Upheaval in Grace Tame’s foundation; Race Strauss the Bain man to pilot Virgin’s listing

Grace Tame and partner Max Heerey at last year’s Australian of the Year Awards in Canberra. Picture: Getty Images

The Grace Tame Foundation appears to have undergone a dramatic upheaval with its governing board over summer, with the former Australian of the Year elevating herself to the position of company secretary while her fiance has vanished entirely as an officeholder from the ­organisation.

Margin Call has learned Max Heerey, to whom Tame announced her engagement in January last year, was removed as the foundation’s company secretary on December 14. He also ceased his appointment as a company director a fortnight ago.

The recasting of the board ends Heerey’s association and founding membership with the charitable organisation, which he helped launch alongside Tame in 2021 to fund initiatives for children who experience sexual abuse.

One explanation for Heerey’s departure is that in September he started a fresh business, Mowing Tasmania, appointing himself as its sole director and secretary. He did not respond to a request for comment about his departure from the foundation.

A person familiar with the foundation declined to comment on their relationship and the foundation itself did not respond to questions about the board ­adjustments.

Along with Heerey’s departure, documents filed with the corporate regulator confirm that Tame’s stepfather, Ronald Plaschke, formerly a director of marine research at the CSIRO, also ceased his role as a director on December 14.

The reconstituted board now includes Tame’s lawyer Michael Bradley, managing partner at Sydney firm Marque lawyers, Michael Salter, an academic and friend of Tame’s, and Scarlett Franks, a survivor advocate and researcher at the University of Sydney. According to its website, the foundation’s directors work for no salary.

While the upheaval returns a level of independence to the board (where previously it had almost none), Heerey’s departure remains sudden and unexplained. As to whether there has been a falling-out between Heerey and Tame, who’s to say?

That said, it’s difficult not to notice that Heerey and Tame were fixtures of each other’s Instagram timelines last year. Alas, despite routinely updating followers on their recent activities, neither have posted a photo together in months.

Piloting Virgin float

Race Strauss is the Bain Capital numbers man tasked with shepherding Virgin Australia back to the listed market. He begins his new role in March, and it looks like he’s walking through the door with almost two million reasons to get the float moving.

We’re hearing Strauss is receiving up to 1.99 million fully paid shares at $2.10 under Virgin’s management equity plan. No word yet on what other executives will be receiving.

At that price his shares have a starting value of $4.2m and obviously things can only go up if Bain’s IPO of the airline is successful.

Strauss’s arrival poses the odd logistic challenge, however. He followed Virgin CEO Jayne Hrdlicka to the airline from A2 Milk, where he was CFO until May, and where she previously worked as its chief executive.

Hrdlicka had to move from Melbourne to Brisbane to run the airline but hasn’t been able to sell her $18m mansion in Hawthorn for months. Presumably Strauss will endure the same upheaval from his family home in Sydney’s Breakfast Point to Virgin’s Brisbane-based headquarters.

From what we’re hearing, he’s already taking the temperature of the Queensland property market.

Kearney’s new order

Parliament may not have been sitting, but Labor MP Ged Kearney has been back at it again putting her house in order.

Ged Kearney.

The former ACTU president first arrived in Canberra with a portfolio full of shares in listed companies; some of these, like her investment in Medibank Private, needed to be divested to avoid a conflict of interest following her appointment as Assistant Health Minister.

What remained were in ETFs and other stocks, some owned by her unionist husband, Leigh Hubbard, that more or less kept her at a distance from direct ownership.

Still, it would appear that they have now each sold out of all direct shareholdings, including what was left of their resource and telecom investments.

The only sharemarket interest they have left is with an Australian share fund run by Investors Mutual.

We trust that’s the last we’ll be hearing of this.

Small business wage

Word has reached Margin Call of a recruiter working double-time to fill the newly vacated CEO position at peak small business group COSBOA, or the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia, following the exit of its chief executive, Alexi Boyd, in late January.

But there may be hurdles to finding a replacement; whispers around town suggest the salary on offer is $180,000, a packet likely to fall short of expectations, especially for an advocacy group of some status and profile.

Alexi Boyd with ACTU secretary Sally McManus. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Unless, of course, the money is for a part-time role – but we’re assured it’s not. Is that really the best they can do for a CEO?

Boyd quit not long after signing an MOU with trade unions on pattern bargaining in September, only for the council to then withdraw that support following an outcry from businesses. The organisation subsequently reversed course and joined allied groups to demand the Albanese government’s incoming legislation on multi-employer bargaining be rewritten or abandoned.

That wasn’t very successful, with the legislation passing through federal parliament in December.