ScoMo opening doors for Dubai; Allan Fels finds a safe Haven

Add Jimmy Barnes to the list of the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge members. Picture: Jane Barnes

Presumably no one can open doors like a former prime minister? Scott Morrison, we hear, has been busy smoothing out introductions in Australia for executives at Sidara Collaborative, the Dubai-based engineering and consulting firm that appointed him to its advisory board in March.

We’re starting to understand why – what kind of schmuck turns down a meeting with a former prime minister?

This was one of several strategic advisory roles the former PM accepted after leaving office two years ago. In fact, his latest gig was just announced last month when he was named chair of Space Centre Australia, a rocket-launching space port based in Queensland.

But it’s the work with Sidara (formerly Dar Group) that appears to be consuming most of ScoMo’s time and attention.

Margin Call has learned that he’s become a key point-man in the group’s efforts to expand its presence in Australia. Chaired by Talal Shair, the company employs more than 19,000 people – about 150 of whom work here – and reported annual revenue last year in excess of $4.2bn.

The timing of these expansion plans are worthy of examination, and so too are a few dots left behind, just begging to be joined together.

Former prime minister Scott Morrison. Picture: Getty Images

Morrison joined Sidara in March, one month before it offloaded a $1.4bn interest in engineering firm Worley, which it tried unsuccessfully to buy in 2016. Later it switched tactics and crept up its register, acquiring more than 23 per cent of the company.

Until that mammoth block trade to sell 19 per cent of its holding, Sidara had been Worley’s largest shareholder.

We have it on reliable authority that Morrison, in the months since, has been approaching ASX-listed companies for discussions about forming partnerships with Sidara. Barely any secret has been made of the firm’s intent to expand and the former PM is clearly the link to realising its ambition for Australia. Morrison’s former defence minister, Christopher Pyne, could be another – his firm Pyne and Partners is still listed as Sidara’s registered lobbyist (although, from what we hear, Pyne’s role with Sidara ended once it sold that stake in Worley six months ago).

And expansion plans have been noted elsewhere, too. In August, Sidara walked away from a $3bn bid to buy Britain’s John Wood Group, blaming global market turmoil and geopolitical risks for the collapse in those negotiations.

Morrison declined to comment when we came knocking. YB

Chairman’s Lounge

Spotted! Rock star Jimmy Barnes in the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge at Sydney Airport. No shade on Barnesy for kicking back in a leather chair while waiting for a flight. After all, he’s a working class man … just like Anthony Albanese. YB

Safe Haven for some

While it was in opposition last year, NSW Labor announced that Professor Allan Fels, ex-chairman of the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, would oversee a review of road tolling across NSW.

That appointment was flagged in February. One month later, then-opposition leader Chris Minns announced that, should Labor win the election, his government would commit $20m to the Haven Foundation, a mental health organisation that counts not only Fels but his daughter, Teresa, as directors.

History from there records that Labor did win government and the funding has since duly flowed.

We hear announcements in this space should be coming fairly soon.

No suggestion of anything outwardly wrong with these arrangements, of course, although the appointment of Fels and the funding later allocated to his organisation is curious in its timing and coincidence.

According to parliamentary budget office documents, the $20m will pay for the purchase of three sites which will be leased to Haven at a peppercorn rate and used for long-term residential accommodation.

Haven is a subsidiary of Mind Australia, which lauded the funding announcement.

What else would you expect? Its chair is Allan Fels! YB

Timely tips

You wouldn’t single out the Australian National Audit Office for its sense of comic timing.

But one of the cardigans at the audit office must surely have had a chuckle at Albo’s expense as they published their latest report – Audit Lesson Insights: Gifts, Benefits and Hospitality.

Released as Albo twists and turns on the depth of his relationship with Qantas, the ANAO report leads out with a simple recommendation: don’t take freebies, even if they appear innocent. It looks bad and fosters real corruption.

Or, in audit office language, “establishing a guiding principle for officials to generally avoid the acceptance of gifts, benefits and hospitality helps promote a culture of integrity”.

ANAO’s fifth recommendation also seems apt, given the PM’s current problems: controls can help ensure inappropriate personal benefits are not derived from official travel.

Self control would be a good start, on form.

The ANAO can’t police the behaviour of politicians, of course. Our political leaders set their own rules and thereby prove the old adage that self-regulation is no regulation at all.

But there have been plenty of examples that senior public servants take their guide from their political masters. From NDIS officials that failed to declare luxury lunches with software companies to the ACCC commissioners and CASA officials that accepted memberships of Qantas’s Chairman’s Lounge and the Office of the eSafety Commissioner employees who accepted $1000 tickets to a fundraiser put on by the AFL, but said on a gift registry they were only worth $150.

Still, the ANAO’s timely insights could deliver a lesson to Albo and his colleagues on both sides of parliament.

“The appearance of a conflict can be just as damaging to public confidence as a conflict that gives rise to a concern based on objective facts. The acceptance of gifts, benefits or hospitality creates the risk of an actual, potential or perceived conflict of interest – at the time the gift was offered or during later decision-making activities.” We have every confidence the lesson will be learned this time. NE