Crisis is engulfing the Sydney Theatre Company following the weekend’s onstage pro-Palestine protest by actors, but where is the leading cultural organisation’s actual chairman?
The STC board is fracturing but Alan Joyce is nowhere to be seen.
In March the now former Qantas boss was appointed chair of the STC, replacing ex-Commonwealth Bank chief and now Seek boss Ian Narev.
At the start of September, Joyce “retired” from Qantas and has since then made himself scarce as possibly the least popular public figure in corporate Australia. Selling tickets for already cancelled flights and multimillion dollar pay days will have that effect on your profile.
And now things have erupted at the STC following the opening night of its new production, The Seagull, with long-serving director Judi Hausmann resigning from the board. The institution, in Joyce’s absence, is being led by Sydney eastern suburbs philanthropist and fundraiser Ann Johnson.
Hausmann is Jewish has said she was “stunned” and “devastated” by the weekend’s events.
“I never imagined my resignation would be necessary because I’m a Jew,” Hausmann wrote to Johnson this week.
So that’s another controversy the ex-airline boss has dodged by his absence.
Johnson, who’s been on the board for a decade, is the wife of Optimal Fund Management founder Warwick Johnson. They bought their Wolseley Road, Point Piper waterfront mansion from businessman Ben Tilley, who is right-hand man to billionaire James Packer.
Packer’s billionaire sister Gretel Packer is also on the STC and chairs the company’s foundation.
Joyce, who in 2021 was one of several wealthy Sydneysiders to tip in at $100,000 as donor “angels” to help the company get through Covid, meantime, was last seen in Europe. He was snapped a few weeks ago outside what was said to be his mum’s house in Dublin.
Repeated calls and emails to the STC’s publicity team and head office to find out why Joyce was on “extended leave” and when he would be back, alas, went unanswered.
They are keeping the circle, it seems, particularly tight.
Brighton brick wall
Melbourne real estate agency Marshall White is one of the city’s most successful operations of its kind, dominating the market for luxury residences in affluent suburbs like Toorak, South Yarra, Armadale and Brighton.
But recent weeks have seen the industry awash with chatter about Marshall White’s Brighton base following the shock exit from the business of successful agent Matthew Pollios at the start of this month. Pollios was a director of the entity Marshall White Brighton.
The reasons for the departure of Pollios, who handled hundreds of millions of dollars in sales last year through the Bayside office are unclear. He’s won several industry awards – including being named Victoria’s number one agent – and has bought and sold houses for myriad Aussie rules players.
Sadly, a call into Marshall White’s group sales director John Bongiorno concerning the departure of Pollios ended with Bongiorno hanging up on Margin Call after declaring he had no comment to make. Seems no one is in the mood to talk this week.
Who’d go to Canberra
What a grim picture of life as a political staffer is being painted, ever so graphically, by the evidence given in recent days by alleged Parliament House rape victim Brittany Higgins, as well as by her accused rapist Bruce Lehrmann.
But the “he said, she said” conflicting picture of events in March 2019 that is being painted by the former staffers to then defence industry minister Linda Reynolds harmonise on a key point.
Amid Lehrmann’s defamation action against Network Ten and its journalist Lisa Wilkinson, both Higgins and Lehrmann have recounted to Federal Court judge Michael Lee that the events of more than four years ago left each of the twenty-somethings contemplating suicide. Higgins told the court on Tuesday how she ended up in a depressive state and had taken to locking herself in a small shower room of the women’s bathroom while panic attacks unfolded.
This followed Lehrmann earlier in the week describing how he resorted to using cocaine as his mental health spiralled quickly downward.
He was soon admitted to a private mental health facility in Sydney’s north. Both of their careers in politics are dead in the water.
Who’d encourage their kids, then, fresh out of university and hearts full of dreams to head to Canberra and our nation’s seat of power, to begin a career of public service?
Almost 17,000 people were tuned into the Federal Court’s YouTube channel to watch the live stream of Higgins’ emotionally delivered evidence yesterday.
And what a sad, wretched affair the whole unfolding story is, which not even a chateau in France (Higgins and her partner David Sharaz reportedly have bought one) or living it up in luxury digs in Sydney’s east (Lehrmann courtesy of billionaire Kerry Stokes) could erase.
Sitting at the seat of power sounds like a terrible place to be.
More Coverage
Twist in move to trademark the ‘river’
It was only a matter of time before someone tried putting a trademark on the pro-Palestine rallying cry, but the obvious candidates have been beaten to the punch.
Game, set and much posturing at opening salvo
Let’s call it the first — and ultimate — status update of the corporate season. School assembly for the CEOs. The gathering of big-shots and silverbacks. The Australian Open tennis finals.