Heads roll after census debacle

Illustration: Rod Clement.

Less than six weeks after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called for it, heads are rolling over the 2016 census debacle.

Our mail from managing director Kerry Purcell’s IBM Australia is that the guillotine has fallen with a fury reminiscent of Maximilien Robespierre’s French Republic.

Scott Morrison and Malcolm Turnbull, after the census debacle.

The departed include a head of global technology services and project director. Both are understood to have been involved in the delivery — or lack of delivery — of the $9.6 million census IT gig that IBM’s Australian arm won back in 2014.

We won’t name the departed because it looks to us like they are being punished for faults more justly visited on their superiors at the American-founded multinational. IBM wouldn’t comment on the departures.

Malcolm Turnbull's famous tweet on Census night. Within an hour the Census website had crashed due to an overseas DOS attack.

Turnbull was understandably furious about the census cock-up, which occurred on August 9 only five weeks after his unhappy election night.

At a press conference held while the census website was still down — more than 36 hours after the glitch — Turnbull vented on the responsible federal bureaucracy, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which (for now) is headed by David Kalisch, along with Purcell’s IBM.

The Prime Minister announced that a review led by his cybersecurity adviser Alastair MacGibbon would determine “which heads will roll where and when”.

That review is still under way. When it is released, pity Kalisch, who has a total salary of $705,030.

It’s not clear if more blood will be spilt over at IBM. That could depend on whether the federal government follows the lead of Campbell Newman, who in 2013 banned IBM from bidding for all Queensland government contracts, following its inglorious role in a $1.25 billion health department payroll fiasco.

Going, going, gong

Not to besmirch IBM’s good name Down Under — 2016 hasn’t been all bad for them.

IBM Australia board member Kaaren Koomen.

This Australia Day past, IBM Australia board member and head of government and regulatory affairs Kaaren Koomen was made a Member of the Order of Australia.

That award to Koomen — given less than seven months before the census disaster — was for “significant service to the information technology and communications sector, to business through executive roles, and to education”.

Don’t expect Angus Houston’s Council for the Order of Australia to induct any of her fellow IBM staff this coming January 26.

Trophy for toys

Scott Perrin just failed to break the Gold Coast property record after the $25m deal that was first revealed in this column last Friday passed its cooling-off period.

Scott Perrin’s Gold Coast house, “Tidemark”.

So who bought “Tidemark”, Perrin’s enormous six-bedroom, six-bathroom, 11-carpark luxury property, which sits right at the front of Mermaid Beach?

Billionaire Manny Stul certainly has the cash to afford a new trophy pad. Picture: Julie Kiriacoudis.

Last week we flagged that the buyer was a wealthy Melbourne-based businessman.

Our latest mail is that the new owner of “Tidemark” is a Victorian billionaire. We gather he’s in the toys business.

That sounds a lot like Manny Stul, the chairman of toy manufacturer Moose Enterprises, which is based in southeast Melbourne. Not that the agent would say a word about the buyer.

Stul, 67, certainly has the cash to afford it. Thanks to the global craze for Shopkins — small plastic figurines made by Moose — his fortune has swelled to $1.24bn this year.

The Gold Coast trophy pad would be just the thing to mark his tremendous recent success.

Meanwhile, the $25m sale is undoubtedly good news for Perrin, a former Chevron Island lawyer who was instrumental in the public float of surfwear company Billabong.

Last month, Perrin abruptly became the former head of Racing.com — the joint venture between Kerry Stokes’s Seven West Media and Racing Victoria.

The sale of “Tidemark” came nine years after Perrin is believed to have declined a $52m offer for the place — just before the Gold Coast property market was monstered in the GFC.

That would have set the Gold Coast record. For now, even after the “Tidemark” sale, that remains with another Mermaid Beach property that sold for $27m in April 2008.

All aboard Estia

Last week as they announced the swift departure of its managing director Paul Gregersen, listed aged-care operator Estia announced that it was after new board members.

Departing Finance Department secretary Jane Halton.

Have a read of the profiles of the current mob, and you can see why.

For a company that has been up-ended by changes to government funding announced in Scott Morrison’s last budget, they don’t appear to be overflowing with expertise in that area.

Estia chair Pat Grier — by all accounts a decent fellow, if not that long from an aged-care facility himself — could use some help.

Could it be a job for departing Finance Department secretary Jane Halton, who as first flagged in this column last week is leaving the Australian public service? Halton was the nation’s chief health bureaucrat for 12 years, including a decade running aged care.

If only Estia could convince her to take it, once she sets off for her life as an independent director on October 14.

A board spot on a big four bank, for example, would be a much safer way to start a new career.

The stars align

Glenn “Son of Ken” Rosewall has copped a lot of criticism for incorporating the services of energy healer and astrologist Nevine Rottinger at his broker BBY in the six years before it collapsed.

A 1985 Time magazine cover on the role of astrology in Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

Before “Son of Ken” gives evidence in the NSW Supreme Court, after his father, tennis legend Ken Rosewall (expected to speak in court this morning), it’s worth pointing out that the former BBY executive chairman joins a noble line of those who have sought astrological advice.

The movement of celestial objects famously played a role in Ronald Reagan’s presidency. The 40th president’s wife Nancyconsulted an astrologist to map out The Gipper’s days in the Oval Office.

One of America’s great bankers John Pierpont Morgan was known to incorporate the movements of the stars with his business decisions, at least in his latter years.

It’s likely apocryphal, but JP Morgan has been attributed as saying: “Millionaires don’t use astrologers, but billionaires do.”

Still more devoted was American investor WD Gann, whose interwar investment philosophy married geometry to astrology. Pick up a copy of his classic The Basis of My Forecasting Method (1935) to test it out.

And we have it on good authority that there are bigger fish than the “Son of Ken” in the Australian financial market who have dabbled in astrology’s financial powers — not that they are keen to promote the fact.