Malcolm Turnbull shelves Christmas bevvies

Illustration: Rod Clement.

There is an historic absence on this year’s festive calendar.

Malcolm Turnbull has cancelled Christmas drinks at Kirribilli House, the Prime Minister’s secondary official residence (and for our Point Piper-residing 29th PM, his secondary Sydney pad).

Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull at last year’s Christmas drinks at Kirribilli House.

The PM’s Kirribilli Christmas drinks are one of the great fixtures on the social calendar. They are also a useful end-of-year barometer for who is close to the holder of the highest office in the land.

Kerry Stokes and Jack Cowin arriving at the 2015 Kirribilli House Christmas drinks.

Last December former PM John Howard was along, as was fellow Liberal grandee Nick Greiner, Visy billionaire Anthony Pratt, Seven billionaire Kerry Stokes, hamburger billionaire Jack Cowin, ANZ chairman David Gonski, CBA CEO Ian Narev, Westpac CEO Brian Hartzer … you get the point. It was a pretty A-list crowd inspecting the PM and Lucy Turnbull’s white Christmas tree.

We’ve heard some of last year’s powerful attendees have been anxiously checking their mail, wondering if perhaps they had fallen out of favour. They can now relax. It’s nothing personal. The drinks just aren’t happening.

Was a Christmas summit of bankers and billionaires thought to be a bad look in this Trumpian Age?

No. Nor was the cancellation a reflection of a new-found animosity to the season. Rather, it seems the PM is a bit hosted out.

Last Sunday he and wife Lucy had the Canberra elite (pollies and their families, army brass, heads of its cultural institutions) over for a reception at The Lodge.

Due to years of renovations on the historic home, it was the first such function since the Rudd-Gillard era.

And this Thursday, the PM hosted the Canberra Press Gallery at The Lodge to toast the end of the parliamentary year. Again because of those renovations, it was the first time the event had been held at The Lodge since 2012.

The Sydney set will get their turn. We understand an alternative event will be held in the new year, around Australia Day, by which time the PM will — so long as natural disasters don’t get in the way — have had some well-deserved time off.

Gathering no moss

One member of the Prime Minister’s office who wasn’t along to mix with the Press Gallery at The Lodge on Thursday night was John Garnaut.

Decorated former Fairfax journo John Garnaut has moved from political staffing to the federal bureaucracy. Picture: Supplied.

That’s because the decorated former Fairfax journo is no longer working for Malcolm Turnbull.

In recent months, Garnaut has moved from political staffing to the federal bureaucracy.

The former China correspondent had been a key part of Turnbull’s media team and then a member of the PMO’s foreign affairs team until former counter-terrorism co­-ordinator Greg Moriarty was appointed as the PM’s personal foreign affairs adviser.

Garnaut is now a principal adviser working in the International Policy Division of Martin Parkinson’s Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Garnaut’s stint in the PMO — which lasted just under a year — followed a family tradition. His father Ross Garnaut served as economics adviser to prime minister Bob Hawke in the 1980s.

Double take

Call it a mixed Friday for the executive team of Tasmanian-based baby formula producer Bellamy’s.

Bellamy's Organic chief executive Laura McBain. Picture: Supplied.

First the good news. Bellamy’s CEO Laura McBain and CFO Shona Ollington showed off their impressive grasp of the complexities of doing business in China in a profile in Boss magazine, an insert in yesterday’s Australian Financial Review. “When you think you know something in China make sure you go and ask again two or three times,” McBain said, sagely.

As it happened, a business update to the ASX — which was also out yesterday morning — underlined that point explicitly.

Bellamy’s stock fell a stunning 44 per cent to $6.85 after investors — wading through the opaque statement — learned of trouble with Chinese import regulations and the company’s lower-than-expected sales during the China’s Singles Day retail frenzy.

As the Middle Kingdom expert McBain put it in Boss: “The regulations in China have always been a moving feast, so you’ve got to be ahead of the curve.”

Which, at least in a personal capacity, the CEO sure was. McBain cashed in $2.4 million worth of Bellamy’s shares in late August when they were trading at $14.54 — more than twice yesterday’s close. During the same late August window her chairman Robert Woolley cashed in $2.9m worth at $14.60. At least those two were ahead of the curve — although that’s not likely to cheer up less enlightened investors on the company’s share registry.

Rudd honoured

Brace yourself Canberra — it sounds like former prime minister Kevin Rudd is inward bound.

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd and ANU chancellor Gareth Evans.

ANU chancellor Gareth Evans yesterday announced that Rudd and his entrepreneurial wife Therese Rein will both receive honorary degrees from the national university. The pair — both alumni — will each be made Doctors of Law of the university at which they met, fell in love and began the journey that saw them attempt to take over the world (or at least the UN).

Also on the December ANU honours list are the former chief of the defence force Sir Angus Houston (one of the few awarded a knighthood by former PM Tony Abbott) and Indonesia’s former foreign minister Marty Natalegawa.

FIFA pays respects

An unhappy roundball update.

The new president of football’s governing body FIFA, Gianni Infantino, will no longer be in Sydney on Monday for a roundtable with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and other worthies to discuss “Football diplomacy”.

FIFA president Gianni Infantin. Picture: AFP Photo/Roman Kruchinin.

Instead of the visit Down Under — which we flagged earlier in the week — the powerful sports administrator Infantino is off to attend funeral services in Brazil for the football players who died in this week’s plane crash in Colombia.

Infantino has told Football Federation Australia chairman Steven Lowy he will reschedule the trip. It should happen in the new year.

In happier news, the celebration of chairman Peter Costello’s Future Fund is going ahead this Monday night at the Park Hyatt in Melbourne.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will be along to mark the 10-year anniversary of the Future Fund, which has grown to more than $124.6bn and stands as one the great legacies of Costello’s time as treasurer. Well worth a knees-up.