Ex-Rio Tinto chief Sam Walsh gives media the slip

Illustration: Rod Clement.

The under-fire former boss of Rio Tinto, Sam Walsh, was taking no chances when he fronted a CPA forum at Perth’s Crown casino yesterday.

Walsh was never shy of the limelight during his time running Rio, but the not so insignificant matter of his involvement in Rio Tinto’s Guinean corruption scandal saw the milk jug collector go to great lengths yesterday to avoid the waiting press pack.

Not only was media shut out of the event — a world first at an event co-starring CPA chief Alex Malley (star of billboards around the world) — but Walsh and the CPA enlisted the help of Crown’s finest security guards to navigate him through the bowels of the hotel to escape through a back exit.

Walsh’s 40-minute breakfast speech to the forum — appropriately titled “Leadership in a complex world” — was well received, judging by the applause that could be heard from outside the Crown ballroom.

The assembled accountants were true to the profession’s conservative stereotype: none of them was willing to discuss Walsh’s speech in any great ­detail.

Meanwhile, the former miner’s successor at Rio, Jean-Sebastien Jacques — who is doing Walsh no favours by pointing the Guinean bone just as his predecessor seeks to establish a non-exec career — was in Sydney yesterday.

JSJ, who visits Australia about once a month, was busy with internal meetings ahead of a scheduled investor presentation tomorrow. Wonder what they’ll be asking about?

Sam Walsh to spend more time with his milk jug collection, as #RioTinto names successor https://t.co/aRAHCVi85G pic.twitter.com/DExVjd8xdZ

— Peter Wells (@_PeterWells) March 17, 2016

Nudie feud laid bare

Friday is looming as D-Day for investors, including Ten chair David Gordon, former Greencross boss Jeff David and Son of Singo Jack Singleton,who are desperately trying to recover about $20 million they pumped into the Nudie Juice empire run by tax commissioner Chris Jordan’s least favourite family, the Binetters.

Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan.

Last week, the Australian Taxation Office was behind a $125m judgment against ­members of the clan over their habit of stashing millions of dollars in secret bank accounts in Switzerland and Israel and then borrowing the money from themselves to fund their business empire. That old trick.

As part of the ongoing legal stoush, about $50m reaped from the sale of Nudie to Philippines outfit Monde Nissin remains frozen by order of the Federal Court.

On Friday, lawyers for the investors will ask the court to free up the money so they can be repaid.

But liquidators John Sheahan and Ian Lock, who control key Binetter family companies and are funded by the ATO to pursue the tax bills, reckon the investments — mostly “redeemable preference notes” — actually represent an equity stake and so should rank well behind the taxman’s take.

The identities of the investors are hidden behind a series of trusts, but some names and numbers can be gleaned from paperwork filed with the court.

Sydney’s Bellevue Hill resident Gordon is owed $2.17m through his company, Lexnom, and David is personally owed $327,000.

Singo Jr and his fellow founders of boutique ad agency Jack Watts Currie, which has also done some work for Nudie, are owed $68,700 through their Robert Currie, Jack Singleton and Colin Watts partnership.

Another $637,000 is owed to a trust run by a company called NTTP, run by Andrew Binetter and Samantha Kelliher, whose shareholders are Gordon,
David and two other trust companies associated with
the Binetters, Dunba Investments and Dunmaf Investments.

Between them, Dunba and Dunmaf appear to be owed about $9m, but there are no clues as to where that money may have come from.

Worth the money

Yes, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s chief of staff Drew Clarke is paid more than Tony Abbott’s former COS Peta Credlin.

Drew Clarke, Malcolm Turnbull's chief of staff. Picture: Kym Smith.

Clarke, a former Department of Communications secretary, who was appointed to that
job by Julia Gillard but who developed a close relationship with Turnbull when he was communications minister, is a career public servant.

He’s a hard worker, a cool head and is happy to keep a low profile.

When Clarke was department head, he was paid a bit over $600,000, a salary he maintained when he was made the permanent COS last November.

That’s twice the roughly $300,000 Credlin was on in the role, as she said on Sky News on Monday night.

Money well spent, says Turnbull.

“He’s one of the most experienced public servants in this city and that’s obviously been reflected in his ongoing remuneration,” the PM said yesterday.

Now that’s an Encore

Meanwhile, Gillardlooks to have found her niche in life after her tumultuous time running Australia.

The Seabourn Encore: soon to star Julia Gillard.

This time next year, the 55-year-old Welsh-born Gillard will take to the high seas as a special guest speaker on board six-star luxury cruise ship Seabourn Encore as it sails from Singapore to our fair shores.

The former labour lawyer and member for Lalor will arrive to a suite filled with French champagne on ice and a bed made with fine Egyptian cotton, fluffy duvet and down and feather pillows.

Just like home.

The Sandringham set

For more than five years, 37-year-old Liberal pollie Tim Wilson has lived Melbourne’s South Yarra lifestyle in a stylish one-bedroom apartment on Marne Street in the Domain precinct, adjacent to the Royal Botanic Gardens.

Liberal member for Goldstein Tim Wilson. Picture: Kym Smith.

But gaining preselection for the blue ribbon Liberal seat of Goldstein in March turned everything on its ear for the former Human Rights Commissioner and his primary school teacher partner Ryan Bolger.

Wilson won the right to contest former trade minister Andrew Robb’s seat after a tight preselection battle with lawyer turned diplomat Georgina Downer, daughter of former Liberal foreign minister Alexander Downer.

Within three weeks, Wilson and Bolger had packed their things and were living in the heart of Wilson’s electorate, nearby to local Church Street coffee hotspot The Pantry.

But that’s just an interim abode while he and Bolger have been waiting to settle on a purchase in seaside Sandringham.

It’s the sort of home you might expect your grandma to love.

The 1975 brick unit cost the couple $755,000. They are set to move in next month — once renovations are completed, parliament has finished sitting and just in time for Christmas.

As for the South Yarra abode, it’s been refinanced with CBA and is now an investment property.

All executed with the sort of speed and alacrity of which Labor’s David Feeney, the member for Batman, can only dream.