Julie Bishop’s shindig hottest ticket in budget town

The host with the most Julie Bishop.

It’s the golden ticket of the budget night in Canberra: an invitation to Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s pre-budget drinks.

“You know, it’s very competitive on budget night,” said Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull as he surveyed the billionaires, bankers, television personalities, cabinet ministers, ambassadors, fashion designers, sporting heavies and military brass squeezed into Bishop’s ministerial room.

Malcolm Turnbull at Julie Bishop’s drinks.

“This is clearly the hot ticket. This is the party to be at,” Turnbull deadpanned.

Sure was.

There was Seven billionaire Kerry Stokes, one of the night’s big winners thanks to Scott Morrison’s $130 million licence fee relief, chatting with Danni Roche, fresh from her failed tilt to chair the Australian Olympic Committee. In this room of well-connected Liberals, Roche was a winner, whatever happened last Saturday.

Nine’s Helen McCabe and former ANZ boss and now PwC adviser Mike Smith were there when word spread about the government’s $6 billion surprise for banks — that’s ANZ’s agile chieftain Shayne Elliott’s problem now.

Mike Smith with Helen McCabe at the pre-budget shindig. Picture: Kym Smith

It made for a mixed budget for Howard minister Warwick Smith, who works for both ANZ and Stokes, to name just two of his hydra heads. A good lesson in hedging from one of Tasmania’s finest.

Virgin Australia boss John Borghetti joked with Nine’s on-air talent Richard Wilkins. Borghetti was clearly having a better day than Qantas rival Alan Joyce, who was so rudely the recipient of a cream pie in the face in Perth earlier in the day. Should have come to Bishop’s.

Bishop’s partner David Panton helped the Foreign Minister work the crowd, which included Wilkins’s former fashion designer partner Collette Dinnigan, as well as Tom Harley (once a Dragoman), the King of the Liberal moderates Michael Photios and Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Kate Carnell.

Virgin CEO John Borghetti and Richard Wilkins at the Bishop drinks. Picture: Kym Smith

Perth property developer Nigel Slattery, clearly a well-mannered sandgroper, made sure Stokes’s glass of red was topped up throughout the soiree.

The foreign policy establishment were well represented, ­including Department of Foreign Affairs boss Frances Adamson (Bishop’s key mandarin), Chinese ambassador Cheng Jingye and Japanese ambassador Sumio Kusaka.

Former head of the Australian Defence Force Angus Houston was packed in, as was chief of the Australian Army Angus Campbell, and cabinet ministers included Attorney-General George Brandis, Minister for Social Services Christian Porter, federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg, Minister for Defence Industry Christopher Pyne and, the man who played matchmaker between Bishop and Panton, Liberal moderate pin-up Bruce Baird, the father of the former NSW premier now chosen one at NAB, Mike Baird.

Bruce Baird. Picture: Kym Smith

Paper chase

Aspiring local media proprietors TPG Capital and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board are harbouring a secret third member of their $2.5bn consortium that is bidding to carve up Fairfax.

It is understood the mysterious third party in the consortium is an offshore entity, but is not a media company. For now the minority investor is seeking to fly under the radar as negotiations unfold between TPG’s local boss, Joel Thickens, and Fairfax chairman Nick Falloon.

The bidding consortium is understood to have established a so-called war room on level 31 of Melbourne’s tower of power at 101 Collins Street to drive the transaction, as the group waits to hear back from Fairfax, which is being advised by Macquarie Capital’s Darren Keogh.

Thickens is being heavily supported in his transaction by his US and Asian counterparts, where there is significant expertise thanks to past deals, including Rentpath in the US and top Southeast Asian property website PropertyGuru.com, based out of Singapore.

In that business TPG is a co-investor with Paul Bassat’s Square Peg Capital, which like TPG also has an invested interested in Uber.

Square Peg’s backers include billionaire James Packer, while former Telstra boss David Thodey is a special adviser to the venture capital group.

Thickens is dealing peer-to-peer with Falloon, but there has been no meeting between the pair since last Friday, when Thickens presented his proposal.

TPG is anticipating a response from its target early next week.

The private equiteers are being advised by Michael Stock, who runs investment banking for Credit Suisse after joining the firm at the end of 2015 from UBS. JPMorgan is a debt provider to the consortium.

TPG continues to have access to a swag of Fairfax stock via facilities established since work on the offer began as early as January. The group is still believed to have its foot on less than 5 per cent.

Gittins absent

But back to the capital.

There was a Ross Gittins-shaped hole in the budget lock-up in Canberra, as The Sydney Morning Herald’s economics doyen went on strike with most of his Fairfax colleagues.

It would have been Gittins’ 43rd budget lock-up. And we understand his collection of budget papers goes back even further — all the way back to 1972, when Billy Snedden was treasurer in William McMahon’s government. No joke.

In a small mercy, we gather one of Gittins’ colleagues picked up a set of Scott Morrison’s latest so the collection, at least, remains unbroken.

The shrunken SMH and The Age ranks was a sad spectacle at what is supposed to be the biggest day of the year for political and economic journalists. Fairfax Media editorial director Sean Aylmer, one of the dozens of Fairfax economics journalists who have learned from Gittins over the years, traded in his executive duties to return to his old trade as a journo for the day.

Aylmer was helping out The Age’s newish editor Alex Lavelle, the SMH’s newish editor Lisa Davies and Mark Hawthorne, who along with Mathew Dunckley and the London-based James Chessell have been filling the book during the week-long strike, with a bit of help from the newswires.

There was no sign of Chris Janz, who in February was appointed managing director of Fairfax’s Australian Metro Publishing. It seems Janz is about as popular as Maserati hoon Greg Hywood in Fairfax-land right now.

Senator’s long path

The budget wasn’t the only show in town in Canberra yesterday. It was also Lucy Gichuhi’s first day as an Australian senator.

There was a beaming entourage of Kenyan-Australians along to watch the swearing-in of the parliament’s first ever person of black African descent.

Some were from Canberra, who know the independently minded Gichuhi from her time as an intern last year in the office of Family First’s Bob Day, the senator she has now replaced. So it turns out she’s not entirely a political novice.

The Kenyan-born Gichuhi has walked an amazing path — some of it literally barefoot — to the red house on Capital Hill.

She studied accounting in Nairobi, worked at Ernst & Young, then in her late thirties came to Australia, picked up a law degree at the University of Adelaide (not to be confused with the University of South Australia) and then with hard work and a not unfavourable tax system, assembled a portfolio of six houses with her husband William, who works at the St George arm of Brian Hartzer’s Westpac.

Surely even Pauline Hanson — not always a champion of Australia’s immigration policy — would agree that’s an impressive story.