It’s fear and loathing at 10 paces over at Nine Entertainment’s North Sydney bureau where The Sydney Morning Herald’s coverage of Monday’s train chaos led to some seriously raised eyebrows – among its own staff.
The masthead’s new editor Bevan Shields copped an overwhelmingly negative response to his 6.41am Twitter post quoting a NSW government minister describing the situation as “industrial bastardry of the worst form”.
“Sydney hit by snap train strike,” Shields wrote.
‘This is industrial bastardy of the worst form’.
— Bevan Shields (@BevanShields) February 20, 2022
Sydney hit by snap train strike https://t.co/wv32vLDNqJ
That’s despite the paper’s breaking news reporter, Sarah McPhee, in an internal Slack group, telling Shields only minutes before his post that it was “not technically a strike”. “The government says the union essentially made it unsafe to run the network today hence using industrial action,” she wrote.
“It’s a strike,” Shields responded to McPhee.
The Herald had, it seemed, fallen for the NSW government’s spin hook, line and sinker.
David Elliott, Transport Minister and part-time police impersonator, had that morning accused the Rail, Tram and Bus Union of engaging in “some sort of terrorist-like activity”.
The next day, facing a barrage of criticism, the government backed down and dropped its legal action against the workers.
By 9.24am on Monday, McPhee was pushing back. “I would be leaning towards using shutdown, I am getting an enormous amount of heat for us running strike,” she said.
So was transport reporter Tom Rabe, who told the group that “amid industrial action” would be his preferred turn of phrase. Then there was new Sydney editor Michael Koziol, who weighed in with, “my support for ‘shutdown’ over strike”.
After some debate, Shields told his journalists that “the decision about what we name this should be made by editors” – specifically news director Andrew Forbes and digital editor Alex Rowe.
Forbes’ take? “Shutdown please,” he responded.
But the bust-up did not end there. At an all-staff meeting on Thursday, some anonymous Herald scribe lobbed this curly question in reference to Shields’ favoured approach to online criticism – the block button: “How much have subscriptions decreased after Bevan repeatedly blocked subscribers on Twitter?”
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Hill of content
Now that the reprisal last year of exclusive charity gala the Gold Dinner is behind her, shopping centre heiress Monica Saunders-Weinberg can get on with the job of creating the perfect eastern suburbs mansion for her family in Sydney’s Bellevue Hill.
Over the past 12 years Saunders-Weinberg, who is the billionaire philanthropist daughter of Westfield co-founder John Saunders, has spent millions of dollars scooping up homes on the suburb’s prestigious Drumalbyn Rd. She now looks ready to begin the process towards construction of her dream home.
In 2010, the 43-year-old philanthropist, who was chair of the organising committee that rolled out the Sydney Children’s Hospital fundraiser in June last year at Sydney Airport, forked out for the first of three adjoining properties, writing a cheque for $20m.
She then sat tight until 2018, when she purchased the neighbour’s place for $5.9m.
Two years later, the dream site was complete when Saunders-Weinberg paid $4.8m for the other neighbour to find herself the owner of a $30.7m cluster of connecting properties in a prime locale.
Now the socialite is asking Woollahra Municipal Council for permission to put the three sites together, demolish existing dwellings and build the sort of home you might expect a billionaires to live in – all at an estimated cost of another $8.45m.
Must be nice.
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Distorted Power
If Perth businessman and keen aviator Neville Power offers you a ride in his plane or chopper, we think the answer needs to be no.
The now former Perth Airport chairman – who used to run Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest’s Fortescue Metals – has been in court with his son Nick over breaches of Western Australia’s Covid-19 border restrictions.
The pair have pleaded guilty after flying from Queensland to WA in October last year without the requisite pass required for all travellers entering the state at that time.
Not a great look for respected board director Power, who oversaw Scott Morrison’s national coronavirus commission that was set up early in 2020 as the virus took hold.
But Power’s legal team has filed a baker’s dozen of character references – including one from Twiggy and a psychologist report describing “cognitive distortions” that affect the businessman at times of stress. Power, over the course of the pandemic, has piloted his private jet on several trips with government ministers aboard, including the Prime Minister’s confidant and Special Minister of State Ben Morton, the then attorney-general Christian Porter and the then finance minister Mathias Cormann.
All the flights were appropriately disclosed – the ministers didn’t forget their paperwork – but did they know of Power’s “cognitive distortions” amid stress?
Flying a plane, after all, is said to be one of the most stressful jobs around.
The father-and-son pair will be sentenced in a month’s time.
Brace for impact.
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Lark hangover
Collateral damage continues to rain down on those associated with imploded former Lark Distillery boss Geoff Bainbridge.
The millionaire businessman is believed to be lying low in the US following publication by this newspaper of videos exposing his drug use.
There was also his accompanying, but ultimately discredited, tall tale of extortion told to Nine Entertainment masthead The Age.
But the fallout is continuing back home as Lark shares trade at their lowest level in eight months, closing on Thursday at $3.24.
That’s a long way off the $5 a share at which Lark and Bainbridge raised $53m in fresh capital via a Barrenjoey-led underwritten placement in October last year, which institutional and new investors embraced to assist the grog company grow via acquisition.
At the time a buoyant Bainbridge told Stockhead that Lark could one day be worth $15 a share, given the current momentum and demand for whiskey worldwide.
“I think Lark has demonstrated that luxury brands are rare, and I believe the company is sitting comfortably with the likes of the Penfolds and in the category of triple-A investments,” the now disgraced boss said.
John Murray’s Perennial Value Management drank the kool aid, sorry, whiskey, taking the fund’s stake in Lark via the placement beyond substantial.
In subsequent days Perennial, clearly excited by Lark’s story, spent about another $10m on-market to take its stake to 7.3 per cent.
Ouch.
The millionaire boss is believed to have walked out of the lift to the capital raising’s celebration party on level six of billionaire Justin Hemmes’ The Ivy on George St in Sydney jumping out of his skin at how well the Barrenjoey-led placement had gone.
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