TPB chair Peter De Cure’s illuminating tweets; Packer cranks up property purchases
Peter de Cure is the button-down chairman of the Tax Practitioners Board, a scarcely known agency that turned giant-slayer this year when it sank a stone between the eyes of consulting major PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Empowered by that victory, de Cure told The Australian a week ago of potentially more pain to come for the hobbled accounting firm. Investigations are continuing – to unearth further instances of impropriety – and the TPB has requested further documents to inspect from the organisation.
Frankly, it’s all starting to sound a bit Eliot Ness over at the TPB. Sure, no bootlegging, no raids, no Al Capone – but plenty of tax evasion, and the bust-up at PwC has certainly up-ended an arrogant and seemingly untouchable consulting industry that has been soaking up government revenue for decades.
And while the famed federal agent never had access to Twitter in his day, de Cure is another matter.
His musings on the platform date back well before his appointment as TPB chair, in May, but they do jut up a little close to his appointment as a director in July 2017. Bearing a far lower profile back then – and not exactly a household name now, either – we doubt he’d carry on quite so freewheeling with his criticism as he would, perhaps, today.
In March 2012, while de Cure was a KPMG partner and director of Variety, the Children’s Charity, he called former treasurer Wayne Swan “misguided” over a “campaign against great Australians” – namely three billionaires. That was in reference to a Monthly essay in which Swan opined about the “rising power of vested interests” from people such as Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forrest and Clive Palmer, all of whom had been critical of Labor government policies like the mining tax.
And de Cure apparently was being quite restrained in his use of the word “misguided”, too, tweeting this was a “generous interpretation” of Swan, now the chairman of Cbus Super (and who happened to be spotted with DPG Advisory lobbyist Ben Oquist at Aussie’s cafe in federal parliament on Wednesday).
Perhaps even more off-piste was a slightly incoherent June 2016 tweet in which de Cure felt slighted by something TV presenter Waleed Aly had done.
“Gold logie & 5 minutes of media mega salary already out of touch with hard working Australians #Loser (sic),” he wrote. At the time de Cure was deputy chairman of Fulbright Australia, the cultural exchange program between Australia and US – and no great fan of punctuation either, it would seem.
We’re not certain of Aly’s crime on that occasion, but he did play some guitar on stage that evening during a fundraiser, and surely he wasn’t that bad. We asked de Cure if he wanted to make any remarks on the tweets but he declined.
Property play
James Packer’s real estate manoeuvring continues apace across Sydney and Melbourne.
Margin Call has already reported on the billionaire’s stake in the redevelopment of an apartment block in Sydney’s Potts Point, his offbeat affordable housing project in the Geelong suburb of Corio and, as revealed last week, a loan he provided to Tim Price’s Time & Place for the $50m purchase of Melbourne’s Hotel Lindrum, from billionaire Robert Magid. It’s now likely to be turned into an office tower.
The property plays do sound a bit safe, maybe even a bit dull compared with Packer’s run as a casino tycoon.
Yet we hear there are even more irons in the fire, with plans to acquire further real estate. Looks like Packer’s team, led by longstanding official Michael Johnston, is eyeing another investment in the Sydney suburb of Manly, which once again involves Time & Place, led by Price, Chris O’Keefe and Evan Papadopoulos. We sought comment but the calls weren’t returned.
In recent weeks there have been no fewer than seven new entities created by Camp Packer and the Time & Place team for a corporate structuring not unlike those used in their previous collaborations.
The latest vehicle is known as the Manly Development Partnership, which lists Johnston and Messrs Price, O’Keefe and Papadopoulos as directors. Packer owns about 20 per cent of that while the T&P crew has about 26.5 per cent each via companies in their own names.
Packer’s stake is held by NPACT Manly Developments, which is mostly owned by Packer through a related company.
His business partner, Todd Nisbet, controls a minority stake.
And they’ve spun off a slew of related vehicles: T&P Manly Land No1 Pty Ltd; T&P Manly Land Pty Ltd; and T&P Manly Equity Pty Ltd.
Elsewhere, Packer and Nisbet look to be planning a foray into the Melbourne suburb of Clayton with the creation of NPACT Clayton Pty Ltd. As usual, the billionaire has taken the majority ownership position.
The Cat’s luxury lair raided by corporate cop
The Byron Bay home of media entrepreneur Antony Catalano was paid a visit by ASIC on the hunt for a computer, as part of an alleged investigation of trading in asset manager Magellan.
The Price is right for Rinehart
Gina Rinehart praised the Coalition’s Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, urged the ADF to shift to Darwin and chastised unacclimatised city folk, in a recorded address to the Institute of Public Affairs.