Liberals done like a dinner

Cartoon: Rod Clement.

This Friday, the federal executive of the Liberal Party is scheduled to meet at Canberra’s Menzies House. It promises to be one of their most awkward family reunions.

The federal office bearers led by president Nick Greiner (who was in Canberra earlier in the week for the rudely overshadowed Dame Enid Lyons anniversary dinner) will meet with the federal parliamentary leadership group, which when the invitations went out was led by PM Malcolm Turnbull and Liberal deputy leader Julie Bishop.

All that may have changed by Friday.

Honorary Liberal Party treasurer Andrew Burnes (the $225 million man, who by day runs the ASX-listed travel outfit Helloworld) will be along to discuss the dysfunctional political outfit’s finances.

The presidents of the various state divisions will also be along. That includes Victorian Liberal president Michael Kroger, NSW Liberal president Philip Ruddock, South Australian Liberal president John Olsen and — the figurehead of the moment — Queensland Liberal National president Gary Spence.

The Sunshine State’s Spence made headlines earlier in the week for privately urging federal MPs to replace Turnbull with millionaire policeman Peter Dutton.

Incredibly, Spence’s pineapple-induced dreams could yet come true.

The ensemble of state party directors — the machine men in charge of running elections for the hapless party — are also due to meet tomorrow with federal Liberal director Andrew Hirst for their traditional night-before-executive dinner.

After this tawdry week, be thankful you aren’t one of them.

Peter Dutton, rear left, prepares his next move. Picture: AFP

Cormack hurdle

One item on the Liberal’s federal executive agenda is the Party’s relationship with the Charles Goode-chaired $70m Cormack Foundation.

Margin Call understands Goode and his fellow directors on the Liberal-aligned Cormack — the party’s biggest donor over the past three decades — are noncommittal about the federal Liberal leadership. They see it as a matter for the parliamentary party.

But there is a hurdle to clear before Cormack’s millions are committed to the next federal campaign.

We understand Goode’s board has made it known to the federal Liberal Party that it wants a commitment that the federal executive will not support any further legal action waged against it by Michael Kroger’s Victorian Liberal division.

Exactly how the federal executive could give such assurances isn’t clear.

Following a federal court judgment in June, Kroger’s division was awarded shares previously held by Cormack foundational directors John Calvert-Jones and Hugh Morgan. In recent weeks those shares were transferred to Kroger allies Richard Alston and Alan Stockdale.

Kroger’s Liberals now have 25 per cent of the shell company’s shares, but no board seats and no cut of the Cormack corpus.

Child’s play

Prime ministerial wannabe Peter Dutton and Victorian Liberal president Michael Kroger have a bit in common.

While the Queenslander’s and the Victorian’s hairstyles couldn’t be more different, they share a passion for for-profit early childhood education.

Dutton, along with wife Kirrily Dutton and builder father Bruce Dutton, operate two childcare centres in suburban Brisbane, one in Bald Hills and the other in Everton Hills.

For arcane reasons, those outfits have embroiled the ambitious Queenslander in a fresh Section 44 constitutional controversy, following the government’s changes to the childcare subsidy.

That reform didn’t come fast enough for the Sydney-based listed childcare provider Think Child Care, which operates 45 centres throughout Australia.

Think floated in 2014 after Kroger and his associates, along with Think boss Mathew Edwards, rolled their respective operations together and raised $22m in fresh capital to value the outfit at $40m.

In March, Think raised another $10m to fund further expansion. But at the release of its interim results yesterday, managing director Edwards complained that federal reform of the childcare subsidy hadn’t come fast enough due to a “lack of political will”, which had negatively impacted the group’s first half to June 30.

Think shares tanked 10 per cent to end yesterday at $1.45 (the fresh equity in March was issued at $1.99 a share — ouch).

The dip cost Kroger about $55,000. His less than 1 per cent stake (at last disclosure) is now worth about $515,000.

Think is still on the march for more market share and has declared it wants to buy more centres.

That could provide an elegant solution for Dutton and his family, should his perceived problem with the Constitution persist.

Add it to Friday’s to federal executive agenda?

King’s realm

Peter King, the Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull blew out of the federal seat of Wentworth ahead of the 2004 election, was along for Question Time in Canberra yesterday.

“I was in Canberra for a hearing,” the barrister King told Margin Call.

And — surprise, surprise — King told us he enjoyed returning to Parliament to watch his old foe.

“It was very interesting.”

AMP’s new CEO Francesco De Ferrari. Picture: Bloomberg

Among friends

Meanwhile, outside of the Canberra bubble star AMP recruit Francesco De Ferrari made a lightning visit to the wealth business’s Circular Quay headquarters.

Margin Call hears the Singapore-based Credit Suisse executive De Ferrari popped into the AMP’s Sydney tower shortly after his new gig was revealed by chairman David Murray.

De Ferrari formally starts as chief executive on December 1 (on a salary that will max out at $8.3m a year). He dropped in to join Murray and acting boss Mike Wilkins for a meet and greet with the senior leadership team.

De Ferrari, who’s coming to Oz with his five kids in tow, said pulling the plug on CS was one of the toughest decisions of his life. Along with the dosh, he was attracted by the “interesting” challenge the gig presented.

Being around old friends might have helped a bit too.

Former local Credit Suisse local chair John O’Sullivan has recently joined Murray’s AMP board, while Murray was also a distinguished part of the furniture at the investment bank. Murray was a paid Credit Suisse adviser — with an office in its Circular Quay tower, not far from O’Sullivan’s — before he moved into the neighbouring AMP office a few months ago.