Liberals’ fundraiser not the first

Then PM Malcolm Turnbull and Nine’s Hugh Marks attend an event celebrating 60 years of commercial free-to-air television at Parliament House. Picture: Kym Smith

Three months before Hugh Marks and his chairman Peter Costello pounced on Fairfax Media, Marks’s media company Nine hosted a Liberal Party fundraiser on the set of Nine’s singing show The Voice.

Nine chairman Peter Costello and CEO Hugh Marks. Picture: John Feder

The guest of honour at Nine’s until-now secret fundraiser at Fox Studios for the federal Liberal Party: Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

So it turns out Margin Call owes our readers, Marks and Nine’s head of government relations Clare Gill an apology.

MORE: Staff go feral over fundraiser

Yesterday, we reported that Marks’s $10,000-a-head Liberal fundraiser this week with Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his cabinet colleagues on the set of Nine’s Today show was the first time a media company had hosted a party fundraising event in the modern era.

We were wrong.

The earlier Nine fundraiser for the Liberals was back in March 2018, three months before Nine unveiled its $4bn takeover of Fairfax.

That takeover was only possible because of the media ownership reforms that were passed by Turnbull’s government.

The then PM Turnbull was quick to celebrate the corporate union.

Illustration: Rod Clement

“To be frank, I welcome the announcement,” Turnbull said after Marks and Costello’s bid was revealed in June 2018. The man who was communications minister in the Abbott era had long championed the need for the changes to the media ownership regime, which was brought in by Paul Keating’s government.

A former journalist and adviser to Kerry Packer, Turnbull was sympathetic to a Nine-Fairfax union well before Nine helped out with the Liberals’ fundraising efforts.

But Nine — chaired by Liberal grandee and Future Fund chairman Costello — apparently thought the night couldn’t hurt.

It seems incredible that Nine would enmesh itself with the Liberals’ Australia Business Network months before launching a multi-billion-dollar, politically sensitive takeover of the country’s oldest media company.

What if their earlier night with the Libs had got out before the deal, rather than in this column now?

As Marks and his Nine team have learned in recent days, their newly acquired employees at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Financial Review take these things pretty seriously.

Good on them for that.

Hugh and cry

The fury over Nine’s embrace of the Liberal fundraising circuit extends beyond Hugh Marks’s new employees at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Financial Review.

Nine’s Canberra television bureau was similarly unimpressed.

Margin Call has learned Nine Network political editor Chris Uhlmann let it be known to Marks’s government relations executive Clare Gill that the television side of the media operation was not happy with the company’s Liberal love on Monday night.

“Forthright.” Chris Uhlmann.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s chief political correspondent David Crowe also relayed his bureau’s unhappiness about the company joining the Liberal fundraising calendar during Peter Costello’s chairmanship.

Nine’s communications executive Victoria Buchan yesterday put Gill on a media ban so we were unable to ask her directly about the exchange.

But Buchan said on Gill’s behalf that it was not correct to describe Uhlmann’s tone in their conversation as either “a volcanic eruption”, “the right royal treatment” or “a full ripping”.

Margin Call was told through non-Buchan channels that Uhlmann was civil but “forthright”.

The astonishment with the Monday night fundraiser at Willoughby was shared by the Australian Financial Review’s political editor Phil Coorey and colleagues at the masthead’s Canberra outpost.

Apparently the eruption has stunned Marks’s executive team who, aside from the Fairfax-promoted publishing boss Chris Janz, all came up through the Nine TV side.

It shows, doesn’t it?

Horsewhipped

Incredibly, the James Packer-backed Crown Resorts is again in trouble in the Pearl Delta.

The trigger is the expansion into Hong Kong by Crown’s wholly owned betting exchange subsidiary Betfair.

Betfair is a leftover from the days when Packer was trying to create an online betting giant with the likes of Matthew Tripp’s BetEasy (which has since been gobbled up by Canada’s The Stars Group).

The online outfit is now a minor, albeit profitable, part of executive chairman John Alexander’s Crown gaming empire.

Two weeks ago, Befair began offering betting exchange wagering on Hong Kong racing — without the permission of the all-powerful Hong Kong Jockey Club.

What followed is a minor China-related scandal by Crown standards, but a headache nonetheless.

On Wednesday a clearly upset Hong Kong Jockey Club fired off a terse letter.

It was addressed to “the Australian government and relevant racing authorities” — including the NT Racing Commission, where Betfair is licensed — the Australian Communications and Media Authority, Racing Australia, Betfair and its parent company Crown Resorts.

Ominously, “cease and desist” was splashed across the missive.

The Hong Kong Jockey Club said that it had only just found out Betfair was offering online markets on their races.

They pointed out in the letter that Betfair had — unsuccessfully — previously sought the club’s approval to offer wagering on Sha Tin and Happy Valley races.

Then they went for Crown’s jugular.

The HKJC letter noted recent “serious allegations in the Australian media … regarding apparent historical failures by Crown Resorts to oversee and manage fundamental risks to entities controlled by it”.

They then set out via several explosive dot points those alleged failures, listing alleged money laundering, alleged partnering with junket operators with links to drug traffickers and so on.

Crown has rebutted those allegations, which were first reported by Nine.

There’s even a pointed reference to the NSW Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority’s inquiry into Packer’s mooted share sale to the Hong Kong-based Lawrence Ho.

That’ll teach those cocky Australians.