Mundine fighting three big battles; Python-esque adulation for Kev

Warren Mundine doesn’t mind standing up for his beliefs. Picture: Adam Yip

In the midst of leading the No campaign against an Indigenous voice to parliament, Warren Mundine has quietly been fighting an ugly little court battle against his former business partner in an electrical consulting business.

You’re forgiven for having never heard of Wehbar Electrics, a middling outfit that Mundine chaired and operated with his son until its licence was cancelled in May 2021. The company’s largest shareholder (aside from Mundine) was Spire Electrical Services (49 per cent). Spire’s been suing Wehbar – and Mundine’s personal investment vehicle Nyungga Black Group – in the NSW District Court for the past 12 months.

Why? Well it seems Spire director Daniel Palmer was at one time the head of operations at Wehbar until the company was rendered defunct and he fell out with Mundine. That was after the Indigenous leader returned from a hiatus to run for the seat of Gilmore, in 2019, and learned of an alleged fraud perpetrated at the business. We hear charges were laid, then dropped, against a number of individuals.

The case against Wehbar followed the aftermath. We were expecting the case to be heard again in a matter of weeks, but Mundine’s lawyer, Michael Hayter, told us that won’t be happening. “I believe the matter’s settled,” he said.

Well timed, if true, considering the referendum could be held within mere weeks. Can’t be fighting wars on two fronts. Or three, in fact.

We forget to mention conservative think tank LibertyWorks, which Mundine chairs, is up for $172,000 in legal costs over two failed court actions against the federal government.

Comic potential

British actor John Cleese once said: “I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.”

Maybe that’s why lodgers at Canberra’s Hyatt Hotel barely noticed the Monty Python comedian at breakfast, perhaps mistaking him for another soulless industry CEO on a FIFO ­mission to Canberra. Instead they flocked to the other side of the dining room for selfies with that other ironically hilarious individual, Kevin Rudd!

Anthony Albanese welcomes Kevin Rudd and wife Therese Rein to Question Time. Picture: Martin Ollman

Mr Programmatic Specificity was in the capital to unveil his official portrait on Thursday, and was even spotted in fine fettle the previous evening knocking back drinky poos with a pal at the bar, his security detail sipping water nearby.

The portrait, Rudd said on Thursday, was set back a number of years while he sought “political asylum” in the US after his exit from parliament in 2013 – or maybe he was really just planning another comeback? Kevin 2027, as was briefly rumoured?

Meanwhile Cleese is here on an Australian tour and had a bit of trouble with the lock to his hotel room, apparently shutting himself out on at least one occasion. Hyatt management sorted him out, but as Waleed Aly found out recently, while interviewing Cleese, best not to go near the topic of certain hotels.

Seaweed solution

And while we’re on Rudd, famous for straying into the weeds, we note his wife Therese and their progeny have forged ahead with a new line of business – seaweed!

She and sons Nicholas and Marcus have named themselves directors of Syntayis Pty Ltd, a kelp-farming enterprise working to trap carbon and, eventually, save the planet. We could have sworn this was an idea that competed for space on the butcher’s paper at Rudd’s wacky 2020 summit.

The Syntayis website is schmick enough, suggesting kelp can draw down CO2 and be reconstituted into whatever; apparently you can make toothpaste and shampoo and salad dressing out of it. No word of reply from the Rudds and no sign of any investors so far. Surely one for Malcolm Turnbull to tip a sneaky tonne into?

Watchdog’s woes

Nearly one year after ASIC chair Joe Longo blew up a handful of managers during an enforcement meeting, we’ve finally been flicked a few details of that review into his behaviour.

Treasury’s first assistant secretary Simon Writer examined the aftermath, concluding there was no dispute about Longo’s carry-on. The details were obtained after the Senate ordered the government to hand over the findings of Writer’s assurance review.

ASIC chair Joe Longo. Picture: Ian Currie

Redacted in parts, the document confirms that Longo “acknowledged the seriousness of his conduct, its potential to damage ASIC and his change agenda and its negative impact on ASIC officers”.

As reported, Longo apologised at the next enforcement meeting and basically supplicated for forgiveness before 150 ASIC officers dialled-in to the call.

“The chairman accepts that his approach on this occasion was wrong and, given his visibility as the head of a national regulator, that it had much broader effects that he had appreciated.”

We’d bring you more but the rest of that hefty paragraph was blurred, as was a section titled “observations”. Both were blocked using the figleaf of a public interest immunity defence. One of the people he shouted at resigned soon after. And Longo? Still the commissioner.