It’s not you it’s us: Rice exits Nine

Illustration: Jon Kudelka.

Sometimes with these things, it’s best to translate goings on at Nine into the language of Eddie McGuire, the TV company’s former chief executive.

So, using Eddie-speak, was 60 Minutes producer Stephen Rice “boned” (a la Jessica Rowe)?

Or was Rice forced to “eat a shit sandwich” (a la Mark Llewellyn)?

Or has Rice been put into a “Millionaire Hot Seat”?

That sum is a bit of a stretch. But we would be stunned if Rice — a 30-year veteran at the network who turns 60 next year — is leaving without considerably more than the $115,000 the network paid Adam Whittington for Nine’s ham-fisted attempt to get into the international kidnapping business.

The light-on-details review that was put out yesterday on behalf of newbie Nine chief executive Hugh Marks made no case for Rice taking the hit.

Indeed its authors — former Nine news execs Gerald Stone and David Hurley, and in-house lawyer Rachel Launders — wrote that no one should be “singled out” for dismissal. Which would seem to give Rice a handy bit of ammunition for an unfair dismissal case — if that is what happened.

On a close read, Nine’s statement, which accompanied the review, did not say Rice was fired, only that he was “leaving the company effective immediately”. Nine chose not to clarify that point when asked.

We suspect the arrangement was less a boning, more a conscious uncoupling.

And we suspect Rice is leaving Nine’s Willoughby bunker — a little over a month after the spectacular inter-juristical cock-up — with hefty loot. Television, there’s no business like it.

Digital goes gardening

Digital might be the way forward at Andy Penn’s Telstra, but not if you are Gerd Schenkel.

Details were sketchy, but we got late mail yesterday that Penn’s head of Telstra Digital was out the door to “pursue other opportunities”, after five years in the role.

Schenkel is a big believer in his own world view. He’d created his own website, gerdgschenkel.com, to promote his credentials, talents, experience and thoughts and has his own blog to share his observations on the digital universe.

After myriad calls to Penn’s legions of communications specialists, we finally confirmed that Schenkel had indeed left the group, but was on “gardening leave”.

Also out the door was the telco’s chief technology officer Vish Nandlall amid claims he embellished his CV.

Even less clear are the reasons behind the departure of Schenkel — who was close to Penn’s predecessor David Thodey.

“Gerd is assisting us with the transition,” a spokesman said.

If only gerdgschenkel.com had a live webcam, perhaps his recent office interactions would flesh out the reason for his departure.

Keeping the meerkat

Staying with digital departures: online insurance comparison business Compare the Market is best known for an ad starring a meerkat in a burgundy velvet dressing gown.

Perhaps the next best known thing about Compare the Market is that since 2015 it has been run by Matt McCann. He’s the guy who ran rival insurance comparison business iSelect until late 2013, when he resigned after a dramatic falling out with his board — and only four months after it listed on the ASX.

And it looks like something similar has happened at his new shop, which last year partnered with health insurer Bupa.

We can reveal that McCann has permanently left Compare the Market’s Melbourne office.

Fellow iSelect refugee Jo Thomas has also left Compare the Market at which — until recent days — she was the chief operating officer.

Margin Call understands the velvet-garbed meerkat remains with the company.

The end of Frase

Secretary John Fraser’s Treasury department, one of the nation’s better hive minds, is making the most of the caretaker period.

There has been the funfest that is PEFO (the pre-election economic and fiscal outlook) and a party to celebrate the opening of the department’s Melbourne office, which is almost as popular internally — and, to be fair, externally — as their newish accommodation in Sydney.

But most of all, they are making the most of their time with the travelling Fraser — who is something like the department’s Prodigal Son after he left to make squillions in London at investment bank UBS (the proof is in his expansive international property portfolio), before returning in 2015 at Tony Abbott’s request to run the joint.

Fraser will stand down as Treasury secretary after the July 2 election, as reported in this paper this week. The straight shooter will be missed — although, perhaps not by the gender police.

Calling all tsars

So who will next rule Treasury?

The clever man Fraser replaced, Martin Parkinson, now runs Malcolm Turnbull’s public service.

Parky was a mentor figure to Blair Comley. They worked closely together on the development of carbon pricing policy, and — for their good work — were knifed by Abbott in 2013.

Comley then rose — like a meritocratic phoenix — to run Mike Baird’s NSW public service in late 2014.

Many in Canberra think Parky was grooming Comley to be his successor. In purely dramatic terms, Comley would be an excellent choice — but could he bare to disappoint Baird?

Also in the mix is David Gruen, a long-time Treasury employee, now at Parky’s Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, where he is the economic deputy secretary.

But wise heads in the Commonwealth Club tip Gordon de Brouwer, the secretary of the Environment Department.

He’s the cunning fellow who helped Greg Hunt smuggle a “secret” emissions trading scheme into Abbott’s direct action policy. He was mooted to replace Parky back in 2013. Three years on, this could be the former ANU economics professor’s moment.

All power to Sims

More proof that it’s good to be in private equity — at least if you founded one of the country’s most successful firms, as Tim Sims did 19 years ago with Paul McCullagh, Simon Pillar and Rickard Gardell.

We hear that Sims recently hosted a dinner for visiting British historian Niall Ferguson (who you can read in today’s Inquirer on P22).

“I can neither confirm nor deny,” Sims told us when asked about the intimate but high powered dinner.

We’re much less discreet. Here are some highlights from the guest list: RBA governor Glenn Stevens, NSW Premier Mike Baird, his Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione, former deputy prime minister John Anderson, former prime minister John Howard and — in a rare appearance in the same room with JWH — former treasurer Peter Costello, who, to finish the column where we began, is now the chairman of Nine, of recent kidnapping fame.