Studio 104 gets party restarted
When the dust settles on the federal election there will be some hard decisions to be made at president Michael Kroger’s Victorian Liberal Party headquarters.
The filching of $1.5 million from the party by former state director Damien Mantach (currently on remand ahead of sentencing on July 19) meant a quick reshuffle of finances, including taking out a $2m overdraft with National Australia Bank against the art deco building at 104 Exhibition Street, Melbourne that is owned by the Victorian division.
About $1m of the overdraft was drawn down to repay the so-called “Central Fighting Fund”.
That honey pot is filled by fundraising from rich branches, including those in Kelly O’Dwyer’s Higgins and Tim Wilson’s Goldstein.
The wider party had previously used the fund as an informal overdraft facility, but is now self-funding via the half-drawn NAB line of credit secured against the CBD building. The Libs paid $546,000 for the bricks and mortar in 1976.
These days the party occupies 104’s basement and four other levels. The Libs recently refurbished level five — which had previously been leased out to a contact lens factory — to house one of the party’s more effective call centres in the marathon campaign.
The floors the Libs use are run down, with the royal blue paint peeling off the walls.
We gather that once state director Simon Frost finishes election scrutineering — yesterday he was at an AEC stronghold in Mitcham looking at votes in Chisholm — he’ll be channelling Grand Designs presenter Kevin McCloud.
On the agenda: renovations, space consolidation and subleasing to generate income. As federal director Tony Nutt might tell you, every dollar helps.
Canvassing widely
Less urbane party members than Sky News commentator Michael Kroger have had to shield their eyes during recent visits to the Liberals’ Melbourne HQ.
The Victorian Liberals lease level four to the well-respected Tolarno Galleries, which has occupied the space for almost a decade.
Tolarno plans its schedule more than two years in advance, so how awkward that its current politically contentious exhibition by Australian artist Ben Quilty should coincide with the federal election.
Quilty’s The Stain has been on show since June 9 — running for almost half of the eight-week election campaign.
Serves Malcolm Turnbull right for holding a rotten winter campaign.
The exhibition is a graphic commentary on the plight of refugees around the world. It features Quilty’s work Border Force and installations featuring life jackets salvaged from Syrian refugees, some from children.
The gallery has been an occasional sore spot for the conservative wing of Robert Menzies’ broad church. It regularly features exhibitions by renowned Australian photographer Bill Henson, whose pubescent nudes made then prime minister Kevin Rudd so upset back in 2008 — when Turnbull was Liberal leader the first time around.
If you remember, our 29th Prime Minister owns two non-nude Hensons, one of a face in profile, the other of a sunset.
The first defendant
In three weeks lawyers for ANZ boss Shayne Elliott and his innovative head of communications Paul Edwards will gather with the lawyers representing tanned, unemployed, litigious broker Angus Aitken.
The two legal teams will gather at the Supreme Court of NSW for the next instalment of Aitken’s ambitious damages claim against the bank, following Edwards’ infamous “sexist” tweet.
Will ANZ’s lawyers allow the case to go much further? Will they allow Elliott to make history as Australia’s first big-four bank CEO to take the stand?
A full read of Angus’s statement of claim reveals why ANZ’s head of legal affairs Bob Santamaria might advise against it.
Aitken’s lawyers denounce ANZ’s “hypocrisy” for “resorting to allegations of sexism”.
And, raising the stakes, they point to ANZ’s “institutional culture ... in particular those employees in its trading arm (who) were indulging in sexist behaviour, and in one case sexual harassment, to the knowledge of the first defendant”.
The first defendant again? ANZ’s vegetarian boss Elliott, formerly the head of the bank’s scandal-plagued institutional bank. Gulp.
Too much to lose
Yes, it was while head of ANZ’s institutional bank that Shayne Elliott hired — we understand following an endorsement from John Key, New Zealand’s Prime Minister — former Merrill Lyncher Steve Bellotti to head ANZ’s global markets team.
A colourful figure in markets land, Bellotti left ANZ suddenly last November — only months before the financial press was filled with two legal cases launched by his former traders, who alleged a “toxic culture” at the bank, nights out at strip clubs and cocaine-laced birthday cakes on the trading floor.
Exciting stories about the ANZ markets team at the Hunter Valley’s Vintage Golf Club and nights out in Hong Kong that would make Jamie Briggs blush have swirled ever since.
There is disquiet within pockets of the ANZ diaspora about Elliott’s transformation from boss of the headline-making institutional wing of the bank to the CEO in charge of reshaping its culture.
So it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that some of the more unhappy staff dismissed from ANZ’s markets division have thoroughly briefed Aitken’s legal team on the more flagrant examples of bawdy behaviour at the bank — stuff that would make Elliott squirm in his Supreme Court chair, should he ever sit in it. Which is why — however time-challenged Aitken’s lawyer Mark O’Brien may be — we reckon this one is going to settle.
Hope we’re wrong though. Sounds almost as fun as the Oswals.
The floating rich
Meanwhile, as our nation awaits a leader and ANZ’s legal counsel Bob Santamaria burns the midnight oil, life is beautiful in the billionaire bays off Italy’s Isle of Capri.
White socked-billionaire James Packer and his Fantasy fianceeMariah Carey have been enjoying the company of American billionaire music and movie producer David Geffen, whose mega yacht Rising Sunis moored just across the way from Packer’s whopping Arctic P.
Joining them is fellow American billionaire Lex Wexner, whose L Brands owns lingerie giant Victoria’s Secret. Wexner has motored his super yacht Limitless into the same bay.
Wexner’s one-time angel Miranda Kerr knows the ins and outs of the Packer icebreaker well.
Indian tycoon Vijay Mallya also has his watercraft Indian Expressmoorednearby.
He clearly prefers the Mediterranean to Melbourne. Mallya, the boss of the Force India Formula One team, was meant to have visited earlier this year for the Australian Grand Prix but his teetering empire, founded on Kingfisher beer, kept him away.
Sydney millionaire rubbish king Ian Malouf of Dial A Dump success has his boat Mischief near the Packer party.
Also along, Armenian-born millionaire businessman and one-time owner of London’s Dorchester Hotel Bob Manoukian, who has his yacht Siran parked off Capri just over from American real estate developer Warren E. Halle’s Marth Ann.
Yes, it’s all happening in the Mediterranean — even before Lindsay Fox’s Love Boatsets off for his bacchanalian “conception party”, now only days away. Hide the children.
More wrongs than rights at the AHRC?
A case of curious priorities over at the Australian Human Rights Commission where hand-picked appointee Giridharan Sivaraman seems to prefer playing politics over action on anti-Semitism.
Freehills partner given notice over synagogue tweet
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