The AMP man who tipped a ScoMo win
They are calling him the “Oracle of Circular Quay”: the almost lone voice in corporate Australia who picked the election result.
Come on down Alastair Kinloch, director of government relations at AMP.
The financial services shop — worth $6.7 billion after yesterday’s 3 per cent ScoMo surge — hasn’t been flushed with good news stories over the last 12 months.
So let’s give the AMP man his credit.
Last week Australian Banking Association boss Anna Bligh threw a private election insights event at her bank lobby’s Sydney CBD headquarters.
The agenda included a political panel with Sky News host Peta Credlin (the Liberals chief staffer when Tony Abbott was elected in 2013), former Labor national secretary Tim Gartrell (one of the key brains behind Kevin Rudd’s ascension in 2007) and Sydney Morning Herald and Age executive editor James Chessell (an infamous staffer in the Howard government dubbed “the architect of WorkChoices”).
All three tipped a Shorten victory. So did just about everyone in the room full of government relations specialists.
That is everyone except Francesco De Ferrari’s political seer Kinloch.
Asked for his election insight by Gartrell, the AMP man told the room he thought Scott Morrison’s Coalition would win.
Kinloch sensed a swing back to the government in the campaign’s final week — a phenomenon he experienced first hand in 1993 when he was working alongside Andrew Robb in the Liberals’ campaign HQ.
No doubt this weekend’s experience will be just as memorable for those campaign staff who worked for John Hewson’s political successor Bill Shorten.
Wrong call
Most of corporate Australia lacked The Oracle’s insight — none more publicly than packaging billionaire Anthony Pratt.
After an awkward night out at Bill Shorten’s election night party, the pragmatic Pratt yesterday popped around to see the Liberal deputy leader Josh Frydenberg.
Pratt even brought a copy of The Oz, with the Margin Call-inspired “Messiah from The Shire” front page.
Nothing a bit of chutzpah and the Visy chequebook cannot fix.
Power lunch
The election of the flagrantly Victorian Bill Shorten would have dramatically relocated the national power lunch scene to Melbourne.
Instead, Scott Morrison victory has kept the main game in the Harbour City.
Case in point: the late lunch crowd at Rockpool yesterday, which is nestled in easy walk from the Commonwealth government’s Sydney offices.
Having a go and getting a go of the wine list were PM ScoMo’s principal political adviser Yaron Finkelstein, WA state director turned member for Tangney Ben Morton, Morton’s wife Asta and Isaac Levido, a deputy to federal Liberal director Andrew Hirst (and, like Finkelstein and Hirst, an alumnus of the Coalition’s ascendant again pollster C|T).
Also backing in a well deserved Rockpool long lunch on the neighbouring table was PM ScoMo’s media team: Andrew Carswell, Nick Creevey, Kate Williams and Ben Wicks.
How good is Neil Perry?
Meanwhile their boss was up in his CBD office around the corner, taking calls from world leaders, preparing his new ministerial line-up and, no doubt, taking a passing interest in the ongoing Labor leadership contest (and ALP recrimination campaign).
A perfect backdrop as the PM gets on with running the country.
Wedding bells
Back to Anthony Pratt, whose social curse seems to have finally broken.
The evening after the packaging billionaire jinxed Bill Shorten’s election night party — after performing a similar trick at Malcolm Turnbull’s equivalent function in 2016 — Pratt was on the guest list for the wedding of Tony Gray and Emily Ross at The Prince in St Kilda.
Pratt’s attendance on Sunday night naturally led to some concern that disaster might strike.
Would the groom, a longstanding Pratt family confidante, get lost and not arrive? Would the bride, a former journo-turned PR adviser, have second thoughts?
So it is with some relief that Margin Call can confirm that, in contrast to the Australian voting public’s cold feet for Shorten on Saturday night, the two participants went through with it.
Further, the celebration — attended by a flotilla of billionaires and their hangers on — was a great success.
The political albatross Pratt was along with his partner Claudine, his mother Jeanne, his sisters Fiona Geminder and Heloise Pratt, along with Visy director and HWT chairman Penny Fowler and Pratt Foundation trustee Sam Lipski.
Long-time Lowy consigliore Mark Ryan gave the best man speech, revealing why Gray was given the nickname “Spider”.
Barrister-turned Real Housewife of Melbourne Gina Liano presided over the wedding ceremony before the crowd of 350 guzzled 110 magnums of French champagne, which was specially imported for the occasion by Alex Waislitz’s right-hand man, former Macquarie banker Peter Landos.
Waislitz, in his trademark hat, brought along his romantic partner Rebecca Behbahani and business partner Antony Catalano.
Also among the crowd were a few other Waislitz favourites, notably Melbourne investor Sam Brougham, Bell Potter principal Hugh Robertson and Thorney Opportunities director and former Packer lieutenant Ashok Jacob.
Other rich listers in the crowd included businessman Peter Scanlan and Sussan boss Naomi Milgrom, while there was a sprinkling of CEOs including Mesoblast boss Silviu Itescu and BetEasy chief Matt Tripp.
Given Gray and Ross were both hacks (in different eras) on the now extinct Business Review Weekly, there was a roll-call of the fourth estate led by BRW’s founding editor Robert Gottliebsen, his modern day successor John “The List” Stensholt and his partner in wealth watching Damon Kitney.