Nauru island asylum-seeker detention deal extended

Illustration: Rod Clement.

Despite mounting public pressure, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton aren’t done holding asylum-seekers on Nauru just yet, with the $377 million, 13-month private contract to operate Australia’s controversial detention centre on the island nation quietly extended for another six months.

The highly secretive deal with Brisbane company Canstruct International — entered into on September 28 last year — was set to end on Tuesday.

But Margin Call understands the previously $29m-a-month government deal has been extended to April 30 next year, ­although an official announcement is yet to be made.

A spokesman for Home Affairs Minister Mr Dutton declined to comment.

The price tag for the renewal is unknown, but the extension comes as the Morrison government faces increasing pressure to remove children and their families from the facility.

Canstruct is a family-controlled Brisbane-based construction and services company specialising in the delivery of projects in difficult and remote locations.

The company is owned by the Murphy family, founded by patriarch Robin Murphy, and is now run by his son Rory ­Murphy. The group is chaired by Brisbane accountant Tim ­Klaebe.

Canstruct was awarded the lucrative detention centre contract last year after Spanish company Ferrovial, which controls previous operator Broadspectrum, said it did not want to renew its deal with the Australian government.

Broadspectrum, chaired by Diane Smith-Gander before it was taken over by the Spanish, was paid $2.53 billion over 3½ years to the end of October last year to operate Australia’s detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island.

The Manus centre was closed at the same time as Ferrovial’s contract expired.

Broadspectrum’s government contract was amended three times from an original value of about $900m.

Calls to its operational ­successor Canstruct yesterday to discuss its contractual renewal to operate the Morrison ­government’s Nauru centre were referred to Queensland public relations firm Mercer PR.

The firm did not respond to our inquiries.

Dwyer straits

It doesn’t seem like master of the universe Ben Gray and his BGH Capital team will have to wait much longer for official news from Healthscope chair Paula Dwyer on BGH’s revised $4.1bn bid for the private hospital operator.

“We are not going to kick the can down the road,” the also ANZ director and Tabcorp chair told Margin Call yesterday after Healthscope’s annual meeting in Melbourne.

Dwyer suffered a 5.3 per cent protest vote against her re-election to the board, which she joined when Gray’s old private equity shop TPG sold the health company back to the market in 2014.

What a backstory.

Now Gray is bidding for the group again with his inaugural $2.6bn BGH fund, along with colleagues Simon Harle and Robin Bishop (and the best wishes of their investors, including French billionaires Alain and Gerard Wertheimer of the Chanel luxury fortune).

Bishop’s old colleague at Macquarie, Tim Joyce, is advising BGH on its Healthscope bid, but we hear he’s still to be paid a cent for his so far unsuccessful work.

That’s unlike Dwyer’s adviser Kelvin Barry from UBS, who was front and centre at yesterday’s packed meeting.

The rainmaker Barry was paid $13m in fees to swat back BGH’s initial offer in May.

Barry, it turns out, is also advising the group on its proposed $1.8bn private property trust spin-off, which is a key component of Dwyer and her new CEO Gordon Ballantyne’s defence strategy.

Major shareholder Ellerston Capital’s Ashok Jacob — who wants Dwyer to open a data room to its private equity suitor —was also in the AGM crowd, the former Packer money man’s mere presence adding pressure on the chair.

There are a lot of well-paid eyes on this one.

New York knees-up

Good of our man in New York Alastair Walton to join Rupert Murdoch, Keith Urban and the gangfor the American Australian Association’s 70th anniversary bash in New York.

The black-tie, gala event — held yesterday at Wall Street’s Greek revivalist Cipriani venue — is the biggest annual event on the bilateral relationship’s social calendar. This year’s event was particularly extravagant, as a who’s who crowd of 600 marked the success of the outfit Sir Keith Murdoch founded back in 1948.

Rupert and wife Jerry Hall sat on the main table alongside Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the National Football League.

The media mogul — and founder of this masthead — jokingly promised in his speech “not to take a knee”, a gesture that has caused the NFL all sorts of angst this year.

“At my age it would be impossible anyway,” said Murdoch.

Also on Rupert’s table was his son and News Corp co-chairman Lachlan Murdoch, Australia’s Ambassador to Washington Joe Hockey, and News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson,and the American Australian Association boss John Berry, the former US ambassador to Australia.

Fox News personality Harris Faulkner hosted the benefit dinner, which also honoured Marillyn Hewson, the boss of Lockheed Martin, which — for a modest fee — is building Australia’s 70-odd F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.

Guests along for the night included son of Darwin Andrew Liveris, JPMorgan supremo Jamie Dimon and James Gorman, the Aussie running Morgan Stanley.

The former Goldman Sachs banker Walton — now Australia’s consul-general in New York — had a grim look about him, which was understandable.

Walton has been championing an Australian-US business group to rival the American Australian Association — or at least Walton was championing the idea, until the Morrison government knocked it over a few weeks ago.

That was after many of the heavyweights in the black-tie Cipriani crowd expressed their strong opposition to the proposal.