Michelle Rowland in battle for her Foxtel; Peter King’s ‘renewal’ bid

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has been unable to tune into Foxtel. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Michelle Rowland’s access to timely, 24-hour news and current affairs would rightfully be considered essential, given her role as the nation’s Communications Minister. One would imagine so, in any case.

And yet it seems her office is still dusting itself off from a row with Parliament House officials over their refusal to provide her with help to access Foxtel inside her Sydney electoral office.

Like all MPs, Rowland was gifted a free subscription to the pay-TV service but, unlike most, she hasn’t been able to use it because of a technical snafu in the Blacktown building where the electoral office is located.

Staff moved into the ground floor space more than a year ago, only to learn there was no Foxtel satellite atop the high-rise.

What followed, Margin Call has learned, was a round of furious email correspondence between Rowland’s people and the killjoys at the Department of Parliamentary Services, led by secretary Rob Stefanic.

Eager to live up to their sulky, difficult reputation, DPS snubbed Rowland’s request for the department to fund a dish on the roof and sent a glowering response back to her people noting that it was all outside their ambit of responsibility.

This from the same mob who picked a fight with the National Press Club over its provision of wine bottles at Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ post-budget luncheon in the Great Hall last week, a stoush faithfully reported in this column ahead of the event.

The added dimension of oddity is that Rowland, as Communications Minister, has a port­folio responsibility over services that include entities like Foxtel.

We’re led to believe the pay-TV operator offered a replacement service using the internet, but it hasn’t proved much use to the minister yet; her EO runs on the same secure wi-fi used by Parliament House, cruelling that solution.

Failing that, her only alternative for round-the-clock news is to watch ABC News 24 – and no one deserves that sort of punishment.

King’s ‘renewal’ bid

Anyone remember Peter King? The barrister was once the celebrated Liberal MP for Wentworth before a cunning merchant banker named Malcolm Turnbull sauntered into politics and bumped him off in a preselection coup. That was in 2004, a lifetime ago.

We hear King is mounting a political comeback, of sorts. Apparently he’s attempting to overthrow Sally Betts as president of the Wentworth Federal Election Committee at an AGM being held at Woollahra Golf Club on Thursday night. That’s the public golf course, mind; do not confuse it with the toffs palace of Royal Sydney Golf Club located next door.

King’s platform for change? He’s telling people it’s time for “renewal”, as he’s allegedly been terming it during a ring-around of branch executives.

Peter King’s platform for change? He’s telling people it’s time for ‘renewal’. Picture: AAP

This from a guy in his 70s who’s already had his day, and who carried out the ultimate betrayal of running against the party as an independent during the 2004 election, receiving a 10-year ban as a consequence.

Notwithstanding, too, that King was once rather close with Betts – she even voted for him when he ran against Turnbull as an independent. How’s that for loyalty!

Margin Call reached out to King at Queen’s Square Chambers but received no response. Betts declined to comment other than to say she would recontest the role of president and thereby meet the threat allegedly posed by King.

About 120 people could show up for the vote, with King said to be supported by Wentworth’s conservative-leaning faction. They control about four of the 19 branches.

But perhaps renewal isn’t such a tall order? It was Betts, after all, who signed off a damning review of the Wentworth Liberals’ performance during the 2022 election. It found the party was “outnumbered, outsmarted, outfunded and outshone” by the campaign of teal independent Allegra Spender. Even Betts, it would seem, would support some form of renewal.

Wine diplomacy

It wasn’t just plonk that Don Farrell gave to his Chinese counterpart, Wang Wentao, during his visit to the Middle Kingdom last week.

The bottle from Farrell’s recently offloaded vineyard happened to be a personal gift, but the Trade Minister also parted ways with a 1964 Seppeltsfield Para Liqueur Vintage Tawny from the Barossa Valley.

That was an official gift, and we hear the sticky was chosen specifically for Wang’s year of birth, with a 100ml bottle going for about $1100.

Farrell, now back in Australia, was caught regaling a bunch of tourism industry folk on Tuesday about the exchange and was overheard boasting that Wang greatly preferred his relatively inexpensive wine to the bottle of port.

Maybe that’s true, and maybe Farrell is also naive enough to have forgotten how diplomacy and flattery often work in pairs.