CT Group co-founder Mark Textor has social media delete on repeat

CT Group co-founder Mark Textor. Picture: AAP

Venture capitalist Alan Jonesissued a grovelling apology on Wednesday after being pulled up about a series of online remarks concerning Israel and Gaza, comments that cost him a speaking gig at an angel investor conference being held in Sydney next month.

But he’s not the only corporate figure posting, then deleting, their questionable political commentary. It’s been happening repeatedly on the LinkedIn page of Mark Textor, co-founder of lobbying firm C|T Group. In fact, it happened again on Thursday.

Summoning the crisis in Gaza, Textor hopped on the platform to hammer away at Jewish lobbyists and their waning influence in the political sphere. Except he didn’t call them Jewish lobbyists. Of course not, that would be rude. Instead he called them “pro-Israel organisations”, which is far safer. Tomayto-tomahto, except it’s loaded with deniability.

“For years, many pro-Israel organisations in Australia (and elsewhere) have prioritised elite influence over public persuasion. Quiet lobbying. Direct power access. Board dinners and tours.” Yes, all very bad and evil. Except Tex appears to have forgotten that quiet lobbying and access to power are the very promises that CT has been selling to its own clients for decades. Whether it’s ever successfully delivered is another matter, but apparently doing so is only sinister when the Js try to do it.

On he goes: “They assumed that if they secured the ‘right’ relationships, they could bypass the court of public opinion. But that strategy is collapsing. Because the internet has expanded access to information beyond all these people.”

It’s true, the internet has democratised everything. But haven’t all these pro-Israel organisations figured this out already? Isn’t it why they’re constantly issuing media statements and holding press conferences, or jostling for airtime on the ABC and beseeching editors at The Daily Telegraph for column inches?

Mark Textor’s deleted LinkedIn post.

Are these no longer considered courts of public opinion, Tex, or does it only count if you read it on LinkedIn with the other new-from-me narcissists?

He’s already deleted this post, of course. He does it all the time. He’s thought better of himself on at least three occasions in recent weeks. One deleted post took aim at “the lobby” (again) after Antoinette Lattouf’s court victory against the ABC. Two others punched down at Jillian Segal, the government’s special envoy for anti-Semitism.

Reputable boards would eventually haul in any non-executive director for routinely taking potshots at a minority group in the community. But Tex, of course, remains a director at CT Group, even though he’s becoming a liability for the brand and making things very awkward for any associates trying to bring in the work. And boy it’s needed.

It’s got five lobbying clients left in Canberra, having shed more than 30 since Labor won office in 2022. CT Group has shared a bed with the Liberal Party for so long that corporate Australia figures them for practically useless during eras of Labor governments. That’s the bit Tex doesn’t get. He’s on LinkedIn kicking the Jews for trying to secure the “right” relationships in Canberra, calling that a failing strategy, without realising that CT Group’s entire lobbying business was predicated on doing the very same.

And not unlike Jones, the apologetic VC, Textor is no stranger to issuing a mea culpa. There was that bizarre moment in 2013 when he said sorry for posting a tweet comparing a member of the Indonesian government to a “1970s Pilipino (sic) porn star”, which he deleted (of course) but not before trying to claim he was never talking about anyone specific.

“I was not referring to anyone in particular but if you want to imagine someone that’s fine by me,” he told journalists. Which, if anything, proves the guy for a rank gas-lighter and invertebrate who isn’t fussed about putting craven BS on the public record.

Actually, that much becomes obvious for anyone who reads his LinkedIn profile, the first line of which says (seriously): “Mark is considered one of the finest thinkers and political contributors of his generation.”

To which we would suggest: it must have been a slow generation.

Who pays for the port?

If there’s one thing Western Australia knows, it’s how to milk the Pilbara iron ore cash cow. In this case the state government is looking to rip $615m out of the state’s biggest export facility port, at a time major reinvestment is needed.

Margin Call was amused – and a little appalled – to see a colleague’s report this week that the state’s government-owned iron ore export behemoth, the Pilbara Ports Authority (PPA), was putting the hard word on the state’s big miners to pay for the duplication of the Port Hedland shipping channel.

Bulk iron ore carriers at Port Hedland. Picture: Pilbara Ports Authority

The bypass has been needed for years, but the requirement was thrown into sharp relief in February after Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue nearly managed to shut down a big chunk of the state’s iron ore industry – and thereby the WA and national economy – in a near-miss that could have blocked the port’s only export route.

Sure, make the big kids pay for the infrastructure they use. BHP, Fortescue and Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting probably won’t even miss the hundreds of millions the new emergency bypass channel will cost.

BHP, though, is said to be “anxious about the funding model”, as are other major users. Which we suspect is just corporate-speak for threatening to chuck their toys out of the cot. Because when you take a close look at WA Labor’s state budget, you’ll see the extraordinary profits made by the port and the dividends it is already kicking into the coffers of WA Treasurer Rita Saffioti.

In this case it’s a windfall $615.5m dividend from the PPA flagged for the current financial year. That includes a $400m special dividend as the WA government sucks up the port authority’s excess cash.

That’s about a quarter of Saffioti’s projected $2.4bn surplus for the year, as it happens.

The PPA hasn’t yet delivered its official annual results, but the state’s budget papers suggest the authority made a $265.1m after-tax profit last financial year, and is projected to deliver a $200m net profit the following year.

It paid $257.5m in dividends last financial year, but nothing the previous year as it hung on to its profits to “fund strategic infrastructure projects”.

And what could be more strategic for future years than a bypass channel to make sure the iron ore cash cow keeps flowing, we wonder? Aside from the Treasurer’s ability to boast about another budget surplus, we suppose.