We always figured Greg Combet to be a Labor man, given his time as a cabinet minister in the Gillard and Rudd Labor governments, and his 20 years of loyal service with the trade union movement.
Well, guess again.
Prominently displayed out the front of the Sydney home that Combet shares with his partner Juanita Phillips, formerly an ABC presenter, are numerous posters flagging support for a political candidate in the upcoming election, which is yet to be called.
Except it’s not the ALP candidate, Jeffrey Quinn, as anyone with the faintest knowledge of political fealty would have expected, but actually – yes, seriously – teal MP Sophie Scamps! Apparently Combet’s dyed-in-the-wool loyalties to the ALP, which make this very awkward, had very little bearing on the decision, or so Phillips told us when we approached with questions.
She said it was her call to put up the three posters on the side of their house in the northern beaches seat of Mackellar, which Scamps won at the 2022 election from former Liberal MP Jason Falinski, now a partner at economics consultancy Ergo Videatur.
“Obviously Greg is a Labor man and most of the time our values are closely aligned,” Phillips said. “However, in this case, and this particular electorate, I believe that Sophie is the best person to represent our community. She’s been a terrific MP. Greg is fine with the fence display and there wasn’t too much discussion about it – he respects my views and he knows I would just go ahead and do it anyway!”
To be clear, we’re not all that sure what Phillips sees in Scamps, who for the past three years has basically voted with the Greens on almost everything, like the rest of the teals. Scamps has spent her years in parliament complaining about a housing affordability crisis while having entered the house with a portfolio of her own lucrative real estate assets. And as far as we can tell her only real political achievement is having scored an invitation to drinks at The Lodge last month. A second achievement would be holding the PM over a barrel should the election return a minority government.
We did ask Combet for his opinion on this unwitting support for Scamps but he’s overseas so he can’t defend himself, and mainly we were wondering if such strident political telegraphing might jar with his role as chair of the nation’s Future Fund.
Phillips reiterated that it was her decision to support Scamps, not Combet’s. “Greg and I are both independent people with our own views,” she said. Could have been worse, right? Could have been corflutes for Clive Palmer’s Trumpets for Patriots.
And what about the poor ALP candidate? No love for him?
Phillips said: “One of the good things about not working for the ABC any more is that I don’t have to answer to anyone about my perceived political views. The freedom to stick a poster on my fence is quite exhilarating.”
Simon says
Meanwhile, ABC viewers would have been riveted to their television screens on Wednesday for a live broadcast of teal puppetmaster Simon Holmes a Court and his address to the National Press Club.
There was Simon again, declaring with absolute conviction that Climate 200 doesn’t “run campaigns” or “target seats”, which can’t be true because Simon has said the exact opposite in on-record interviews.
Here he is speaking on a 2022 podcast about Facebook marketing deployed during the election: “We worked with some experts on how to target that content, (to) make sure it went not only to the target seats, but to persuadable people in the targeted seats using all the best and worst of what Facebook gives you in that tooling.”
If he had said the word “target” one more time the Candyman would have appeared. Yes, he doesn’t mind a bit of manipulation, this lord and saviour who insists he’s cleaning up politics.
Clive Palmer is scheduled to speak on Thursday at the National Press Club, the billionaire lately promising to outspend the $100m that he blew on the 2022 election. Think you’ve lost money on the markets this week? Just remember that Palmer’s splurge ended up buying him one lousy seat in the Senate, and it was gifted to a gormless real estate agent named Ralph Babet.
Palmer’s now regularly emblazoning much political bumf on the front pages of newspapers around the country, but none of it’s fired up readers like what he did on Wednesday, in which his advertisement said: “There are only two genders – male and female.”
Uproar ensued at some of the mastheads, including the Newcastle Herald, published by Australian Community Media, which took Palmer’s money on Tuesday and then pulled the ad and wrote up a grovelling apology on Wednesday. No mention, however, of whether it’ll be giving Palmer back his dough.
But is all that fuss why the ABC – under its newly appointed managing director, Hugh Marks, who started work this week – won’t be live broadcasting Palmer at the press club on Thursday just as it did for Holmes a Court on Wednesday?
No comment from the NPC, although we heard its leadership was puzzled by the ABC’s call. Our chums at Sky News have apparently stepped in to do the job instead. Is it that the ABC just can’t bring itself to give Clive any more oxygen?
After all, it’s done this once before, during the 2022 election; it broadcast a re-run of Hard Quiz instead of taking Palmer’s speech at the press club on that occasion.
An ABC spokeswoman told us that its agreement with the NPC is only to broadcast Wednesday events. “We’ll be covering the Clive Palmer address as a news event on its merits.”
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