Daniel Andrews advising his old mates; Lindsay Fox’s birthday bash coming soon

Dan Andrews (fifth from right) standing next to VietJet president and CEO Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao (fourth from right).

Wedgetail Partners is the name given by Daniel Andrews to a company he started four months after retiring as premier of ­Victoria.

Registered in January, it has no website promoting its services, and nor is there any hint of the partnerships it possesses or seeks to form. By design it’s a business that exists largely on paper, with Andrews listed as sole director and a former adviser in his office, Zheng “Marty” Mei, named as the only other shareholder.

Why these two didn’t go off and join with the rest of Andrews’ senior leadership retinue – Lissie Ratcliff, Jessie Mc­Crone, Ben Foster and Adam Sims – who started their own advisory firm and opened the doors on that venture this month, is just as mysterious, especially when Wedgetail appears to be engaged in similar work. Margin Call asked about any beef there but didn’t receive a response.

In any case, Victoria’s Ministerial Code of Conduct makes it plain that lobbying is pretty much out of the question for ministers and staff during the first 18 months of their post-separation employment. The use of information “acquired in the course” of official functions, such as cabinet or other duties, is much greyer to say the least.

What then to make of Andrews’ teasing of those trip wires with his work at Wedgetail, which we hear has procured itself advisory services with low-budget Vietnamese airline Vietjet Air. And before you ask, yes, Andrews and Mei were definitely cosy with VietJet and its CEO during their time in ­government.

In October 2019 they flew to Vietnam to meet with VietJet President and CEO Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao for what was essentially a photo op, Andrews’ office subsequently issuing a press release that day announcing the airline would start flying planes into Avalon Airport, a development hailed for its employment potential in regional Victoria.

Years in the making, the sign-off had presumably occurred months earlier when VietJet board member Dr Nguyen Thanh Hung arrived in Melbourne and, among other engagements, met with the state’s former governor, Linda Dessau. We’d love to tell you that he met with Andrews and his staff on that trip, too, but the Victorian government didn’t mandate ministerial diary disclosures until late 2023, right after Andrews had stepped down as leader.

All of which is to say this deal was substantial and hard-fought and enormously beneficial to VietJet, which listed the mere hosting of Dan and the inking of this arrangement in its 2019 shareholder results slide show.

Sadly, Avalon came out the big loser here. The pandemic struck, Melbourne staged one the longest Covid-19 lockdowns of any city in the world, and Avalon was inexplicably dumped in favour of Tullamarine as VietJet’s date to the ball. Three years of work, according to Avalon’s CEO Tony Brun, turned to very bitter fruit when the betrayal was made public in January 2023.

Andrews was still premier at the time but, weirdly, he wasn’t quoted anywhere near the press release celebrating the Tullamarine coup. Some handy lines were included, however, from VietJet’s MD Dinh Viet Phuong, who said: “Flying to Victoria will lay the first stones of Vietjet’s grand plan to connect Vietnam and Australia.”

And we can only presume Wedgetail is setting itself up as a mason in this stone-laying arrangement, although neither VietJet nor Andrews would respond to questions about it.

Birthday bash

Actually, while we’re on the subject of airports, Linfox family patriarch Lindsay Fox is up for a birthday any day now and that can only mean another wildly extravagant party is in the offing.

Invitations have been dispatched for the trucking magnate’s 87th celebrations, the theme this year a repeat of the Scottish highland dress of last year’s bash – except this time it will be thrown in the privacy of a hangar at Essendon Fields Airport (much harder to pap arrivals there than at the National Gallery of Victoria, where Eric Bana and Greg Norman were boshed on the street 12 months ago.)

Lindsay Fox knows how to party. Picture: Valeriu Campan

Anthony Albanese is down to attend, the airport runways offering another opportunity to fly in on the taxpayer dime. Let’s just say it’s anyone’s guess whether he’ll use his converted A330 or another Dassault 7X of the kind used in Scone earlier this month.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton is another one likely to make an appearance; let’s face it, if he had time for Gina Rinehart’s 70th during the campaign for the Dunkley by-election last month then surely there’s a hot minute for Dutts to show his face at a toast for the Fox. So, too, the usual list of moneyed-up characters and, as always, the handful of politicians and businessmen coming to terms with their ascending and descending levels of influence. Think Lloyd Williams, Jeff Kennett, Gerry Ryan, Andrew Bassat, Linfox’s director Bill Kelty (badly in need of a scotch after all this duelling with Anna Bligh over Armaguard) and the aforementioned Dan Andrews.

Those with long memories might recall Fox deployed the hangar once before during his 75th birthday party, an event that stretched for three days and cost upwards of seven figures. His 85th was a $5m number involving a cruise ship from New York to Montreal.

Harder to put a number on this year’s efforts, but given the family’s repeated bailouts of their cash-in-transit business, we’re expecting a mild tightening of the belt. If they’ve put away the Macallan for shots of Johnnie Red we’ll know things are really bad.