Spilling the beans on coffee club

Illustration: Rod Clement.

Guess who first lady Lucy Turnbull was having coffee with at exactly the same time her husband, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, joined his Treasurer Scott Morrison to announce a tough new “accountability” measure for the big four banks?

Step forward David Gonski, the chairman of ANZ — one of the big four banks with which the PM was apparently getting tough.

ANZ chairman David Gonski. Picture: Hollie Adams/The Australian.

So where would Lucy and Gonski elect to meet?

First lady Lucy Turnbull. Picture: Britta Campion/The Australian.

Where else but the coffee shop at 1 Bligh Street, home of the commonwealth government’s offices in Sydney — the very spot that the PM and his Treasurer held their press ­conference to make their supposedly tough-on-banks announcement.

No wonder the Labor Party is having such fun using bank bashing as a proxy for going after Turnbull, once the head of investment bank Goldman Sachs down under.

And no wonder ANZ’s boss Shayne Elliott (who Gonski ­appointed last year) was so quick to endorse the PM’s “necessary initiative”.

We almost wouldn’t be surprised if his handsomely tanned boss Gonski had helped write ­Elliott’s lines.

Could it be that the ANZ chair’s almost Point Piper neighbour Lucy — who was dressed brightly in a pink jacket, black shirt and fetching matching pumps — also helped with a line or two for Shayne with a “y”? Surely not.

Coleman tools up

So the question everyone in the banking world now wants to know is, who will be the chair of Malcolm Turnbull’s retooled House of Representatives Economics Committee?

David Coleman is the hot favourite to chair the House of Representatives Economics Committee.

The hot favourite is David Coleman, who took over as its chair not long before the last parliament dissolved.

The position is one given by the grace of the Prime Minister (who himself was once its chair, as more recently was now Assistant Treasurer Kelly O’Dwyer).

As the bank CEOs are going to prepare thoroughly before their appearances, the new chair — who will be officially appointed shortly after the 45th federal parliament assembles in Canberra on August 30 — will need to know their stuff.

Coleman’s CV includes time as a McKinsey analyst, a director of strategy and digital at Nine Entertainment and, helpfully, director at fender-bending Mark Bouris’s home loan business Yellow Brick Road Holdings.

The guy should know his stuff.

And if that’s not convincing enough, we should mention Coleman is literally the Member for Banks. That’s the name of the electorate in the southwest of Sydney that he won in 2013, making him the first non-Labor member to hold the seat (named after James Cook’s botanist Joseph Banks) since it was created in 1949.

Chamber pot

Arthur Sinodinos and the rest of Malcolm Turnbull’s “Star Chamber” continue to approve, and disapprove, would-be political staffers.

Attorney-General George Brandis. Picture: Philip Norrish.

Health Minister Sussan Ley has a new acting chief of staff Lisa Studdert — a senior public servant from the Health Department — who has recently been cleared by the Star Chamber.

As reported, Simon Atkinson also got the nod to leave his gig as chief of staff to Mathias Cormann, the famously hard-working Finance Minister, and join the PMO. Atkinson will be in a “strategic policy” role that will work closely with cabinet secretary Sinodinos.

Atkinson is likely to be replaced internally by Cormann’s former deputy COS, Belinda Pola.

Pity our Perth-based federal representatives, who can find it hard to retain staff.

During daylight saving, the three-hour time difference is brutal. Then there’s the exhausting Perth commute.

And if you work for Employment Minister Michaelia Cash you have to hear about her cats. Little wonder she has had such attrition in recent weeks.

Also problematic is the office of Attorney-General George Brandis. Not only has his COS Paul O’Sullivan left, the leader of the government in the Senate has also lost his deputy chief of staff Josh Faulks to Michelle Guthrie’s ABC. The search for a permanent replacement for both continues.

Vale, Buster

The good burghers of Sydney’s eastern suburbs yesterday farewelled retired general practitioner Winston Joseph “Buster” Summerhayes, the longstanding doctor of the billionaire Packer clan, with a Catholic ceremony at St Francis of Assisi in Paddington.

Kerry Packer in 1991.

The much-loved doctor was — in addition to being the GP of most of Coogee — the late Kerry Packer and his family’s most trusted practitioner.

Buster even had an office at the Packers’ Consolidated Press headquarters and looked after James Packer, 48, soon to marry (on reality TV?) for the third time to American songstress Mariah Carey.

In a rare mention of Kerry in the service, gathered friends and family heard how Buster loved racquetball and played often at CPH with the late Packer, an opponent who famously did not enjoy losing.

Wrong side of 60

Another long-time loyal servant of both James and his late father Kerry Packer, lawyer Guy Jalland, turned 60 last month.

Mariah Carey and James Packer.

Recent years have seen Jalland, originally from Bendigo in Victoria, based out of the Caribbean. But far from being marooned on a tropical island, he has remained a key part of the empire as the Packers’ most intimate legal adviser.

Might it soon be time for Jalland to scale back his role in the inner sanctum, but perhaps stick around in a reduced, consulting-style capacity as the keeper of many secrets — corporate and otherwise? We have heard as much.

For the time being Jalland, who was a key part of the team that negotiated the settlement of Kerry Packer’s estate with siblings Gretel and James, still remains a director of ConsPress. He is also on a host of other private family vehicles, including those relating to Packer’s second wife, Erica Baxter, and their three children.

Packer — whose fortune was last valued at $5 billion — might be hoping Jalland is still working directly for him to sort out legal arrangements ahead of his wedding to Mariah Carey, who in her own right is worth more than $700 million.

Ringside seat

We just can’t wait. And we bet Flagstaff boss Tony Burgess can’t, either.

Flagstaff Partners CEO Tony Burgess, in his Melbourne office.

It’s now been confirmed that the boutique investment banker is set to take the stand in the unfolding court battle between ANZ and wannabe fertiliser billionaires Pankaj and his “wifey” Radhika Oswal.

Burgess is becoming increasingly familiar with the Victorian justice system, having recently taken the enterprising — if unorthodox — step of suing his former client, detention centre operator Broadspectrum (nee Transfield Services) over almost $4m in fees.

That action in the Victorian Supreme Court came after chair Diane Smith-Gander ditched Flagstaff’s advisory services in favour of Nicholas Moore’s Macquarie to hold its hand during the ultimately successful $813m takeover by Spanish giant Ferrovial.

Burgess’s Flagstaff has already copped some flak from the Oswal side, which accused the Charles Goode-chaired boutique of not being up to the job of flogging off the couple’s Burrup fertiliser empire.

Along with Burgess, other much anticipated guests scheduled for the box include ANZ’s former chief risk officer Chris “headlock” Page, along with Shayne Elliott’s current head lawyer Bob Santamaria (son of Tony Abbott’s first political love, the late B.A.) and senior exec Guy Gaudion.

Receiver and former state president of the Victorian Liberal Party Ian Carson will also soon take the stand once settlement talks between the Oswals and other parties to the action are finished.