Gladys Berejiklian is due for an imminent return to the headlines courtesy of corruption findings about to be handed down about some questionable conduct observed during her time as NSW premier, and while she was a minister in previous Coalition governments.
The nub of that conduct concerned Berejiklian’s intimate personal relationship with rogue MP Daryl ‘‘Hokis’’ Maguire, a revelation that blew up so fast on Macquarie Street that it threatened to turn them both into wall shadows. Then again, it also proved that love really can be found in such a hopeless place.
Now an Optus executive, Berejiklian no longer has access to battle-hardened government minders capable of cutting a path through a torrent of unwelcome publicity.
Unless she opts for external advice, what’s available to her is Optus’ clumsy communications team. We all remember their handling of the telco’s cyber attacks last year, and our thoughts and prayers to Glad if she intends to rely on them.
Berejiklian’s former media director Sean Berry – often credited with shrewdly reframing the Maguire scandal into that of a lonely premier who succumbed to the charms of a scoundrel – would come in handy right about now. Except Margin Call understands Berry is just a bit busy at the moment.
As of last week he’s taken a job advising PwC’s acting CEO Kristin Stubbins in a role that apparently runs broader than just crisis comms and breathing exercises for the rookie boss. Unclear, too, whether it’s a permanent role, and Berry was unavailable to clarify.
His path to PwC is a curious one.
It starts with Berejiklian’s exit from politics in October 2021, after which he picked up a job with the state’s loveable former treasurer and human labrador Matt Kean, who employed Berry as a head of strategy, then as a chief of staff.
That was to replace Kean’s former chief, Ben Coles – confidant, drinking buddy – who left a year out from the election to take an ESG gig with investment bank Jarden.
Kean himself used to work as a PwC accountant prior to running for parliament. He’s even credited Stubbins with being a mentor and singled her out in his 2011 maiden speech, lavishing her with a “special thank you” for her “loyalty and friendship”.
That loyalty seems to have been partly repaid in 2021 when, as the then treasurer and environment minister, Kean appointed Stubbins to the board of Taronga Zoo alongside Harris Farm chair Catherine Harris, Fortescue director Penny Bingham Hall and Gretel Packer, who stepped off last year.
Stubbins, now the board’s deputy chair, has a term that expires in mid-2024. No shade on her appointment but it’s reasonably cushy, paying about $125,000 – not including honoraria – and it only meets six times per year. Stubbins, to be fair, has turned up to all six meetings; Harris showed up to one.
Evidently Kean and Stubbins are still in touch. So, was it time for the PwC boss to return the favour and help place one of Kean’s high-ranking staff post-election? Kean rubbished the suggestion. “Sean Berry is one of the best strategic minds going around. He certainly does not need my help to get a job.”
Berry, of course, is a keeper of Treasury secrets from his time working in government. PwC, as we all know, is a prolific leaker of those secrets. The two now in bed together? Maybe it’s no surprise at all.
Adler’s adventures
All eyes on Vaucluse this weekend for what’s expected to be a lavish engagement party at the home of Lyndi and Rodney Adler, formerly the CEO of FAI Insurance until he was thrown in the clink during the early noughts.
Adler’s retelling of prison life has always been readable: speaking into a toilet bowl so he could communicate with an inmate in a neighbouring cell; sidling up to a Tongan gent to find out why the guys were dispensing so many condoms each day. “It’s not for sex,” the prisoner assured Adler, as he told The Australian during a 2015 interview.
“We all scoop the jelly out and use it as hair gel.”
Margin Call understands about 150 people are invited to the “celebration of love” between Adler’s daughter, Natalie, and her fiance, a gentleman a few years her senior with a brood from a previous relationship.
We hear the wedding arrangements are already advanced despite the proposal only taking place a few weeks ago, and we’re eager to note who might turn up, of course, Rodney being Rodney and Lyndi having previously chaired the Sydney Children’s Hospital Foundation.
The house itself isn’t the Olola Ave pile they sold in 2020 to stockbroker Angus Aitken. The Adler’s wanted $16m and that’s pretty close to what they received, enough loot to buy in the same suburb for just shy of $9.5m. As for the old digs, they’re apparently valued at well north of $16m these days after Aitken’s never-ending tinkering to the place (much to the chagrin of his neighbour, former ACCC chair Rod Sims).
Adler didn’t respond to requests for contact, but we note that he’s still running Adler Corp, a business offering a buffet-range of services: corporate advice, venture capital, short-term financing, crisis management.
Reputational repair still looks to be the order of the day, however, and his website lists a half-dozen examples of the businessman making the news. Some of these are dead links. The others took Margin Call to the same obscure business publication headquartered on the Gold Coast.
Medical skirmish gets pulses racing
Most lawyers will tell you their work doesn’t save lives, but a case starting on Monday could prove the exception.
‘The scapegoating of business has to stop’: literal alarm at corporate Oscars
Seats were in short supply at business’s equivalent of the Oscars, but the speeches didn’t miss and at least one big name couldn’t wait to hot-foot it out of there before the dessert plates were even cleared.