MPs quick to declare interests

Illustration: Rod Clement.

The deadline is not until September 27, but already entries on the Register of Members’ Interests for the 45th parliament have begun.

And what a time to fill in the paperwork, as the orgy of schadenfreude over Labor senator Sam Dastyari reached its, seemingly, inevitable conclusion.

Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen, with a beard.

One of the first to declare is corporate Australia’s favourite member of Bill Shorten’s front bench, Chris Bowen, who is something of a big brother figure to the chastened Dastyari. Both are senior members of the party’s engine, the NSW Labor Right.

Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen, without a beard. Picture: Kym Smith.

As any of the big four bank CEOs would probably tell you, Bowen — including his recent dinner date to Canberra’s Midwinter Ball, Westpac CEO Brian Hartzer — is not a bad mentor figure to have.

The latest addition to Bowen’s register is a block of land (worth a touch under $300,000) in lovely Bawley Point, which sits 30 minutes south of Ulladulla on the NSW south coast — a spot best known to many as the site of the gestation of the shadow treasurer’s famous summer beard.

We understand Mayor Joanna Gash’s Shoalhaven City Council has commissioned a plaque to commemorate the hairy connection.

Bowen bought the plot with wife Rebecca Mifsud, an industrial relations executive at the now Japanese Post-owned Toll Holdings, which she joined in September last year after it was taken over for $6 billion. They plan to build a little summer shack/beard-rearing facility sometime in the future.

Between summers, the couple — who have two children — reside in Bowen’s electorate in Smithfield, in Sydney’s west — some distance from the sea breeze, but near some excellent Laotian restaurants.

Well worth a trip.

Bandt owns up

Other early Members’ Interests filers include the Greens’ Adam Bandt, whose paperwork is mostly straightforward, but does reveal the sinister ownership of shares in financial services ­behemoth AMP. (Bandt best keep that grubby dalliance with capitalism quiet at his next inner-north Melbourne Greens branch meeting.)

Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie. Picture: Kim Eiszele.

Also diligently lodging their paperwork are the Nats’ Andrew Broad, the Libs’ Ian Goodenough (the Rolex expert) and Tassie independent Andrew Wilkie, who in a perhaps exaggerated spirit of full disclosure has declared a potential conflict of interest with his niece Caroline Wilkie, who is CEO of the Australian Airports Association. She’s on maternity leave. Still, better declared than embarrassed.

Leigh on the verge

Bill Shorten’s worst-paid shadow minister, Andrew Leigh,has also lodged his Members’ Interest file.

Harvard PhD Andrew Leigh, who is Bill Shorten’s worst-paid shadow minister.

Not a lot to report on Leigh, the Member for Fenner, an electorate covering the northern half of Canberra. Leigh — a Harvard PhD — is Bill Shorten’s assistant treasury spokesman.

Along with the no longer Labor consumer affairs spokesman Sam Dastyari, he was being paid a backbencher’s salary of $199,040 — down $40,000 on his shadow cabinet colleagues to accommodate Shorten’s mighty team.

After yesterday’s fall, Leigh is one demotion away from a pay rise — not that the post-materialist middle distance runner seems the least bit concerned.

Tea for two

Meanwhile, we have been told the co-host of Sam Dastyari’s now famous afternoon tea, David Coleman, will not be adding that Australia-China Relations Institute-funded event to his register.

David Coleman, the member for Banks.

“I have sought advice on the requirements of the Register of Members’ Interests and I am satisfied that my actions are consistent with those requirements,” Coleman, the newly appointed chairman of the PM’s banking committee and, literally, the member for Banks, told us.

That’s in contrast to Dastyari, who declared that the Australia-China Relations Institute paid for it — and for his disclosure has since been set on fire, and resigned.

Dasher off the leash

Yes, Sam Dastyari is a shadow frontbencher no more — a joyful development for the many corporates the energetic senator has embarrassed and the ALP colleagues he has outshone.

Labor Senator Sam Dastyari, a shadow frontbencher no more. Picture: AAP Image/Daniel McCulloch.

Not that Dastyari has taken a pay cut. He never got a raise.

For now it’s back to the opposition backbench for the 33-year-old Dastyari — the very spot where he fashioned himself into a terror of banking and big business.

The NSW senator is bruised, sure, but he’s free of what passes for a shadow ministry leash. Dasher’s corporate enemies should be hoping he doesn’t test out its full length as he goes about rebuilding his political career.

Brown jets off

Rumours of the departure of damaged 60 Minutes reporter Tara Brown are entirely misplaced.

Yes Hugh Marks’ embattled network has settled with the dismissed 60 Minutes producer Stephen Rice, who worked on the infamous Lebanon kiddie-snatching production — and picked up a reported $1 million for his trouble.

But we’re told by Willoughby that Brown remains very much on staff at Nine’s flagship current affairs show.

Brown’s recent trip to the US was no relocation to less soiled pastures, as some of her colleagues have pedalled.

Rather, Brown was on assignment — her first offshore since her passport was returned after the Beirut affair.

No word yet about what it involves.

Oswals case drags on

Moving to the Oswals, the flamboyant Indian business couple are still to settle their case with Shayne Elliott’s ANZ.

Radhika and Pankaj Oswal. Picture: David Geraghty/The Australian.

The negotiations are held up by Pankaj and his “wifey” Radhika Oswal’s ongoing dispute with Chris Jordan’s Australian Taxation Office — for a bill believed to be towards $100m.

Lawyers for ANZ and the Oswals reached an in principle settlement three weeks ago — but nothing can be finished until the Indian’s tax bill is paid.

Meanwhile, we hear that Radhika has sought to travel to Dubai to visit family.

Pankaj will stay in Australia, as security for the Australian Taxation Office, which has powers to stop those with unpaid tax bills from travelling.

Across the Nullarbor, the good folk at the council of Peppermint Grove — one of Perth’s posher suburbs — are poised and ready to demolish the Oswals’ abandoned and derelict mansion, known as Taj-On-Swan.

The council has lined up local firm Capital Recycling to roll in the wrecking balls at the waterfront site, starting on October 3. The demo contract is worth between $300,000 and $500,000.

The Oswals have until the end of this month to comply with the knockdown order or the council will get Capital on to the job on the local government’s behalf.

Lindsay Fox. Picture: Ellen Smith.

Fox full of beans

Good to see trucking billionaire Lindsay Fox in Melbourne yesterday. The Linfox mogul — the star of undoubtedly the year’s best Mediterranean conception party — breakfasted in Toorak cafe Monkey Bean, also a favourite of his billionaire bestie, Solomon Lew.