Lachlan Harris lends a hand to old mate Andrew Charlton; drama at the Kennedy Foundation

Kevin Rudd chats to Alister Gordon and Andrew Charlton.

Lachlan Harris swears his time in politics is over, but eagle-eyed observers at Stockland Merrylands would have been correct in identifying the former Kevin Rudd flak distributing flyers for Labor candidate Andrew Charlton on Saturday.

The pair enjoy a friendship spanning well over a decade, including their days at The Lodge under Rudd. In Harris’s case, the job was to stalk the halls as Rudd’s principal press secretary, while wonky Charlton mined data during the GFC as a senior economic adviser.

In the years since, Charlton has gone on to accrue substantial riches from selling his boutique consultancy, AlphaBeta, to Accenture, while Harris, scion of the Harris Farm grocery chain clan, has founded a series of consumer-led organisations.

Illustration: Rod Clement

Charlton also made a considerable fortune with Afterpay, as did another former Rudd adviser Damian Kassabgi – who made a cool $7m before the buy now, pay later outfit was purchased by Block and then promptly purchased a Byron Bay pad for around $13m. No sign of Harris in that deal, however.

But with an election looming, the Rudd boys have got the band back together for one last show in Charlton’s campaign battleground of Parramatta, held by Labor with a margin of 3.5 per cent. “It’s going to be a really tough fight out there in Parramatta and Andrew’s an old mate. I’m happy to help out with door knocking and handing out flyers when I can,” Harris said.

Charlton, however, is an interloper from well outside the region; he’s landed in the heart of Sydney’s western suburbs after buying a trophy home in ­Bellevue Hill two years ago for some $16.1m.

On the other hand, the guy has the looks of a Kennedy and Labor operatives reckon he will probably take a frontbench position in any Albanese government. Still others tout him as a future party leader, or treasurer, although we’re unsure how Jim Chalmers feels about that.

Meanwhile, Harris is not exactly a local either. Filings with the corporate regulator indicate he has made his home in Sydney’s eastern beaches.

Harris again: “It’s a real pleasure to be out doing real proper local campaigning with a great team of volunteers. There’s been really good support from the party with some really good young campaigners and I’m quite frankly learning a lot.”

Asked if a Charlton juggernaut could ever entice him back to his old job in Canberra, Harris laughed at length. “No,” he said. “One hun-dred per-cent, no.”

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Kennedy conflict

High drama at the Kennedy Foundation, variously the night of nights for NSW journalists or the tabloid, sentimental favourite compared with the pomp and nonsense of the more prestigious Walkley Awards.

On Monday, Margin Call has confirmed, Kennedy co-founder Adam Walters announced an abrupt exit from the organisation’s board, ending 10 years of formalised association with the event which began as a thought-bubble at a bar in Glebe, circa 2011.

Walters, the Brisbane bureau chief at Sky News Australia, was one of the original clique who imagined and implemented the yearly ceremony in honour of its namesake, Les Kennedy, a renowned, raffish crime reporter with a fund of anecdotes who died of cancer at the age of 53.

Les Kennedy.

“I’ll be an ardent supporter and friend (of the foundation),” Walters told Margin Call, counting off a list of its achievements and highlights, including survival during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It’s been a team effort all along,” he said.

“Of all the things I’ve done in 41 years of journalism, this has been the most satisfying.”

But if one resignation was not conspicuous enough, a second board member – Simon Bouda, Nine Network crime editor – announced his own departure just a few hours later.

In a note to the board, Bouda cited Walters’ departure as a catalyst for his own decision, among other reasons, including a curious mention of the “new and exciting” directions taken by the foundation’s management in recent months.

What directions?

It would be impossible not to consider what has been observed by some as a changing of the guard at the board level.

Recent promotions include Anna Magnus, formerly of the Walkley Foundation, who was elevated to the role of general manager in December.

Magnus and another director, Susie Elelman, are understood to have fallen well and truly out with a long-serving Kennedy contributor, citing factors that included chauvinism and his inability to work with women.

That contractor, a personal friend of Walters’, resigned a week ago in a letter to the board that gave a lukewarm mention to Magnus – although not by name – and said the decision to quit had come down to “various reasons”.

The letter did, however, end on a positive note.

“Hopefully, we will cross paths down the track over a wine or two,” it read.

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Jockeying for position

Similarly tense times over at the Nine Network’s dodgy tradie watchdog A Current Affair where – as Margin Call reported in March – there was much speculation that executive producer Fiona Dear might not be returning to her post following extended leave.

Dear, who was appointed to the job in December 2018, had been absent through several crucial weeks, including through the ratings period, with other senior figures in the network’s newsrooms apparently jockeying for pole position if she decided not to end her time away.

Chief among them was Robert ‘Carmo’ Carmody, who has been filling in for Dear. Others included Amanda Paterson, the network’s Queensland news director and a former ACA reporter who does not have the best of relations with some of the others on the program.

Now Margin Call is told that newsroom bosses were in overdrive assuring staff Dear was, in fact, to return.

As of last week, however, she was still far from the studio.

Lachlan Harris, Andrew Charlton

Adam Walters, Simon Bouda

Fiona Dear