Damien Mantach finds out who true friends are

Illustration: Rod Clement.

Convicted fraudster Damien Mantach, who stole $1.5 million from the Liberal Party in Victoria and is now behind bars, had few friends left in the party by the time it came around to his sentencing.

Submissions to the County Court on his behalf were few and far between.

The nation’s leading political conservatives have run a mile from Mantach following his crimes against the party.

There is no former federal president Brian Loughnane or former Victorian premier Ted Baillieu vouching for Mantach, whose main supporters are his mother and father and old family and school friends.

Dad Brian Mantach, himself a former state president in Tasmania, recalls in his sentencing submission how his son worked in the offices of Liberal luminaries including Jocelyn Newman, Warwick Smith, Peter Reith and Greg Hunt.

But none of those penned a note to the court.

The closest thing to a Liberal name standing up for Mantach was former party pollster Mike Sexton, who worked closely with the former state director from 2007 to 2014.

Mantach will be behind bars in regional Victoria for at least another two years.

Fall from grace

Nine boss Hugh Marks has laid out the ground rules for acceptable behaviour at the entertainment company.

Yesterday the network and Walkley Award-winning journalist Rebecca Le Tourneau parted company after what has been a bumpy year for the now former 60 Minutes producer.

First there was the in-flight first class incident where Le Tourneau exposed herself to fellow passengers at the pointy end of the plane.

Then last month there was her low-range drink driving conviction on the way to a work do in Sydney’s inner west.

How quickly fortunes can change at Nine, at least for some.

In October Le Tourneau was on stage at James Packer’s Crown Palladium ballroom alongside 60 Minutes star reporter Tara Brown to accept the pair’s Walkley for their report on paedophile Peter Scully.

Now the producer’s out of a job.

But not Brown, whose return to 60 Minutes on Sunday night following her role in the Beirut child-snatching scandal and subsequent incarceration in Beirut was promoted heavily on the network over the weekend.

The star reporter was back. Sadly, it was a different story for Le Tourneau.

McGuire’s mire

The Curse of Nine has also once again struck embattled game show host and Collingwood Football Club president Eddie McGuire, with the foot-in-mouth personality now accused of ripping off a reality-TV show format.

In a writ filed with the Victorian Supreme Court yesterday, former Richmond player Stephen Parsons (five games and one goal, 1974) lined up McGuire’s modestly named McGuire Media, Foxtel (half-owned by The Australian’s publisher, News Corp Australia) and McGuire Media subsidiary Jam TV Australia, headed by another former Nine exec, Cos Cardone.

As head of sport at Nine, Cardone was executive producer of the AFL Footy Show, and therefore the man responsible for foisting fossilised footballer Sam Newman on a startled public.

Parsons reckons Foxtel and McGuire Media stole the idea for reality show The Recruit, currently airing on the pay-TV network, from him.

He claims to have been developing the idea since 2005, including buying footage of players James Hird, Nathan Buckley and Michael Voss, with help from former Ten sports reporter Ian Cohen.

The idea was allegedly pitched to Cardone by TV producer Ian Gates at a meeting in August 2011, and also passed on to then-Fox Footy chief Rod Law by an intermediary.

Parsons reckons he was boned when it came time to air the show.

None of the allegations have been tested in court but it comes at just the wrong time for Eddie Everywhere, who, following a bout of self-inflicted reputational injuries — including calling for footy journo Caroline Wilson to be drowned in an ice bath — has been busy rehabbing his image by appearing alongside former Australian of the Year Rosie Batty.

McGuire and Foxtel didn’t return calls.

Journo’s headline act

Tony Abbott’s sister, Christine Forster, has quit her day job as a resources journo to concentrate on her bid to tip Clover Moore out as Lord Mayor of Sydney.

Forster told Margin Call she finished up at S&P Global Platts’ uber-specialised Asia Oil News on Wednesday — and seized the moment to plug her campaign.

“I am passionate about Sydney and wanted to be able to put my full energy into bringing new leadership to the city,” she said.

Forster and her rainbow Liberal corflutes have been hard at it on the hustings, hitting Oxford Street for a meet-and-greet with locals on Thursday.

Also on Thursday she popped in to the NSW parliament for the launch of Faith, Love and Australia, the Conservative Case for Same-Sex Marriage, a tome penned by her brother’s speechwriter Paul Ritchie. (Tony turned up
and even autographed some copies.)

True blue Forster knows winkling Moore out of Town Hall is a big ask and she is “very much the underdog”.

“But I’m out there talking to as many people as I can, and I’m certainly getting the message that after 12 years there’s a mood for change,” she said.

Forster and fans out on the hustings

Ground down

Also quitting is sometime MP and occasional entrepreneur Clive Palmer’s daughter Emily, who appears to have shut down the Beans on Queen cafe she was running in Brisbane with business partner Declan Sheridan — on the ground floor of dad’s Mineralogy House, of course.

Company records show the pair only registered in September last year and, according to its scanty Instagram feed, the doors opened in April with a free coffee giveaway.

But despite a cut-price banana bread offer, things appear to have slowed since then, if empty display cabinets and closed doors last Monday are any guide.

Perhaps the location is cursed — a relative of former premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen once ran a yoghurt shop out of the same spot, which sadly didn’t last long.

Liquid asset

Has anyone in South Australia seen Water Minister Ian Hunter? For the second year running, Hunter failed to show at the Croweater water industry’s glam night-of-nights, the Gold Gatsby Ball, held this past Saturday.

Hunter is in high demand right now amid controversy in the City of Churches over burst water mains and maintenance problems at SA Water — which faced the music and turned out in force.

Local paper The Advertiser has even taken to putting a cardboard cutout of the minister up at burst water mains to express frustration at the real thing, a bloke who once promised to “co-design a new engagement paradigm”, whatever that means.

But at least one person who attended on Saturday night — plus three of their nearest and dearest — is set to score some precious facetime with the elusive Hunter.

Auctioned for charity on the night was a lunch for four at Parliament House, hosted by Hunter and billed as “an extraordinary opportunity to discuss water, climate change, conservation and the environment”.

And while it was spruiked as “an experience that money cannot buy”, eager water industry types keen for a chinwag with Hunter managed to put a price on it, with the item fetching $1800.

Will Glasgow is on leave.