There are those in the business community, chief executives, directors and captains of industry that keep well clear of spouting their own political views in this age of the “cancel culture” and the trolling on social media platforms like Twitter.
Best to keep these views, many of them politely classified as “right of centre”, behind closed doors at the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge or the Melbourne Club — although both these days have likely been infiltrated by the long march of the Left through institutions. You never know who might be hiding behind a copy of Quadrant in the billiard room.
Sam Kennard is not one of those types to keep quiet about his views. The chief executive of one of the largest storage facilities in Australia, Kennards Self Storage, turned to Twitter to recount a recent experience when he tried to hire a new relief manager in Melbourne.
He revealed to his followers that Kennards had placed a job advert and only attracted 17 applications when normally this job would get up to 100 applications. Worse still, when those 17 applicants were contacted 14 of them didn’t call back.
“Being paid to sit at home must be pretty appealing,” he tweeted. Cue the gasp.
This, perhaps inelegant, observation at the labour market distortion caused by JobKeeper and other wage subsidies, making it easier to sit at home and watch Netflix rather than actually get a job, was too much for the delicate types on Twitter and an avalanche of trolling began.
There were memes, pictures, obscene cartoons, accusations and much more, as Kennard was shouted down for being deplorable. It probably didn’t help things, or rather added fuel to the fire, that Kennard is on the board of the Centre for Independent Studies alongside capitalists and free marketeers (boo, hiss!) like Alison Watkins, Nicholas Moore, Michael Chaney, Peter Farrell and Simon Mordant.
“Didn’t expect this to be so triggering,” Kennard replied, but this was knocked over in the rush as the trolls let rip. “Carry On”, being his final message to the trolls.
For the record, when contacted by Margin Call, the Kennards CEO confirmed the position paid above award wages. And it has been filled.
But it does raise a real issue, and a warning. While many might prefer to sit at home and get paid JobKeeper or JobSeeker when the wage subsidies run out — which they will — and you need to get an actual job, will all the life rafts be taken and too late to escape the wave of unemployment?
Where’s Wally?
First it was Michael Johnston, then Guy Jalland, and James Packer and then Ben Brazil. And on Friday so came Helen Coonan’s turn to answer the question that bizarrely keeps coming up at Patrica Bergin’s Crown inquisition: When did you last speak to Robert Rankin?
While some of the other answers given — especially Packer’s — were more colourful, Coonan’s was strictly matter of fact.
“Not since 2017,” she replied, when the former Crown executive chairman quietly slipped off the casino company’s board after being dumped from the chairmanship by Packer in January that year.
Packer threw him under the bus on several occasions in his evidence to the hearing last week.
Margin Call has been asking a simple but important question for the past month: Why has Rankin not been compelled to appear before the inquiry and does his non-appearance suggest something sinister happening? There are still no answers forthcoming.
Former Crown director, the 81-year-old former Qantas boss Geoff Dixon, has been compelled to appear as a witness next week despite his wife’s worsening health condition — it is public knowledge she has battled Parkinson’s disease for decades. So where is Rankin?
Coonan was asked on Friday whether the investment banker had told her about a sensational threat made via email by Packer — to then TPG Australia boss Ben Gray — during talks for a privatisation of Crown that Rankin was up to his neck in. No, she said.
The question again highlighted the fact Rankin was in the middle of the most sensational piece of evidence presented throughout the entire inquiry, yet has not been asked to give evidence about it.
Rankin is known to have homes in London and Hong Kong. Perhaps Ben Brazil, who now lives in the UK capital and gave evidence from there at the crack of dawn last week, might want to pop around to Rankin’s place, knock on his door and pop the question about what’s really going on.
The other interesting titbit we learnt from Coonan’s evidence on Friday is that she might be a former federal Minister and the chairman of a big public relations firm, but there is clearly one major newspaper that is not in her reading repertoire.
Quizzed by Counsel Assisting Adam Bell about the extensive allegations against the company aired by The Age newspaper last year, she replied with a straight face: “I don’t know if it is a relevant point Mr Bell, but I don’t read The Age.”
Coonan will be back in the stand on Tuesday, the same day — she noted at the conclusion of Friday’s hearing — she also has five committee meetings scheduled ahead of next Thursday’s Crown AGM. Which promoted Bergin to quip: “Well they’d better be after sunset.”
Rio brains trust
Watching MPs try to force Australia’s corporate bosses to actually answer questions in front of a parliamentary committee is rarely a pretty sight, and Rio’s second appearance in Canberra to explain how it came to blow up 46,000-year-old heritage sites in the Pilbara was no exception.
In particular, outgoing corporate affairs boss Simone Niven’s first appearance before the committee went some way to explaining how Rio managed to dig itself into such a deep public relations hole in the early days of the crisis.
In an attempt to pre-empt further criticism that the Juukan Gorge debacle was partly the fault of the company’s outgoing leadership, because senior heritage staff had left the company as part of successive waves of cost-cutting, Ms Niven launched a defence of Rio’s global communities team –—and particularly those who work in its iron ore division.
The iron ore team that let the Juukan blast through to the keeper was highly skilled, she told the parliamentary committee, and a consultant she paid to “benchmark” her division told her so. Some of them even have political science degrees.
“We have over 90 people in our iron ore team, almost two-thirds of them have a bachelors degree or higher.
“They are highly qualified, they have a lot of qualifications across a number of areas — so everything from anthropology to archaeology to political science, etc,” Ms Niven said.
“We did a benchmark of our capabilities in our global communities team in 2019 with an external provider and that showed, actually, that we have some super highly-qualified teams, and particularly in our iron ore team.
“Our iron ore team is in iron ore, on the ground, every day. And that’s a really important point I want to make. They’re embedded, they’re working out at our assets, at our mine sites, engaging with traditional owners.”
How a corporate relations boss paid $US2.1m by Rio in 2019 didn’t foresee how that particular defence would lead to one obvious question in response, Margin Call will never know.
But West Australian Labor Senator Pat Dodson was happy to step up and supply it.
“With so many people, so much on the ground activity, so much interfacing with the traditional owners, the significance of these caves seems to have escaped you. How did that happen?”
With great minds like that in charge, how indeed?
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