For once and industry group has no interest

Peter Nicholson Margin Call cartoon for 23-02-2016. Version: (650x366) COPYRIGHT: The Australian's artists each have different copyright agreements in place regarding re-use of their work in other publications. Please seek advice from the artists themselves or the Managing Editor of The Australian regarding re-use.

It’s the idea no one wants to own. On Sunday, newspaper readers learned that “industry groups” proposed low-income earners be able to opt out of the super system in a pre-budget submission to Scott Morrison.

But ringing around the peak body alphabet soup yesterday failed to produce an author.

It certainly didn’t come from the super sector, with the for-profit Financial Services Council and the industry funds forming a rare united front in defence of their mutual self-interest.

Innes Willox’s Ai Group? No. Kate Carnell’s ACCI? Nope. Jennifer Westacott’s Business Council of Australia? Nah. The Property Council, the Australian Retailers’ Association? No, no.

“It’s a stupid idea,” Council of Small Business of Australia boss Peter Strong said, pointing out that administration would be a nightmare for his members. “It really is very, very silly.”

ScoMo denied the yarn, prompting speculation that the whole thing was just a government dream.

Meanwhile, as the Treasurer scrambles to solve the evergreen budget emergency, his predecessor, Joe Hockey, seems to be enjoying Washington, DC.

The new US Ambassador is tweeting up a storm, making new mates and catching up with the old, like Trade Minister Steve Ciobo, trade envoy Andrew Robb, A-G George Brandis and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton.

A sparky Hockey has also been spending time building bridges between Aussie industry and start-up central, San Francisco. Malcolm Turnbull must be proud.

Molly and the moon

Trucking magnate Lindsay Fox had the last word on Ian “Molly” Meldrum in the extended herogram to the Aussie music legend screened on Kerry Stokes’s Seven on Sunday night.

Billionaire Fox and his wife Paula have been friends and supporters of Meldrum’s for two decades with the iconic music superfan and Fox lifelong devotee (and Fox an ex-president) of the St Kilda Football Club.

It was Fox who gifted Meldrum the first of his now-omnipresent hats, which the businessman had bought in Aspen and given to Meldrum after his home in Richmond burned down. “Wherever you lay your hat, that’s your home,” Fox’s card read.

“The billionaire couple featured heavily in the Seven doco, recounting how Meldrum spent each Christmas for the past 17 years in Aspen with the extended Fox clan.

Up against a who’s who of Aussie and international music, the Foxes stole the show — the second-highest rating in prime time, with 1.3 million viewers.

It was beaten only by another Seven show, My Kitchen Rules, helping Stokes win the night with a 37.5 per cent share.

Much to the shock and horror of Paula, Fox decided actions spoke louder than words, rising from his chair, turning his back to camera and dropping his strides to flash his muso mate a browneye on national television.

All that was missing on the rolled-gold rear end: “You are passing another Fox”.

Atlassian’s grilling

Users who never pay a cent, media leaks and Atlassian’s low, low tax rates — these are some of the issues US regulator the SEC threw at hoodie Michael Cannon-Brookes and his co-CEO Scott Farquhar as the software unicorn prepared for its Wall Street IPO last year.

All is revealed in letters filed on the regulators’ public database as a matter of routine — a far cry from here in Oz, where Greg Medcraft’s ASIC won’t give over a single letter.

The paper trail shows SEC staff grilled the company over how many of the touted daily 6500 freebie trials of its software turn into paying customers.

Atlassian told the SEC it didn’t know. However, it did admit that just 864 big users deliver 27 per cent of its revenue.

The SEC also cracked the sads at a September Forbes article spilling the beans on the impending IPO, which was supposed to be kept top secret.

“The company is not aware of the identities of the alleged sources for the media report,” Atlassian replied.

SEC staff also spent a lot of time trying to understand a tax-effective structure that saw the company book a tax benefit of some $US7.5m last financial year, prompting Atlassian to admit it was due to non-taxable “related party inter-company interest income received by a group financing company in the United States”.

Any resemblance to the kind of thing that just got James Packer’s Crown empire into trouble with Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan is no doubt a coincidence.

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