, it appears, given the Australian Public Service Commission was forced to spell out the matter this week.

The APSC quietly updated its guidance on disclosing gifts to public servants on Monday, and the only change?

A pointed note to public agency heads that membership of exclusive airline membership lounges – the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge, along with Virgin’s Beyond Lounge – counts as a “gift” that should be disclosed.

“In circumstances where agency heads are gifted airline lounge memberships (including those which are invitation-only), these must be recorded in their agency’s gifts and benefits register annually or when circumstances change, such as a new or cancelled membership,” says the new disclosure guidance.

Most people might think that should be merely a statement of the bleeding obvious.

But apparently not, given the recent slew of belated disclosures across the public service – prompted partly by the revelation in September that new Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock had forgotten to disclose her membership of the exclusive invitation-only club at Qantas.

RBA governor Michele Bullock. Picture: John Feder

It seems the senior executives across a vast range of federal government agencies had somehow failed to notice that lounge membership might be worth slightly more than the $100 threshold for inclusion in their agency’s gift register.

For those playing at home, $100 will buy you about four ham and cheese toasties (with coffee) at Melbourne airport.

Qantas admitted in early October it offered membership of its exclusive club to a raft of senior public servants.

Soon after the Defence Department uploaded a special edition of its gift register dedicated to airline memberships – showing that more than 20 of its top civilian and uniformed personnel had accepted membership to the Qantas and Virgin lounges, including department secretary Greg Moriarty, chief of defence General Angus Campbell, associate secretary Matt Yannopoulos, and the list goes on down the ranks.

The Australian Federal Police banged in its own disclosures in late September, updating its gift registry to include airline lounge memberships for AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw, three deputy commissioners and its chief operating officer.

As befitting its usual operating mode of pointless secrecy, Home Affairs updated its own list in late September – but didn’t put any dates, names or numbers on the disclosure, saying only that the memberships were received by “senior executives”. Margin Call is a little surprised it didn’t write the affair off as an “operating matter” and decline to disclose anything at all.

Same goes for Services Australia, which purportedly delivers benefits for the country’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens. Its September disclosure noted that an unnamed number of “qualifying department executive officials” accepted the kind of corporate largesse beyond the wildest dreams of the plebs they’re supposed to be helping.

And the list goes on, and on.

Kudos though to new Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry boss Adam Fennessy, who managed to disclose he had accepted membership of the Chairman’s Lounge before starting his new role on September 18.

Not so much his predecessor, Andrew Metcalfe, who bunged in his own disclosure on October 11 – more than 44 months after being first granted access to the exclusive club.

Comyn’s withdrawal

It’s a hard life for Australia’s most highly paid banker, with Commonwealth Bank boss Matt Comyn forced to tap the market for just shy of a million dollars last week.

Documents lodged with the market operator reveal Comyn, through a corporate entity controlled by himself and wife Lucy Comyn, tapped Australia’s equities market to help cover a bill from the taxman.

Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn.

Some say it’s a sign of the times when the CEO starts selling – has anyone seen Qantas share trader-in-chief Alan Joyce lately?

Records show Mr CBA lodged a trade on October 16 to sell 9918 shares in CBA at $100.55 a pop. Not a bad price since the heat has come out of CBA’s shares, which are down almost 2.7 per cent since Monday.

Comyn got in before CBA closed the trading window for its execs, as the bank has now entered blackout ahead of its first-quarter results.

CBA, which posted a $10.2bn cash profit at its full-year results in August, showered shareholders in cash in September with a handy $2.40-a-share dividend.

Some of you may know Comyn from his $10m pay packet, which must be quite the struggle to cart from CBA’s headquarters to Sydney’s Eastern Climes.

Comyn’s pay soared 50 per cent on the back of the profits, topping $10.4m from his prior $6.97m payday.

With his almost 59,921 directly held shares, plus another 45,477 held by the family company, Comyn was in line to receive a hefty payout.

But not to fear, Comyn still holds a great chunk of shares in CBA, with almost double his mandated minimum according to CBA’s last set of accounts.

In for a fight

South Australian Liberal turncoat Nick McBride has found himself in a battle on two fronts – one political, and the other managing his family’s grazing empire amid a slump in livestock prices and with the threat of El Nino looming.

The state MP left the Liberal Party in July to sit as an independent in the seat of MacKillop, in the state’s South-East, 10 months after taking the reins as chairman of the family’s 100-year-old sheep and cattle enterprise AJ & PA McBride.

His political defection followed a difficult year for the company, with financial accounts filed with ASIC revealing it slipped to a $17.5m loss in the 12 months to June (down from a $13.5m profit), due to a $27m hit to the valuation of its extensive livestock holdings.

Cattle and sheep prices have slumped over the past year.

Amid the headwinds, including the threat of drier conditions resulting from El Nino, several members of the McBride family are now looking to offload their Keilira Station near the South Australian town of Kingston.

The 3345ha property is the latest in a series of major grazing properties set to test the appetite of corporate and foreign investors for agricultural land.

The late Colin Bell’s $700m rural empire across NSW was put up for sale last month, and that was followed by the billionaire Hui family’s listing of its mammoth 2.9 million hectare cattle portfolio in Western Australia’s Kimberley region.

AJ & PA McBride controls 1.4 million hectares across 10 stations in South Australia and Victoria, making it one of the country’s largest wool growers and owners of agricultural land.

Mr McBride succeeded his father Keith as chairman in September last year, six months after the Liberal Party’s crushing defeat to Labor at the South Australian state election.

He blamed factional divisions for his decision to quit the party in July and, while hopeful of retaining his seat as an independent, faces the prospect of a clash with high-profile former federal Liberal MP Nicolle Flint.

Flint is mulling a move into state politics after abruptly quitting federal politics in 2021 citing burnout, abuse, harassment and health issues.

The conservative former member for Boothby, in Adelaide’s south, is currently the state Liberal Party’s rural and regional council chairwoman, and has roots in the state’s South-East where her family has farmed for generations.