Former Rio chairman Jan du Plessis cops a serve

Illustration: Rod Clement.

Let there be no doubt: the Jan du Plessis-era at global miner Rio Tinto is over. Finished. Kaput.

And it would seem there’s not a lot of sentimentality for the London-based former chairman in the new era of chief executive JS Jacques, at least not among the Sydney-loving boss’s inner circle.

His wonderfully free-speaking wife Muriel Demarcus made that clear as she shared her thoughts on du Plessis’s recent comments on the “conundrum” of finding women with sufficient capability and experience to serve as senior executives and as directors on boards.

And Demarcus’s view of the now chairman of British telco BT du Plessis’ “conundrum”?

“Same old pitiful and patronising excuses. Old world, old prejudices, old boys club,” Demarcus yesterday tweeted from the New World (aka Sydney) before she set off to the Royal Rehab gala.

Former Rio Tinto chairman Jan du Plessis

Even by the Rio first couple’s impressive standards, that was a pretty frank assessment.

It comes after scuttlebutt in blue-chip mining circles that by March, when du Plessis was replaced by Simon Thompson, CEO Jacques thought his outgoing chairman was a peanut. Or as the French say, une cacahuète.

Muriel Demarcus

Du Plessis faced the female conundrum at Rio, too. One of his final consequential decisions as chair was to invite three more men onto the Rio board: Simon Henry (the former Shell finance director), Sam Laidlaw (the former head of British gas and power company ­Centrica) and David Constable (former head of South African energy and chemical company Sasol).

Jacques himself is no stranger to direct expression.

As he told staff at a now famous Brisbane town hall just before his CEO elevation, “If someone is stuck in the past, they can either fit in or f--- off.”

All clear?

Labor’s boffins

Is there a doctor in the house?

Seems it won’t be long until opposition leader Bill Shorten and his Canberra Labor colleagues will be able to call on the services of Victorian upper house member Daniel Mulino.

The state pollie looks to be off to the nation’s capital contesting what is expected to be the new safe Labor federal seat of Fraser in Melbourne’s northeast at the next election.

Mulino is Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ Parliamentary Treasury Secretary and was a former adviser to Shorten when he was a minister in the Julia Gillard government.

Mulino will come to Canberra highly credentialed, with a PhD in economics from Ivy League Yale University.

That rivals his Labor colleague and shadow assistant treasurer Andrew Leigh, who is a former economic professor at ANU and who also has a PhD in public policy from the similarly leafy Harvard.

And already burgeoning Chinese telco Huawei, which is lobbying hard to be allowed to get a gig in the rollout of Australia’s next generation mobile phone network, has extended its tentacles to
the likely newest boy on the block.

In 2016 the controversial telco took Mulino to Shanghai and Beijing on an all expenses-paid parliamentary junket.

Expect some changes from Mulino before he cranks up his campaigning, with the doctor currently living about a 25 minute drive in Melbourne traffic from Fraser’s boundary in a home that he bought about eight years ago in Northcote (near his still renovating former Labor colleague David Feeney) for $740,000.

Mulino’s humble brick abode is mortgaged to Bankwest, controlled by Matt Comyn’s CommBank.

FSC’s flops

The battered membership of Sally Loane’s Financial Services Council gather today in Melbourne for their two-day annual summit.

Held two weeks out from the next round of Kenneth Hayne’s royal commission and three months after their wealth pummelling, it is expected to be funereal.

It hasn’t been lost on the for-profit sector that the line-up for the superannuation round does not look flattering for them.

The FSC’s great nemesis, the industry super funds, will have three of their best performers attending.

Financial Services Council chief Sally Loane

Unlike much of the retail sector, AustralianSuper’s Ian Silk, Hostplus’s David Elia and Cbus’s David Atkin all have good stories to tell about their performance.

Meanwhile, the industry super funds “long tail” — which as the Productivity Commission’s Karen Chester established exists alongside the duds in the retail industry — have a leave pass. Also excused, by some miracle, is Brian Hartzer’s Westpac.

That’s left its for-profit peers CBA, AMP, ANZ, IOOF, Suncorp and Mercer feeling pretty exposed.

For all the dreams of the ideological foes of the industry super industry, this could be another FSC nightmare.

Barnaby bares all

So it’s official.

Former deputy prime minister turned Nationals backbencher Barnaby Joyce has finally put his unprecedented interview deal with billionaire Kerry Stokes’ Seven Network on the public record.

The train-crash interview was aired way back on June 3, with Joyce only just revealing officially to the Parliament that the deal was done with he and his partner Vikki Campion, with the monies to be held in trust for their newborn son Sebastian. An initial payment for the interview was made to Campion, Joyce was at pains to reveal.

He’s not letting it all hang out though, with Joyce silent on the amount the couple were paid — believed to be $150,000 — to sit down with Seven’s Alex Cullen.

Joyce’s book Weatherboard and Iron — Politics, The Bush and Me is set for release on August 7, with booksellers already taking pre-orders for what is being billed as the “deeply personal” memoir.

What more could we possibly bear to hear?