Vitamin king Marcus Blackmore’s tonic for Bill Shorten
The Morrison government will be terrified by the crowd Bill Shorten pulled last night at his budget reply function.
First up, Blackmores founder and the China-focused vitamins business’s CEO once again, Marcus Blackmore (just valued at $545 million on The Stensholt List), was the richest guest Margin Call spotted arriving at the National Convention Centre for the up to $1700-a-head fundraiser.
None of the almost 500 dinner guests — plus the hundreds of extras just there for drinks — could remember any half-billionaires turning up at any of Shorten’s five previous efforts.
The Sydney-based Blackmore wasn’t the only CEO along. We also spotted new Virgin Australia CEO Paul Scurrah, accounting software business boss Tim Reed, ride-sharing outfit Ola’s local MD Simon Smith, Australian Hotels Association boss Stephen Ferguson and Australian Banking Association CEO Anna Bligh, dressed in the unambiguous red that recalled her days as Queensland’s Labor premier. There was also something of a Coalition staffer reunion going on on the sidelines of the gathering of Shorten’s shadow ministry.
That included — but was far from limited to — Tony Abbott’s former communications director Jane McMillan (now running government affairs at American multinational Johnson & Johnson), former senior Abbott staffer Stefanee Lovett (now managing director of Nexus Public Affairs), Kelly O’Dwyer’s former chief of staff Julian Sheezel (now running corporate affairs at the union-loving Carlton & United Breweries) and Michael Keenan’s former chief of staff Sarah Wood (now at Amex).
Not one among them will be regretting their evacuations from staffing life.
Also spotted: Kevin’s brother Greg Rudd. Welcome back!
And the recently married former Labor staffer Claire March, who came fresh from the launch (by a supremely confident Chris Bowen) of her new lobbying shop Counsel House. What better place for a honeymoon?
Wine, dine and Pyne
The night before Christopher Pyne made his triumphant farewell in the House of Representatives, the departing leader of the federal Moderate faction was guest of honour at his own Canberra house party.
Almost 30 members of the Moderate faction — previously known as “The Black Hand”, recently rebranded as the “Modern Liberals” — were along to toast their beloved leader at the house in Deakin the departing Defence Minister shares with Trade Minister Simon Birmingham (Pyne’s successor as the faction’s federal leader), Foreign Minister Marise Payne, North Sydney MP Trent Zimmerman and Fairfax MP Ted O’Brien.
Along to pay respects and to refresh the lemons in Pyne’s bottomless gin and tonics: returned senator for Tasmania Richard Colbeck, Browyn Bishop-crusher Jason Falinski, Bowman MP Andrew Laming, Aged Care Minister Ken Wyatt, Social Services Minister Paul Fletcher, Berowra MP Julian Leeser, Immigration Minister David Coleman and Goldstein MP Tim Wilson and John Alexander, whose defence of Bennelong against the Labor candidate Brian Owler (former president of the Australian Medical Association) just got even harder after Bill Shorten’s health-focused budget reply.
Some of Pyne’s fellow retiring moderates were along, namely retiring Member for Reid Craig Laundy, the departing MP Jane Prentice and Industrial Relations Minister Kelly O’Dwyer.
Departing former foreign minister Julie Bishop didn’t make it. Some thought last August’s leadership ballot was the reason. Others told Margin Call a function Bishop had in her Parliament House office with her current and former staff was the reason. Back to the guests, which also included three of Pyne’s extra-parliamentary friends: former Howard minister Robert Hill, bon vivant and lobbyist Michael Photios and the not-quite-lobbyist Tom Harley.
While there were no speeches at the Festival of Pyne, there were a few cigars and an immoderate quantity of booze.
And what about Pyne’s replacement in the Deakin share house?
That will be determined at a future share house meeting between Birmingham, Payne, Zimmerman and O’Brien — after they survey what is left of the Moderates after the upcoming election.
Looking at Latham
What to do about Mark Latham?
It has been a subject of heated discussion in the Labor Party at least since Latham went missing after his unsuccessful tussle with John Howard at the 2004 election. And it is a subject that Bill Shorten and his federal troops will never completely escape. Even as Gough Whitlam’s ALP successor in Werriwa has reinvented himself as the newly elected NSW state upper house member for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, the ghost of Latham lingers.
Whenever the federal Labor caucus gathers in their party room in Parliament House, staring out at them is Latham’s bespectacled portrait, which sits between his predecessor Simon Crean and the eventual Howard-slayer Kevin Rudd.
Party tradition dictates that the portraits of former leaders will stay hanging — without exception — although evidently some Laborite out-of-towners are less bound by tradition.
On budget night, as the party room was filled with unionists and fellow travellers of the ALP to listen to Josh Frydenberg, Latham’s portrait was flipped to face the wall.
Margin Call can confirm it has since been returned to its proper position — in time for Shorten’s budget speech.
However much he embarrasses them, Latham is still part of the Labor furniture.
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