Sitting down to a very quiet dinner

Cartoon: Peter Nicholson

EMBATTLED PM Tony Abbott was up and at it early yesterday morning as he sold the government’s data retention legislation alongside Australian Federal Police Commissioner Andrew Colvin at Federal Police HQ in Melbourne.

What the bleary-eyed media pack assembled for the AFP press conference didn’t know was that the real reason the PM was in Melbourne was apparently to lend support the previous evening to his new Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

The whisper is (and it is only a whisper because even Josh himself didn’t return our call yesterday) is that Josh entertained a very select group for dinner at the Pratt family’s Kew mansion Raheen, for decades home to big Liberal Party fundraisers.

Margin Call’s spies say there were no formal events listed for Raheen on Wednesday evening, meaning this dinner was very much on the QT.

Costello’s rough day

FORMER federal treasurer and dispatch box brawler Peter Costello had a rocky time yesterday as chair of the Future Fund at its quarterly update.

He confused the $60 billion stake the government originally funded the fund with in 2006 with the $48.7bn it has successfully added on since. He subsequently got them back the right way round, as it would have been quite something to convert $48.7bn into $109bn in the space of eight years.

But his instincts did not desert him when Margin Call’s neighbour John Durie sought comment on the Liberal leadership drama playing out in Canberra, and what he’d advise investors to do.

He dispatched the latter by noting that “I’m not going to give any advice to investors as I’m not licensed to do so”.

And on the leadership crisis, he said his views were something he wouldn’t care to articulate at a Future Fund event.

Coming round

IT has taken far too long but Tasmania’s Attorney-General, Vanessa Goodwin, has finally seen reason and scrapped her boneheaded plan to allow companies to sue for defamation.

Margin Call raised the alarm back on December 9, pointing out the move would be terrible for business journalism and risked making the Apple Isle’s courts a haven for libel tourists from the mainland. But Goodwin ignored reality until yesterday, when she finally capitulated.

Having comprehensively failed to understand her portfolio, she should resign.

And he huffed ...

STILL on matters political, and Margin Call is proud to present the latest episode of the ongoing drama Heffernan Goes Beserk.

The scene: a Senate committee room on Monday morning, where Buffalo Bill Heffernan and other senators have gathered to take evidence on “Australia’s transport energy resilience and sustainability”.

Those feeling the wrath included Nathan Dickens from the Australian Institute of Petroleum, who Heffernan first accused of “playing with the fairies” over the effect of a long interruption to fuel supply.

“Suppose it happened at harvest time and harvests ceased across Australia,” Heff huffed. “I would not say what I would like to say that you are doing to yourself, but you are playing with yourself.”

He also took aim at ExxonMobil Australia’s Andrew Thomas, demanding detailed financial information “because I am actually researching you for tax purposes”.

“I want to have a look at your affairs, because it is like the altar boys and the churches over the years — it is a no-go zone. But it is going to be a go zone.”

Orange the new black

IF the talk is to be believed, the team at Credit Suisse did their best to prove investment bankers really will do anything if there’s a fee to be gobbled at the Amaysim beauty parade on Wednesday.

Word is they dressed to impress, donning orange ties and wielding orange clipboards — orange being Amaysim’s corporate colour.

Macquarie, Goldman Sachs and Citi also pitched for the job of floating the company, which flogs discount mobile phone deals, but there’s no word on their sartorial choices.