Tinkering with the timing for Kylea Tink Award; Vincent Tesoriero performs his Civic duties

Independent MP for North Sydney Kylea Tink had an unfortunate diary clash on the day her inaugural eponymous award was due to be presented. Picture: AAP

“The inaugural Kylea Tink Award,” we recently learned from the Teal MP, “is traditionally given by the Member for North Sydney for perseverance, resilience and excellence across three or more subjects in Year 12.”

There are more than a few things wrong with that sentence. Quite how an award can have any tradition attached when it only came to exist a few months ago, when Tink was elected to parliament, is beyond us.

The bigger picture is that it was ousted North Sydney MP Trent Zimmerman who came up with an award in the first place, the idea being to honour the maiden class of Year 12 students at the newly built Cammeraygal High School, located in his seat. And he didn’t call it the Trent Zimmerman Award.

Former North Sydney MP Trent Zimmerman came up with a nice award but forgot to name it after himself. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Flavio Brancaleone

That was in 2020. He purchased a trophy, gave it to the school, and it was handed to a worthy recipient each year until he was toppled by Tink at the 2022 election. Since then a new trophy has been acquired with the Teal MP’s name all over it.

If there’s any tradition starting to form here it’s that Tink has a reliable tendency to behave in very unusual ways and draw attention to that behaviour with odd public remarks. Take, for ­example, her explanation for buying shares in Beach Energy and Viva Energy last year, despite her vigorous campaigning against coal-and-gas-chugging energy sources.

She defended this glaring inconsistency by saying the shares were acquired to “better understand the entities” and “potentially exert pressure from within to drive reform”. Never mind that these statements are ridiculous. Two weeks later she quietly abandoned her holdings and told Margin Call that parliament itself provided the greater avenue for exerting pressure.

That explanation was equally ridiculous. We’d expect this kind of sophistry from crackpots like Ralph Babet and others carrying water for the UAP, but hardly from Tink, whose raison d’etre was apparently to restore integrity and honesty to the politics of Canberra.

Which is supposedly where Tink was en route the day after her inaugural award was presented to a Year 12 student at the Cammeraygal school in the seat of North Sydney.

Sadly, Tink wasn’t able to turn up to the event and present the trophy in person. Instead, she posted a picture some weeks later on social media congratulating the winner.

“Unfortunately I was travelling to Canberra and couldn’t be there to deliver the award in person,” she wrote in the post.

But what was so pressing in Canberra?

It wasn’t as though parliament was sitting that day. Nor were any of her three parliamentary committees.

Tink didn’t provide an on-record comment, but an official said the post had been miscaptioned – she wasn’t driving to Canberra after all.

We then learned that she couldn’t attend the school event because it clashed with her own daughter’s graduation dinner, booked months in advance.

Understandable if the clash occurred at the last minute.

But apparently it was known to her office for more than a week, enough time, we say, to come up with a solution.

It’s her bloody award, after all.

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Legal expenses

The way Vincent Tesoriero tells the story, he hasn’t got enough money to defend himself in the Federal Court against the likes of Westpac, which is pursuing him as a co-conspirator in a $500m fraud concerning his time as a director of Forum Finance.

A substantial chunk of Tesoriero’s funds were frozen in the course of this marathon courtroom saga. But judges hearing the case have also shown glimmers of benevolence, granting him $5000 per week as a stipend for living expenses and $1.25m to cobble together a defence.

Perhaps it’s curious, or maybe it’s just prudent, but we hear that some of these funds have started being channelled from legal trust accounts into the palms of people inhabiting the murky realm of litigation and reputational advice.

We know this because two members of The Civic Partnership were spotted in court on Monday. For the uninitiated, Civic is the firm that managed Israel Folau’s campaign against Rugby Australia and was put on by Tennis Australia during the Novak Djokovic furore.

No great surprise that Tesoriero would bring them on ahead of his trial next year, although he’s something of a small potato client next to the likes of cancelled Essendon CEO Andrew Thorburn, who recruited the services of Civic’s managing partner Mark Hawthorne about a week ago.

From what we hear, Civic was actually tapped by Tesoriero’s father, John, who spent Monday in court trying to strike himself off from the Westpac matter, without success. Funding Civic out of the legal kitty might not be in the spirit of the judge’s orders. Or is it? We asked Civic about the arrangement and they declined to comment, but only a fool could think they are working for free.

As for the younger Tesoriero, the claim that his legal funds are starting to run dry didn’t garner much sympathy from Justice Tom Thawley, who threw out his request for another $2m.