Jayne Hrdlicka gets prime seat at Wimbledon; David Thodey dragged into John Barilaro trade row
The catastrophic delays at Australian airports are not being helped by the triple threat of extreme weather, school holidays and ongoing labour shortages.
Naturally, airline CEOs are hunkered down in their offices, cooly figuring angles on how to relieve the pandemonium and declutter those unsightly queues snaking into the parking bays.
Well, that’s the least they can do after spending the better part of two years bollocking on about travel restrictions and demanding that planes be put back in the skies.
Our colleague Robyn Ironside reported a few days ago that Qantas boss Alan Joyce is gallivanting around Europe, leaving his executives to man the check-in counters at Sydney Airport.
Similarly, Virgin Australia chief executive Jayne Hrdlicka is said to be travelling but not officially on holiday, leaving her executives to help out at airports under the preposterous guise of “guest ambassadors”.
And so it was that our mouths fell agape at the sight of a clearly relaxed Hrdlicka seated within arms reach of the royal box at Wimbledon on Wednesday, and clapping heartily after Novak Djokovic’s matchwinning point against Jannik Sinner.
Her attendance might have gone unnoticed had she not positioned herself directly behind the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, two of the most photographed people on the planet.
Yes, she may also be chairman of Tennis Australia, but discretion is always advisable – and cost-free.
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Controversy continues
Former CSIRO chairman David Thodey has been dragged into the controversy surrounding the appointment of John Barilaro to the role of Senior Trade and Investment Commissioner, a position he renounced a week ago to end the firestorm it had caused.
For anyone who’s been averting their attention over the past month, the short version is that the role was originally awarded to businesswoman Jenny West in August last year, only for that to be abruptly rescinded four weeks later.
Margin Call broke the news last month that Barilaro, formerly the NSW deputy premier, had been awarded the role after a second round of interviews and a global recruitment campaign to find an eligible candidate.
NSW Labor has used it to cause havoc for NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet ever since, leveraging a strategy of cronyism that is likely to feature heavily in the attack ads leading up to the March election.
So how does the eminent Thodey get drawn into the muck? It turns out his name appeared in a confidential transcript of a NSW parliamentary hearing that was held into the Barilaro appointment last week.
Providing evidence in-camera, Investment NSW chief executive Amy Brown told the hearing that she’d undertaken a series of workplace investigations into West after informing her, on September 17, that she was not going to New York.
One of these inquiries examined the veracity of line items on her curriculum vitae, which Brown claimed had been embroidered to enhance her seniority in trade positions.
Exactly why this due diligence was undertaken after she had already been approved for the role remains a mystery, and brings to mind the possibility of a dirt-digging exercise, which itself was raised by Shooters MP and committee member RobertBorsak. The impetus for those inquiries was “feedback from staff”, which led to a number of astoundingly trivial remarks being put on the record.
Among the more dubious lines of inquiry pursued by Brown was a concerned phone call she received from West about a meeting with Investment NSW that appeared to have gone awry.
West said that someone “who is very high profile in the industry” had been “very upset with someone at Investment NSW” over an apparent misstep during the meeting.
“She didn’t know that I knew that person – they’re a very high-profile person in the business community,” Brown said. The alleged misstep itself wasn’t identified.
Brown then called this unnamed individual and apologised profusely about what happened, only to learn that he was bemused by the call and “didn’t know what I was talking about”.
On Brown’s telling, the incident ultimately caused her to suspect that West was “perhaps mischaracterising some things that were occurring”, but, frankly, given its triviality, we’re unsure why it was even mentioned to the committee in the first place.
Labor MLC Daniel Mookhey requested that Brown identify the phantom businessman, and succeeded in doing so with the prodding and gentle thumb-screwing of a few other committee members. If not for that, Thodey might have steered clear of this mess.
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Ardern’s new title
The very charming Jacinda Ardern averted much embarrassment at a Tourism Leaders’ Lunch held at Sydney’s Hyatt Regency Hotel on Wednesday.
Hosted by Karl Stefanovic, Ardern was welcomed to the stage by a star-struck Michael Issenberg, the American-born chairman of Tourism Australia, who flubbed his lines and called her the “prime minister of Australia”.
Much tut-tutting followed, and suddenly everyone became fascinated by the pattern of the carpet, according to our asset in the field, who told us the Kiwi PM shook off the faux pas and saved the day.
“Despite the closeness of our nations, I remain only the Prime Minister of New Zealand,” she said.
Also present was Harvey Norman CEO Katie Page, who received a shoutout from Ardern. Page had joked with the PM not long earlier that her stores in NZ were full with Australians on holiday.
Ardern’s droll response, relayed to the crowd: “Not sure why they come to New Zealand to buy a fridge.”
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