Holes dug in Peter Dutton’s no-show; Radio silence on airport boss

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, who was a no-show at an annual mining dinner at Parliament House. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

Peter Dutton was a mysterious no-show at Monday night’s ­annual mining dinner at Parliament House, an event thrown by the Minerals Council and well-attended by CEOs in the resources sector.

Oddly, the Opposition Leader had been down to attend, with advancers and security officers completing a walk-through of the venue. In the end, his seat was left empty.

Dutton’s excuse? It was said that he was urgently required at a meeting of the party’s shadow expenditure review committee, which is a bizarre excuse. You would sooner wish to be supine in a dentist’s chair, or standing at a bus stop in the rain.

The only other problem with this explanation is that two shadow ERC members – Nationals leader David Littleproud and deputy opposition leader Sussan Ley – both not only managed to turn up to the dinner, but to stay until its conclusion.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Tania Constable at the Australian Minerals Industry dinner. Picture: Jane Dempster

You might call it a snub or a missed opportunity (for Dutton) considering Anthony Albanese and his government are so poorly regarded within the mining sector. Or so one surmises from the openly hostile reception the Prime Minister and members of his cabinet received from Tania Constable at the podium, the Minerals Council CEO tossing out claims of government “royalty raids”, “onerous and arbitrary” environmental approvals, “restrictive policy interventions” and “reckless” industrial relations reforms.

Dutton’s office did say the reasons for his absence were conveyed to the organisers. And it turns out ERC did run over time, although the Opposition Leader was able to make it to a farmers rally on the lawn of parliament the next morning.

In flight mode

Radio silence from the Australian Airports Association after we revealed on Tuesday that a board director, Matt Cocker, had been put under investigation over an allegedly inappropriate relationship with a female employee.

The AAA confirmed on Monday that external investigators were examining a complaint about Cocker, the chief operating officer of Hobart Airport. But by Tuesday the board had reverted to flight mode, near-total shutdown. It practically curled itself into the foetal position when asked if Cocker had stood aside pending inquiries. These directors, we remind you, are governance leaders in their respective organisations of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane airports. The chair is Kym Meys, an EGM at Adelaide Airport.

Cocker told Margin Call: “I pride myself on acting with the highest integrity, and a suggestion otherwise is categorically incorrect.”

Meanwhile, interim CEO Greg Fordham is apparently on the way out, too, his replacement more than likely to be announced as former Jetstar spinner Simon Westaway.

Given the dysfunction, and the depths of mistrust between board members over the Cocker matter, Westaway might as well bring a mop and bucket along with him for his first day. Plenty of cleaning up to do.

Henry an easy rider

Fresh from being granted board approval to date Canadian National Railway CEO Tracy Robinson, we hear BHP’s CEO, Mike Henry, has taken up a new hobby, one that’s popular among men in the later stages of their careers. The 58-year-old has bought himself a motorbike.

BHP CEO Mike Henry.

Amid a wardrobe full of made-to-measure suits is now a set of riding leathers to go with a Triumph in the garage, making Henry the latest in a string of Australian executives at BHP to try out a two-wheel thrill.

Former CEO Marius Kloppers was known to ride, as were a few of his old executives, namely Marcus Randolph, Jimmy Wilson and Dean Dalla Vale.

And we presume Henry was cajoled into the purchase by a couple of his own inner-circle pals, like former exploration boss Laura Tyler, climate and sustainability lead Fiona Wild and corporate affairs boss James Agar.

Familiar advice

“Independent financial advice” is what was promised by the stockbrokers at Unified Capital Partners, a firm founded last year by Mark Gray and Tony “Burglar” Davis, a nickname that doesn’t serve him well in this instance (although neither he nor Gray were personally involved in the tale that follows). Sadly, there’s nothing independent or more punishing to a firm’s credibility than outright plagiarism.

UCP is accused of ripping off the work of its competitors at Shaw and Partners, where Gray and Davis used to work. And by ripping off we don’t mean the petty theft of a phrase, or the lifting of a couple of lines, but actual highway robbery – entire tracts were purloined from a client note that had been disseminated by Shaw’s Andrew Hines on August 19.

Hines’s analysis had reeled off a slew of insights into why iron ore had fallen below $US100 per tonne. It delved into the history of the market, the price rally in 2010-2011, the post-GFC Chinese stimulus drop-off, and the rally post-2015.

And these remarks were all apparently so sharp that they were copied word for word by UCP and replicated under its own name on Monday, with no attribution.

Surely not what clients had in mind from UCP, allegedly a “bespoke provider” of advice and insight. No comment from Shaw and no explanation of the larceny from UCP’s people, either.

Hockey’s advance

Bad timing for Joe Hockey ahead of his appearance at the Land Forces military expo on Wednesday, where demonstrators by their thousands have made a habit of crowding the entrances, blocking traffic and vandalising the CBD. They call this “resistance”.

Joe Hockey. Picture: Getty Images

With that in mind, the co-founder of Bondi Partners will be crashing through the “ring of steel” erected by police to cast his gaze over an exhibition from manufacturing firm SPEE3D, whose metal printers are in high rotation on the front lines of Ukraine.

Hockey has taken a liking to the company. His security fund, 1941 (jointly owned with Ashok Jacob’s Ellerston Capital), has just plunged north of $7m into the metal-printing firm, which already services the US Department of Defence but also those of Britain, Australia and Japan.