Well, it was bound to happen. The first Australian lawsuit has been filed against rogue entrepreneur David Collard, who’s currently laying low in Britain after being evicted from his high-end apartment in Manhattan – for failing to pay the rent.
Consulting firm Lake Advisory lodged documents with the Victorian Supreme Court on Thursday against SaniteX, a Geelong-based company that provides feeder services to Collard’s parent group, Scale Facilitation.
Margin Call has established that the action seeks payment of roughly $100,000 and the appointment of a liquidator to wind up the company and disperse its assets, with the matter to be heard on October 25.
None of which should be remotely surprising to anyone given that Collard, a close pal of Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles – whose role in signal-boosting this elusive blowhard remains totally unexplained – is understood to have accrued debts to staff and creditors of roughly $7m.
He quite literally owes money all over town, and throughout Marles’ electorate – to the Geelong Football Club, to Deakin University, even to the Give Where You Live Foundation, a Geelong-based charity. The Tinder Swindler wouldn’t stoop that low.
And let’s not forget the Australian Taxation Office, which raided Collard’s headquarters in July with the Australian Federal Police in tow, both agencies now seeking to take a bite out of him.
This lawsuit is almost certain to yield a run-on from others seeking to recover funds, with the wind-up notice submitted to ASIC due to go live imminently. This while Collard is down to his last favour, trying, repeatedly, to finance his purchase of failed car battery firm Britishvolt.
One sliver of relief expected from the court filing is that Collard’s abandoned staff might finally be able to access government support that’s been hitherto unavailable because SaniteX, lifeless dud that it is, is still technically operating.
The allegation is that it’s not only insolvent but, as the liquidator will undoubtedly wonder, whether it’s been trading that way for some time, too.
Fortescue fantasy
Years of big talk and blather from Fortescue Future Industries and yet so few practical achievements to show for it. Margin Call sighed at great length about this on Tuesday while noting that the green-energy arm of Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals empire has crowed (and crowed) about building a hydrogen plant in Brisbane, an electrolyser plant in Gladstone, and ginning up green ammonia at two AGL power stations in the NSW Hunter Region. The bloviating doesn’t stop, and still we’ve seen bubkes.
So what is FFI actually doing? What it does best: pointless stunts! It’s pedal to the metal in New York City, where the company decked out rickshaws in FFI livery ahead of the 78th session of the UN General Assembly. Global leaders, including Foreign Minister Penny Wong, would be mad not to ditch their limousines and hitch a ride down First Ave on these wonky contrivances. They’re glorified bicycles with the Fortescue logo slapped on and a couple of awful UN platitudes (“Act now for our common future”; “The future is ours to shape”) there for good measure. Aside from bleeding cash and losing executives, does anyone know what FFI even does anymore?
“This vehicle also produces zero carbon emissions when used,” says an advertisement, referring to the bike but also a picture of a truck pasted onto the contraption.
It’s a reference to FFI’s partnership with construction machine maker Liebherr to develop battery-electric trucks for hauling iron out of Fortescue’s mines – you know, the metals group side of the business that actually makes money.
Fossil fools
Not to keep harping on about the Australian Petroleum Producers and Exploration Association, or Australian Energy Producers, as they’re more palatably known these days, but a recent hire announced on Thursday demands some attention.
The peak body has signed Kate McNamara as a GM for communications – formerly of BHP, Inpex and Low Emission Technology Australia, where she served as communications director for nearly three years.
This is notable because McNamara is making a habit of joining fossil fuel companies that try to shed their skin. LETA, not unlike APPEA, underwent a costume change in 2020, rebranding themselves from the blunt-sounding Coal21 to the aforementioned low-emissions schtick.
It made sense, in a way, because LETA is essentially a research and development organisation whose reason for being is to take donations from the mining sector to find ways of cleaning up fossil fuels.
And APPEA’s reasoning for changing its name this month? Something about its members being paragons of carbon-fighting virtue, with CEO Sam McCulloch talking up their investments in “the net zero building blocks of low-carbon hydrogen production and carbon capture, utilisation and storage technologies”. So, it’s not just about oil and gas anymore: it’s about energy production.
That’s like Cadbury and Mars chucking a few bucks at fat-loss research and then claiming it’s a misnomer to say they’re purely in the business of snacking. A glance at the APPEA board – ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Woodside, ExxonMobil, etc – and you know this change of name is nothing but a grift.
Sorry from some, but others are silent
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