Former Mike Baird adviser Nigel Blunden the joker in the pack

Nigel Blunden’s sense of humour seemingly on display with Joe Hockey in 2011.

If former NSW premier Mike Baird’s adviser Nigel Blunden’s appearance before ICAC on Wednesday is any indication, there are sure to be wisecracks and pop culture references a-plenty at his latest posting with Lieutenant General John Frewen’s Covid-19 task force.

In a rare glimpse into the NSW public service, the former strategy director was taken at length through a document he had crafted back in 2016 ahead of a meeting of ministers to consider grants including to the Wagga Clay Target Association at the centre of the ICAC fuss.

With a first line quoting Tom Cruise in his breakout movie Risky Business, the document was no doubt destined to be shared to a wider audience than just those in the department.

“As Joel Goodsen famously said, sometimes you gotta say WTF,” Blunden started his memo, going on to detail flaws in the business case presented by the now disgraced then Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire.

Illustration: Rod Clement

Other points of his note include a reference to the $6.7m cost of the upgrade, for which “the shooter dudes have graciously put up $1.2m”, and a projection that increased tourism would account for 97 per cent of the forecast benefits, which he noted would be “suss”.

Perhaps the biggest indication of Blunden’s droll sense of humour, and a point on which counsel assisting Scott Robinson spent plenty of time, was a suggestion that the new development would be “known as the Maguire International Shooting Centre of Excellence”.

Blunden now works for Lieutenant General John Frewen. Picture: Getty Images.

With humour like that it’s no wonder that Baird wanted to keep the joker former reporter and one-time staffer to Joe Hockey around.

Blunden followed the former premier to HammondCare late last year, before being tapped to lead the vaccine communications and media strategy when Frewen started his Covid-19 task force in mid-June.

That’s also meant a move to the nation’s capital, where former partner Kate Schulze too has recently started a new role with the Minerals Council.

Risky business indeed.

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The Baird necessities

Having taken an oath to God at the front end of his evidence to the Operation Keppel corruption hearing, it was probably no surprise that dedicated Christian Mike Baird would describe his reaction to news that his former treasurer Gladys Berejiklian was in a secret relationship with disgraced former MP Daryl Maguire as “incredulous”.

Doubtless Baird wasn’t the only one unwilling or unable to believe that his leadership successor had been on with Maguire since 2015. Baird only found out – like the rest of Australia – when the bombshell was dropped at ICAC hearings in October last year by Berejiklian that the pair had been a clandestine item right up until last year.

Former Premier of NSW Mike Baird before ICAC on Wednesday.

“Certainly, I think it should have been disclosed,” now aged care executive Baird told the Ruth McColl SC-run commission on Wednesday, adding that it simply would have been “good practice” for Berejiklian to have put her love cards on the table to Baird as premier.

“Had it been known for some time it could have been managed, the conflict of interest,” Baird, who also described Maguire as “aggressive”, went on.

Berejiklian, 51, is now in a new relationship with 52-year-old Arthur Moses SC, who was by her side as her lawyer at last year’s ICAC hearings into her old boyfriend Maguire.

Ahead of her own appearance, Berejiklian now has Brett Walker SC looking after her interests as the Operation Keppel hearings unfold, with Sophie CallanSC, also on her team and on the job as Baird answered questions.

Both are being paid for by the NSW taxpayer.

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Mansion ahoy

Nothing like an eastern suburbs trophy home to get Sydney talking. And they don’t come much more glamorous than the piles situated on Darling Point’s Lindsay Avenue skimming the boundary of the leafy waterfront McKell Park.

If you want the likes of industrialist billionaire Kerry Stokes and his wife Christine as your neighbours, here’s a home you might want to take a crack at. So long as you have a cool $80m to splash on residential real estate, that is.

Keen to be a neighbour to Kerry Stokes? This home could be yours for $80m.

For a few years now, yachtie and former investment bankerMatthew Allen has seemed keen to sell the mansion, in 2018 pulling the process amid development plans by Stokes (eventually withdrawn in that form) that Allen reckoned were going to impact his privacy and views.

Then mid this year, talk emerged again of a sale process, with a marketing program now being relaunched by a new sales agent pitching the home as being worth more than $80m.

But the home is not in Sydney-to-Hobart regular Allen’s name, rather that of Elizabeth Allen, who also cites the home as her address in corporate records.

As for sailor Allen, he now calls a luxury $9m-plus apartment on Potts Point that he bought in 2018 home, not quite the absolute harbourfront he previously enjoyed, but still more than comfortable none the less.

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Spenceley nabs a seat

December is shaping up to be a big month for Vocus founder James Spenceley, just announced as the latest director on NAB’s board.

The 45-year-old entrepreneur turned investor is due to join the bank from December pending regulatory approval, filling a hole left by Geraldine McBride late last year, and adding some much needed Gen X to the board ranks.

James Spenceley has had a busy six months, and its only getting busier. Picture: Julian Andrews.

But the new role, effective December 1, adds to what will be a busy few days for the Cremorne local, with his council of North Sydney also going to the polls that weekend.

Spenceley has for several months now been hitting the hustings in his campaign as an independent candidate in the local elections, selling himself as a candidate to bring the council into the digital age, as helped by his credentials as chairman at Airtasker and Swoop.

No doubt a new four-pillar bank directorship should help build a little trust with the local voters too – and, hey, it may even win over a voter in his new chairman Phil Chronican, who lives within the LGA at his palatial Kurraba Point abode.

While Spenceley’s tech nous was cited as a key feature for his appointment, we wouldn’t put it past the exec to have done a few strategic drive-bys in his distinctive black Ferrari and its 2088 plates to really cement himself in the position.

Spenceley’s Cremorne digs (right) are set for a major upgrade too.

If all goes to plan, there’ll be further toasts of the financial variety too – his investment in Beforepay is set to be tested at an IPO before year’s end, if chairman Brian Hartzer and chief James Twiss can get all their ducks in a row.

To top it all off, he and wife Viktoria have in recent months been given the go-ahead for broadscale renovations at their waterside abode, bought back in 2018 for $12.5m.

After two years of back and forth with the North Sydney Council, the Spenceleys are making progress on their $1.3m home reno, including a complete reconfiguration of the four-storey mansion and all topped off with a new pool, sauna and terrace.

Nigel Blunden

Mike Baird

Kerry Stokes

James Spenceley