The unscrambling of Victorian Premier Dan Andrews’ 2026 Commonwealth Games egg isn’t going to be quick, easy or cheap.
If Victoria was a listed corporation, it would be facing a break fee to the Commonwealth Games Federation of between 1 per cent and 3 per cent of its original $2.6bn deal to host the Games in regional Victoria.
So taxpayers might be forking out up to about $80m just for tearing up the contract, let alone all the costs incurred so far along the way in the 15 months since the deal was signed.
The corporate entity Commonwealth Games Australia, which is the operating company of the Australian Commonwealth Games Foundation, gives some insight into the sort of costs already incurred. CGA is the entity that holds the 2026 Games hosting rights.
CGA brought in about $11m in revenue last year to the end of December, but spent $14.8m, for a net loss of $3.9m. It also made a loss, albeit smaller, the year before.
The lease on its premises in South Melbourne runs to 2027, with at least three execs on more than $150,000.
Last year it got $8m in marketing rights income in advance from the Victorian government relating to the 2026 Games, which now won’t be held.
It’s a short-lived life too for new company Victoria 2026 Pty Ltd, which was established late last year as the vehicle that would enter contracts for the Games.
It was calling for expressions of interest from the private sector as late as last Friday for Games contracts – we recommend that interested parties now need not apply.
What now for Weimar
It’s been a hectic few years for Jeroen Weimar, the ever loyal high-profile public servant to Victorian Premier Dan Andrews.
As the $620,000-a-year boss of the southern state’s now blown-up organising committee for the 2026 Commonwealth Games, Weimar is now effectively redundant.
Before that we saw the Dutchman most days on the box standing alongside Chairman Dan in Weimar’s role as commander of Victoria’s Covid-19 response.
In the later months of the crisis as the health risk to the state diminished there was much speculation on what Weimar might do next, with the corporate sector all over the London School of Economics graduate, who before Covid ran the Department of Transport and then VicRoads.
But his unexpected redundancy might open the door for Weimar to put his feet up bayside for a while and let his accomplished corporate wife, Tracy Weimar, step forward in her career as a company secretary for hire.
Mrs Weimar is currently keeping the corporate wheels turning at listed Starpharma, plus a range of companies associated with tech outfit Planet Innovation Digital, pharmaceutical group Tessara Therapeutics and listed medical diagnostics group Lumos Diagnostic.
Then again, we note the Business Council of Australia is still looking for a replacement for outgoing chief Jennifer Westacott following the botched first attempt to appoint a new boss. Perhaps the well-known Victorian should be added to chair Tim Reed’s depleted shortlist.
Hume’s funds switch
When a former minister for superannuation reveals a change of heart about the management of their own financial planning towards retirement, best take notice.
Senior Liberal and Victorian senator Jane Hume, these days her leader Peter Dutton’s shadow minister for finance, has done just that.
Hume, also a former investment banker and senior policy adviser at Australian Super, has made the bold move to shift her own retirement nest egg from hospitality industry-based super fund Hostplus, which is part of the nine-member Industry SuperFunds.
Instead, Hume has moved her money to the relatively lower-fee and better-performing UniSuper, which targets the higher education and research sector and has only just been named as one of this country’s top performing funds in the recent financial year.
Hume has been vocal on the practice of industry funds using members’ money to pay fines levied against directors, rather than the penalties being paid for out of money belonging to shareholders. Last year Hostplus introduced a new monthly fee on members to build a rainy day $50m-plus reserve to pay such fines.
Seems like Hume is putting her money where her mouth is.
Market for everything
At the Mid-Winter Ball in Canberra in late June, Labor’s Andrew Leigh went along as a guest of international online marketplace giant eBay.
Now led in Australia and across the ditch by 10-year veteran of the e-tailer Sarah Sternau, whose appointment in March follows the progression of David Ramadge further up the group’s greasy pole, eBay has had the former Australian National University professor Leigh as its guest at the annual political event for several years.
On first blush it seems like an odd combo, the straight-laced economist with the techie American retailing giant.
But the many-time published author Leigh, who is PM Anthony Albanese’s Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury, plus Employment, knows a thing or two about supply and demand and buyers and sellers meeting at the equilibrium price.
You can even get a second-hand hard copy or two of several of the professor’s myriad books about economics on eBay.
What about an Allen & Unwin-published copy of Leigh’s The Economics of Just about Everything, preloved and on offer for $16.50 with free postage. It even comes with a handwritten cover page note to “Mark” from a bloke called “Sean”, who declares that he “worked with Leigh for a while” and who Sean considers to be “very clever”.
Indeed, on eBay, there is a market for just about anything.
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.
Diamond Joe Gutnick loses the last of his sparkle
Joe Gutnick’s last hurrah is finally coming to an end, as liquidators wind up the last company in the play that was supposed to put ‘diamond’ back into his moniker.