Knees-up for Liberal Pratt-pack

cartoon: Rod Clement.

More good news for Scott Morrison to go with that Ipsos poll: Jeanne Pratt has agreed to host a fundraising dinner for the Liberals at her mansion Raheen.

As the PM might say: How good are billionaires?

Margin Call can reveal federal Liberal president Nick Greiner and his honorary treasurer/chief fundraiser Andrew Burnes have begun flogging seats to the private dinner with the PM and much of the Morrison ministry.

It will be one of the major fund­raisers before Morrison’s showdown with Bill Shorten in May.

“This dinner is generously being hosted by Mrs Jeanne Pratt AC,” says Burnes, the managing director and major shareholder of travel outfit Hello­world, in his invitation.

Jeanne and Anthony Pratt.

The Libs will hope her son Anthony Pratt will be generous too. Pratt, Australia’s richest person, last valued at $12.9 billion, shelled out $790,000 to Malcolm Turnbull’s campaign in 2016. The Visy packaging billionaire’s recent social proximity to opposition Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen has made some Liberal purse-holders nervous.

Raheen is an apt venue.

Shorten, back his union days, was a regular at the Kew mansion when it was the home of Jeanne’s late husband Richard Pratt, the cardboard mogul.

That was one of Turnbull’s favourite Shorten facts.

“There was never a union leader in Melbourne that tucked his knees under more billionaires’ tables than the Leader of the Opposition,” then PM Turnbull told the parliament two years ago.

Come mid-March, it will be the Morrison ministry — and they hope, a posse of big spenders — tucking their knees under the Pratt family’s tables. On the Morrison bill are Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, Foreign Minister Marise Payne, Health Minister Greg Hunt, Home ­Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, Attorney-General Christian Porter, Trade Minister Simon Birmingham, Industry Minister Karen Andrews, Families Minister Paul Fletcher, Education Minister Dan Tehan, Environment Minister Melissa Price, Defence Industry Minister Steve Ciobo and Big Stick Minister Angus Taylor.

To go by that roll-up, it looks like Victoria will be hosting the cabinet meeting that week as well.

Crashing through

After the market closes today, GrainCorp chairman Graham Bradley is expected to receive a call from his successor as Business Council of Australia president, Tony Shepherd.

Tomorrow at the Sydney Hilton, Bradley will chair the $2.2 billion agribusiness’s annual general meeting.

The key thing concerning shareholders: what is happening with the Shepherd-chaired, Goldman Sachs-advised bid by Long Term Asset Partners? Due diligence is still under way, as the LTAP crew continue to crunch GrainCorp’s numbers.

The complicated bid is the brainchild of the idiosyncratic Chris “Crash” Craddock, who has been working towards it for almost a decade.

In a good sign for investors hoping the multi-billion-dollar deal goes ahead, people who have spent time with Craddock over the past week or so tell us Crash does not look like a man whose Great Big Idea has collapsed on due diligence.

Perhaps Bradley will be able to share more with us soon.

A farewell fling

Andrew Thorburn was back on deck yesterday at NAB’s Melbourne HQ, refreshed after his second summer holiday.

Before he sets off for his third holiday, Thorburn will host farewell events during his final fortnight at the Big Four bank. So far, Margin Call hasn’t discovered any involving first-class flights to Fiji or helicopter rides in the Middle East. Instead, he’s catching up with various leadership groups and having a drinks function next week.

The departing CEO is also, of course, taking a keen interest in the negotiation of his leaving package, which could exceed $20m. The prolonged negotiations suggest members of Ken Henry’s board might have reservations about such a big number.

Thorburn’s also doing handover stuff with Phil Chronican, who takes over as interim CEO on March 1.

In the meantime, chief financial officer Gary Lennon is nominally acting CEO. That makes for three CEOs crawling over the bank.

What leadership problem?

Post dodges a bullet

The Senate Communications Committee has made history and given Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate a leave pass from this week’s estimates jamboree in Canberra.

Margin Call has learned Australia Post — the government-owned postal business which today releases its half-year results — was not invited by the Senate’s Environment and Communications Committee to appear in Canberra.

That never happened in the era of Ahmed Fahour.

It seems a strange decision, what with the dark conversations happening in some Labor circles about the state of the Australia Post board.

Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate. Picture: David Geraghty.

Thanks to the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments, a majority of chairman John Stanhope’s fellow independent directors are servants of the Liberal Party: Bruce McIver (the immediate past president of the Liberal National Party of Queensland), Tony Nutt (the previous federal director of the Liberal Party), Deidre Willmott (former chief of staff to Colin Barnett) and former Abbott minister Michael Ronaldson.

Word is that Communications Minister Mitch Fifield has received his department’s recommendations for a replacement for Paul Scurrah, who finished at Friday’s board meeting to devote himself to his new
gig corralling Virgin Australia’s opinionated share registry.

Now Fifield has to decide whether to follow their advice — or make another Liberal postal dream come true.