Andrew’s exit nothing to Bragg about

Cartoon: Rod Clement.

No wonder there’s so much scuttlebutt about Andrew Bragg’s sudden exit from the race to replace former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in Wentworth.

Until yesterday, the former Business Council of Australia director was the frontrunner to be the Liberals candidate for the seat, the harbourside jewel in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

Then Bragg yesterday told the world over Facebook that he’d had an epiphany.

Andrew Bragg has pulled out of the Wentworth pre-selection race to make way for a woman to run in the seat.@chriskkenny: I reckon there's a lot more to this story than meets the eye.

MORE: https://t.co/9HUBaTtqr5 #Credlin pic.twitter.com/QthT9C4Q5I

— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) September 10, 2018

“I believe the Liberal Party should preselect a woman and my withdrawal can pave the way,” Bragg said in his suspiciously selfless statement.

Andrew Bragg will not contest Wentworth

That seemed like a big call. Only a fortnight ago he quit his job at Jennifer Westacott’s BCA to run.

Alternative theories for the decision spread from Paddington’s Lord Dudley to Catalina at Rose Bay.

What had really happened?

This being the Liberal Party in 2018 — weeks after a violent leadership change, which itself was only three years after the last time the federal party tore itself apart — there were no shortage of nasty mutterings.

Ominously for the eight remaining Liberal candidates battling for pre-selection, Margin Call has been told a private investigator has been making calls digging for dirt on candidates.

Apparently this is how politics is done today.

There are less grubby, if less noble reasons given for Bragg’s change of mind.

His supporters point to research that supposedly shows a preference for a female candidate — although it’s not clear the research suggests which female candidate. They say the world has changed since the Julia Banks fiasco.

 

More convincing is the insistence by some key Bragg backers that a Senate spot has been promised to the one-time acting Liberal federal director. The sincerity of that Senate commitment will be revealed in a couple of months when the NSW state council selects its upper house ticket, a process that while contested is far more genteel than pre-selection for a by-election.

The lure of a Senate spot seems a plausible reason for a change of mind, even without the weekend feminist conversion.

But there were other, more salacious reasons being circulated.

We were told scuttlebutt involving Bragg was the talk of rival candidate Peter King’s Sunday campaign launch, which was headlined by Alan Jones.

However, some of the 100-plus attendees at the do swear that wasn’t the case.

Others have pointed to rival candidate Katherine O’Regan’s camp as the source of the rumours. They were silent on the matter yesterday.

From wherever they originated, we understand the allegations — however dubious and with however little evidence to support them — were presented to NSW Liberal state director

Chris Stone.

Stone also wouldn’t respond to Margin Call’s queries yesterday about the messy pre-selection. The poor machine man must be counting down the days for the mess to be over.

And to think, once it’s done, Stone has to oversee an increasingly fraught-looking by-election. Be thankful you don’t have his job.

Julia Banks with Julie Bishop

Mixed message

NAB’s boss Andrew Thorburn had some success marketing his decision to not follow his rate-rising Big Four peers CBA, Westpac and ANZ.

No less than Prime Minister Scott Morrison congratulated Thorburn’s pinstriped ensemble.

“They seem to get it,” the PM tweeted.

And NAB’s customers are even more thrilled.

But, banking being what it is these days, Thorburn’s not short of other headaches.

Prominent in the NAB chief executive’s case are the 6000 staff he is retrenching. The first 2000 should all be out the door in the coming weeks.

The job losses — first announced last November — were accompanied with the bank’s jarringly upbeat publicity about “The Bridge”, a program that is intended to help the recently redundant find work.

Margin Call hears it has been renamed internally as “The Plank”.

We also hear the reviews of those who have walked its grim path are far from flash.

Given the nature of its function, that’s to be expected.

There are criticisms that many have found the re-training underwhelming.

Of the original departures, we hear only a quarter have since found work.

Another few hundred of the exodus are now in further study.

Here’s hoping things pick up in the coming months.

Sticky situation

Could things be more tangled for takeover target Capilano?

Apparently so.

Last week, a Fairfax-ABC investigation reported on research that found honey in the Capilano empire was less pure than the labelling suggested.

That expensive research was paid for by Robert Costa, part of the listed Costa food empire.

Incredibly, that research was done with help from law firm King & Wood Mallesons, who were also working with suitors Roc Partners and Albert Tse-backed Wattle Hill on their proposed $190 million takeover of Capilano. The law firm has since removed itself from the bidding work.

Now Barry Irvin’s Bega Cheese — which coincidentally is raising a Capilano-sized $200 million at the moment — is in the mix as a takeover rival. Bega already owns more than 8 per cent of the honey maker.

The Bega speculation has thrown up another tangle: the dual directorship of Peter Margin, who sits on the boards of both Irvin’s Bega and the Neil Chatfield-chaired Costa.

Peter Margin

That’s likely nothing more than a symptom of the smallness of the agricultural world on the ASX.

But in this suspicious environment, it’s a dual role that’s attracting some interest.