Liberals branch out in Vaucluse

Cartoon: Rod Clement.

Gabrielle Upton’s future parliamentary career awaits colleague Don Harwin’s proposed NSW electoral redistribution.

It seems Harwin reckons it would be a good idea to split her safe Liberal Vaucluse seat into two, with a Waverley electorate created for the next state election in March 2023.

The issue is that Upton’s strongest internal branch support comes from the Dover Heights branch, which would sit within the Waverley electorate.

Unless she wanted to depart Macquarie Street, Upton will need to decide which seat suits her best, and Margin Call reckons the moderate could face a testy preselection battle either way.

It is possible she’ll be remembered as the state’s first female Attorney-General, but it’s hard to forget her Driving Miss Daisy headlines after gun political journalist Andrew Clennell revealed in 2015 she’d fallen out with an alleged seven different government drivers in the prior two years.

She was said to have dismissed one driver for not being able to use GPS adequately and another after he ran late for her 8am pick-up at her luxurious Darling Point home.

There was a row between the Minister and another driver after she berated him for performing a U-turn over double white lines but then asked him to park in a spot he was not allowed to.

The former corporate lawyer at Freehills, who did a stint in corporate finance at Deutsche Bank in New York, was preselected 10 years ago for the blue ribbon seat.

These days Upton is just a parliamentary secretary, assisting Premier Gladys Berejiklian.

At the press gallery Christmas party last year, the Premier noted she relished welcoming new staff to Macquarie Street, saying she’d done 100 in recent times.

“And they were just Gabrielle’s drivers,” quipped the Premier, showing she does have a sense of humour.

The Liberal Party’s redistribution submission will be lodged by June 30 with the Electoral Commission, which is responsible for any final boundary changes.

Harwin, the moderate faction powerbroker, was tasked with the redistribution after he was dumped from the ministry for breaching COVID-19 restrictions.

It seems his thinking for suggesting a new seat in the eastern suburbs would allow for the election of another moderate like Bruce Notley-Smi th, who lost the seat of Coogee at the last election.

Party sources have suggested the final submission would be fair — and designed to maximise party wins — but one factional warlord sensed a blatant factional stitch-up.

“This is not Don’s party. It’s the Liberal Party,” one said.

Harwin lists his special interests as including psephology, the statistical study of elections and trends in voting. Well, that plus political history, film and, he’d have us believe, rugby league.

Well above par

The exclusive Australian Golf Club in Sydney’s Rosebery has posted a $2,004,000 profit in the past year. It was just up on the prior year’s $1,953,000 profit.

The club is sitting nicely with some $21m in reserves, plus this year it received a $20m valuation of its land, building and improvements. That was up from its prior $13.8m valuation.

No doubt there will be a small hit to the club this year in its $2.9m bar and catering revenue given the COVID-19 restrictions. It has also been a bit quieter overhead given a 97 per cent reduction in the Kingsford Smith Airport flight traffic.

There are just 1253 members, up eight, with the all-male board seeing some recent turnover in what is one of the nation’s oldest golf clubs.

Ray Balcomb, the outdoor sports advertising boss, departed after five years on the board. He was chairman of the greens. The former Galloping Green Randwick Rugby Club member Michael Nethery also departed the board. Ditto Stuart Cox, the director of residential site sales at Savills, who signed off the latest accounts as the club captain.

Replacing the trio earlier this month were David Conachear, Ben Cribb and Peter Baker.

Self-employed financial market trader Simon Farr-Jones took on the captaincy.

Sounding out

New Victorian Racing Club boss Steve Rosich was actually sounded out by its chair Amanda Elliott several years ago. Elliott spoke to Rosich before they appointed the soon-to-be chair Neil Wilson to assume the chief executive role.

“The cat’s out of the bag now, that is true,” Rosich told RSN Racing Pulse’s Michael Felgate.

At the time he was eight years into his time as chief executive at the Fremantle Dockers, which ended last August when Fremantle club president Dale Alcock accepted the resignation of then coach Ross Lyon and Rosich on the same eventful day after a disappointing season for the AFL club. Wilson, who had been the club treasurer, stepped aside from his then board role to become CEO after the departure of Simon Love in 2017.

Rosich relocates to “the best race club in the world and leader in racing entertainment” in September.

Just how much excitement is on offer for the owners will emerge with next week’s announcement surrounding race prize money for the Lexus Melbourne Cup.

In the running

Aussies hoping to head to New York to run one of the most gruelling marathons can hit pause on their COVID-19 training schedules. The 50th New York City Marathon has been postponed until 2021 for its intending 50,000-plus runners.

James Thornton, the CEO of Melbourne travel firm Intrepid Group, ran a stellar three hours 52 minutes in last year’s event. The big Nike fan, who typically runs in Zoom Pegasus Turbos, managed to get his hands on a pair of Nike ZoomX Vaporfly NEXT% — which must have helped with the PB.

Thornton wasn’t going to run the NYC one this year. Instead he’s still hoping to run the London marathon for the second time in October.

Another Melburnian took the spotlight last year when Sinead Diver finished fifth in New York, completing the 42.2km in two hours and 26 minutes.

An Aussie did win the NYC marathon back in 1992, the Olympic silver medallist Lisa Ondieki, who won in a then-course record of two hours 24 minutes. The postponed 2020 Virgin Money London Marathon is still a possibility.

“We have hope, desire and ingenuity,” said event director Hugh Brasher, whose father Chris Brasher was its 1979 co-founder.

Agency vacancy

Thomas McGlynn has resigned from his role as chief of sales at The Agency to take up a position at the BresicWhitney estate agency. McGlynn’s departure is set to be formally announced to the staff Friday morning by its chief executive Matt Lahood.

McGlynn, who joined the Sydney real estate industry disrupter in 2017 from McGrath Queensland, is often billed as the biggest auctioneer to come out of Maroochydore.

The Agency has been reporting its weekly sales inventory to its financier Macquarie Bank as it navigates the listings shortage induced by the pandemic. It did sell the $11m Woollahra home of stockbroker Angus Aitken and wife Sarah to the KIIS FM breakfast co-host Jackie O Henderson this week.

There’s whispers The Agency’s idle project division will see departures in both Sydney and Melbourne.

The burgeoning BresicWhitney agency was formed 17 years ago by former McGrath agents Shannan Whitney and Ivan Bresic, who has been based in the US for family reasons in recent times.