After holidays, a court trip for Rosemary Rogers

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Beamed in from a cell in Surry Hills police station on to a screen in Sydney’s central local court, Andrew Thorburn’s former chief of staff Rosemary Rogers looked miserable.

After the extravagant holidays — to Europe, to Miami, to Wolgan Valley — comes the court case.

Yesterday morning Rogers set off on one last jaunt: a modest trip from her home in Melbourne to the police station in Sydney where she was charged as one half of a multi-million-dollar alleged fraud operation that — if proven in court — will underline everything people loath about the big banks.

“The crimes were motivated by greed,” the lawyer representing NSW Police told the court late yesterday afternoon.

For almost a decade, Rogers sat in the nexus of power of ­National Australian Bank, as chief of staff first to Cameron Clyne and then to his replacement Thorburn.

Andrew Thorburn and Cameron Clyne in 2014. Picture: Carmelo Bazzano

It was a position that gave her huge power across NAB’s executive team.

She was the gatekeeper who could help you get time with the CEO. Or put you in the freezer. Rogers was also the person in charge of perks doled out to NAB’s executive team, most of which were provided by her co-accused Helen Rosamond’s outfit The Human Group.

The pair have been charged with more than $5 million of fraud across $40m of transactions charged to NAB.

It is alleged Rogers was brazenly thorough in her road-testing (and plane-testing and heli-testing) NAB’s executive largesse.

NSW Police’s lawyer outlined the scope of their investigation, which has gone on for more than a year.

“The strength of the case is strong,” he said.

More than 100 witness statements have been gathered.

One is from Thorburn. Clyne is suspected of being among the others, but yesterday refused to comment.

Rogers — dressed in a black top, her dark hair dyed a golden blonde, her physique thinner than when she was last photographed — sat silent and downcast.

She was allowed to return to the home in Melbourne’s Williamstown she bought for $3.8m and was moving into in December 2017 when she was summoned by Thorburn for the chat that ended her more than 20-year career at NAB.

Her bail terms are strict: she must hand in her passport, cannot go to an airport unless she is travelling to court, is not allowed near NAB documents, must report daily to the Williamstown police station, cannot speak to any of the case’s hundred witnesses or use any encrypted messaging service.

And — above all — Rogers cannot communicate with her co-accused Rosamond, with whom she had chatted to over WhatsApp before the UK-born Sydney businesswoman was charged on Friday.

The case will return to court on March 19.

Payout on menu

It happened at Azuma.

A fortnight ago, on Monday, February 18, uber investment banker Simon Mordant was at his usual alcove spot in the Japanese power diner in Sydney with sacked ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie.

Over a nutritious lunch of sashimi and daikon salad, the pair discussed Guthrie’s then ongoing litigation against the public broadcaster.

Mordant — who had been on the ABC board that appointed Guthrie back when Jim Spigelman was its chairman — had a scheme.

Might there not be a commercial, rather than legal, answer to Guthrie’s unhappy dismissal?

The conversation was promising enough that two days later, on Wednesday, February 20, Mordant — again in his alcove spot at Azuma that he alternates with ANZ chairman David Gonski — broached the scheme over lunch (sashimi, of course, and daikon salad) with the ABC’s acting chair, Kirstin Ferguson. Cut out those greedy lawyers?

Ferguson liked the idea.

The next day, Guthrie and Ferguson assembled in Mordant’s office in Aurora Place (the alcove table at Azuma only seats two).

By Friday, Ferguson’s ABC board had given the peace negotiations its blessing.

Then, ominously, the lawyers got involved.

They were apparently not happy about being sidelined and even more unhappy that further litigation — and further fees — would come to an end.

Happily for everyone else, wiser heads prevailed.

The AFR’s Aaron Patrick has reported that it was agreed that Guthrie would be paid $500,000 in addition to her earlier $900,000 dismissal fee.

Neither Mordant, the ABC or Guthrie’s camp would comment on the settlement’s size.

Nor did any of them dispute it.

Now Mordant can get back to his Luminis Partners investment banking boutique.

Ferguson and her fellow directors can get on with other public broadcasting matters as the ABC tomorrow officially moves into the Ita Buttrose era.

And Guthrie can plot her career after Aunty, which we expect — once her youngest daughter finishes the International Baccalaureate in Sydney later this year — will see her relocate to friendlier pastures in Asia.

At home in Kooyong

There’s been plenty of talk in federal politics of geographic blow-ins lately.

Think liberal-turned-independent Julia Banks in Chisholm then Flinders, Bondi resident liberal John Alexander in Bennelong, Hunters Hill homemaker Craig Laundy as the Member for Reid.

But no one can accuse newly minted Green Julian Burnside, who turns 70 in June, of not understanding the good people of Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s Kooyong.

Julian Burnside and Richard Di Natale yesterday. Picture: Stuart McEvoy.

Burnside, who joined the Greens just a couple of weeks ago, yesterday launched his campaign as their candidate for the previously safe Liberal seat in Melbourne’s leafy inner east.

Hired gun corporate lawyer-turned refugee advocate Burnside knows his way around.

The Queen’s Counsel, who is married to lifelong Labor voter and artist Katherine Durham, has lived in Kooyong his entire life and owned his current home, a historic mansion on Hawthorn’s Liddell Street with sculpture garden in the front, for almost 30 years.

He also has homes in Clifton Hill and Ballarat.

Burnside’s front gate was wide open yesterday as he appeared on Hawthorn’s Glenferrie Road with Greens leader Richard Di Natale, while charity bags filled with donated goods awaited collection outside the new candidate’s fence for those in need.

He’s certainly on message.