Inside Crown directors’ private dinner meeting

Cartoon: Rod Clement.

Before executive chairman John Alexander and his Crown board squared up to battle at their high-stakes annual general meeting, they gathered in a private room at Neil Perry’s Rockpool Bar and Grill in their Melbourne casino for a working dinner.

How Crown is that?

Whether the credit goes to their dinner — or to JA’s pep talk — the Crown directors were as united as they were robust on Thursday in Crown’s River Room as they defended the $8bn company from its many unhappy shareholders.

Delivering his prepared chairman’s address from his seat, Alexander (once the editor-in-chief of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age) came out swinging at the coverage of the casino’s alleged links with organised crime, money laundering and brothels in the papers he once ruled (which are now part of Hugh Marks’ Nine empire).

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Along with corruption allegations, there was Crown’s “barren” and “threadbare” share­market disclosures, its handling of the relationship with its billionaire-at-large 36 per cent shareholder James Packer, the broader independence of its board and the alleged inappropriateness of Alexander’s role as an executive chair.

It’s been that sort of year.

Perth director John Poynton, up for his inaugural vote, got a serve for being yet another ­Packer rep at the table.

“I have limited communication with James,” Poynton said. “I don’t call him every day. I don’t call him every week.”

Millionaire adman Harold Mitchell suffered the biggest protest vote of 27 per cent, no doubt linked to the court action by James Shipton’s ASIC against him over his time as a director of Tennis Australia as it was negotiating broadcast rights to the Australian Open with Kerry Stokes’ Seven West.

“I expect to win,’’ Mitchell said of the legal matter.

Former AFL chief Andrew Demetriou was the most popular with just a 7 per cent no vote. But Demetriou was still forced to outline his relationship with Packer, whom he said he first met amid negotiations with Packer’s then media business Publishing and Broadcasting over footy broadcast rights in the mid-2000s.

“From time to time, he’d pop his head in and try and intimidate me and get the price down,” Demetriou recalled.

Those were the days.

Even Packer lieutenant and Crown director Mike Johnston had something to say, despite not actually being asked a question.

He spoke up to defend the honour of Hong Kong billionaire Lawrence Ho, who now owns 10 per cent of Crown and intends to increase that to 19.99 per cent (if the regulatory approval comes through).

“Let’s remember Crown was in a joint-venture with Melco International and that JV was the subject of scrutiny here and in two states of the US … and neither had concerns with Lawrence,” Johnston said.

There was plenty of executive moral support in the room, with CFO Ken Barton and head lawyer Mary Manos on stage, while floating around the room were head of strategy Todd Nisbet, Aussie resorts boss Barry Felstead, general manager, community and charity, Annie Peacock, operative and former national secretary of the ALP Karl Bitar.

Swans fly south

Chairman Tony Shepherd and his Greater Western Sydney Giants better watch themselves.

While GWS smashed the Swans on the field this year, their Sydney AFL rivals look to have all the possession in Canberra.

On Wednesday night, a wedge of Sydney Swans flew into the Nationals party room at Parliament House.

The long defunct “Swans on the Hill” has returned and with bipartisan support thanks to Nationals minister and Bloods tragic Darren Chester and his Labor co-convener Matt Thistlewaite (whose appearance was apparently his first ever inside the Nats party room).

Coach John Longmire — in the federal parliament for the first time since his Year 6 school excursion — was along with the club’s CEO Tom Harley and newly retired players Heath Grundy and Jarod Crouch.

Tanya Plibersek and John Longmire

Among the staffers, journos and party pies were Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack, Environment Minister Sussan Ley, Labor’s Tanya Plibersek, her neighbouring Liberal MP Dave Sharma, House of Representatives Speaker Tony Smith, fired-up backbencher Barnaby Joyce and Damian Drum, who as well as being the Member for Nicholls is a former Swans assistant coach.

The Sydney club is really taking the whole Canberra infiltration seriously.

Acting the part

Things were more cultured in Sydney where a gaggle of media all-sorts packed into the Belvoir in Surry Hills for a preview of scenes from the theatre’s upcoming production Packer & Sons.

It was an elite alternative to the Seven upfronts that James Warburton was presiding over on the same night not far away.

Along with a pack of journalists — including Nine’s Kate McClymont and Sky News’s Janine Perrett — there was Seven’s commercial director Bruce McWilliam, a media player more familiar with the play’s subjects than most.

Seven’s commercial director Bruce McWilliam. Picture: Getty Images

Before his current gig as a close adviser to Seven’s billionaire proprietor Kerry Stokes, McWilliam advised this masthead’s founder Rupert Murdoch, who along with his son Lachlan (co-chairman of our parent company News Corp) has a cameo role in the play that mostly focuses on Sir Frank Packer, his sons Clyde and Kerry, and Kerry’s son James.

The word from preview crowd is that the play — which runs for a month from November 16 — looks promising.

Margin Call would expect as much from its writer Tommy Murphy and director Eamon Flack.

As we’ve previously noted, the family’s Sydney head Gretel Packer was discreetly approached for her approval before the production was scheduled.

And, yes, McWilliam was earlier at the Seven upfronts where the prodigal Warburton unveiled his 2020 smorgasbord, which spans Plate of Origin, the exhumed corpse of Big Brother and Mega Mini Golf.

Enough to impress the fickle Australian TV watching public? We’ll find out next year.