John Griffin to join Michael Kroger in Liberal campaign

Cartoon: Jon Kudelka

Starting next week, Jeff Kennett’s former chief of staff John Griffin will help to “co-ordinate activities” at the Liberals’ campaign organisation in Victoria.

Lieutenant Griffin — a managing director at conservative lobbying outfit Barton Deakin — will be based in the Liberals’ Victorian campaign in 104 Exhibition street.

Griffin will help to make sure the Victorian operation stays on track with Canberra HQ.

Some — including this column — interpreted Griffin’s imminent arrival as something of a loss of face for Victorian Liberal president Michael Kroger.

Excitable as we are, we even wrote that Kroger had been “usurped”.

Kroger, a divisive figure in the Party’s southern division, strongly disagreed.

“The article in The Weekend Australian suggesting that John Griffin is overseeing the Federal Election campaign in Victoria is completely false,” he wrote to all Victorian division members.

Kroger wrote that he had asked Griffin months ago to be involved.

There was talk during week one of the campaign of friction between the Victorian division and Federal director Tony Nutt’s Canberra HQ. It’s certainly a dynamic to watch over the next seven weeks.

Kroger — who has a uniquely high media profile for a party official — used the first days of the campaign to loudly cham­pion his strategy to preference Green candidates over Labor in certain Victorian seats.

The displeasure in Nutt’s Canberra HQ at the associated publicity — which undermined the Coalition’s national scare campaign about a Labor-Greens government — was promptly communicated.

Emails were sent. Calls were made. Blue Sharpies may have been snapped.

To be fair, Kroger’s plan is not entirely without its supporters.

Sky News political commentator Michael Kroger, for example, has described the Victorian Liberal president’s strategy a masterstroke.

Barmy army

They have been dubbed the Liberals’ Dad’s Army: the greying flock of political staffers that federal Liberal director Tony Nutt has recruited to run the eight-week long federal election campaign.

Ambition being what it is, some of the party’s younger turks have criticised the ageing warriors for a lack of contemporary campaign skills. They don’t get social media, they’re more stone tablet than iPad, that sort of thing.

A week in, it’s too early to fairly test that criticism. It will all depend on how they fare against the army overseen by Labor national secretary George Wright onJuly 2.

The previously mentioned John Griffin is actually one of the younger members of Nutt’s army. But he’s an old school political operative, perhaps best known in Liberal staffing circles for his great love of a “one pager” — summary notes of this issue or that.

Also shuffling around are fellow old hands Darcy Tronson (we think he was an adviser for Stanley Bruce) and Vincent Woolcock, who was once — if we remember correctly — Alfred Deakin’s press secretary.

But top of the pile is Nutt, who we understand has issued orders to Liberal state directors that all communications — every release, every pamphlet, every poster — is to go through Canberra HQ for the blue Sharpie treatment.

No wonder we are already hearing complaints about slow turnaround times. Sounds like deja vu all over again.

Liberals at lunch

A week after his debut Logies night as Nine chairman, Peter Costello was back in Crown Melbourne’s Palladium room on Friday morning.

Thankfully, there was no sign of street-fighting method actor Malcolm Kennard.

Rather, there was a thousand paid-up corporate types (most of whom shelled out around $150 a head) along for one of the Liberal Party’s biggest fundraising events, the Higgins post-budget breakfast. It raised in the ballpark of $100,000.

The event was overseen by the Costello staffer who replaced the former Treasurer in the blue ribbon seat of Higgins, Assistant Treasurer Kelly O’Dwyer (dubbed “Missy Higgins” by Sky News personality Peta Credlin).

Treasurer Scott Morrison and former RBA board member Warwick McKibbin were the breakfast’s other guests of honour.

Also in the house were Michael Kroger and Victorian Liberal state director Simon Frost (an hour or so before Nutt launched his coup d’etat mentioned above), legendary trade minister Andrew Robb, Fairfax columnist Peter Reith, the almost member for Goldstein Tim Wilson and the Senator for Boatshoes James Patterson. And, happily, we can report that not a single attendee was punched in the face — never a sure thing.

Coming clean

Greg Medcraft’s ASIC announced on Friday that Waratah Resources CEO Ben Kirkpatrick has pleaded guilty to a breach of continuous disclosure obligations. There goes the weekend.

Kirkpatrick got into trouble over an Waratah Resources announcement made in 2013 — when he was its executive chairman — that claimed the company had a $100 million trade finance facility with the Bank of China. It didn’t.

It’s now over to the courts to determine a sentence for the former director at UBS and senior client adviser at Macquarie Bank. The penalty could be a fine of up to $34,000 and five years in jail.

Murdoch’s arrival

Now some good news to finish.

While Rupert Murdoch will not make it to Australia for the federal election, we understand he will be here for the year’s premier event Down Under.

The boss will attend the 2016 News Awards in Sydney in August. And we understand the News Corp executive chairman’s wife Jerry Hall will accompany him on the trip.

As to whether the News Corp board repeats last year’s visit, that’s not clear. Also unclear is whether they will once again host the lunch of the year at Michael McMahon’s Sydney Harbour institution Catalina.

Needless to say, we have already started polishing our shoes and working on our small talk.