Wagyu and shiraz: food for thought

Cartoon: Rod Clement.

It’s likely lunch will be at the desk in chambers this week as the legal team from the Australian Securities & Investments Commission refine their arguments in the Federal Court appeal in the “wagyu and shiraz” Westpac home loan lending matter.

The appeal will be heard on Monday February 25, with ASIC bolstering its team with Noel Hutley SC.

Hutley joins Jeremy Clarke SC who was on the case for last year’s judgment, as was Stephanie Patterson.

Hutley, the former president of the Australian Bar Association, has been in Gina Rinehart’s corner in the trust dispute with her children and also tried to fix mining mogul Travers Duncan’s issues with ICAC.

Noel Hutley

Westpac are keeping their original legal team, Jeremy Kirk SC and Justin Williams.

They won the case last September after judge Nye Perram wisely noted that borrowers could always cut back on their spending after getting into their new home.

“I may eat Wagyu beef everyday washed down with the finest shiraz but, if I really want my new home, I can make do on much more modest fare,” he colourfully noted while deciding for Westpac on a legal question of what Westpac should consider before responsibly giving someone a loan.

Kirk is being assisted by solicitors Moira Saville from Mallesons, and Liam Burgess.

The full bench of Federal Court judges — including justices John Middleton, Jacqueline Gleeson and Michael Lee — will take arguments for two days in Sydney.

Putting down roots

New NAB boss Ross McEwan has certainly dived into Melbourne living.

He and wife Stephanie have taken a $2100-a-week lease on a two-bed, 21st-floor apartment in the heart of Melbourne.

He’s travelling to the other end of town on the tram, to NAB’s HQ on Bourke Street.

The couple are looking to buy an apartment, which must come with bicycle storage given their passion for cycling.

He’ll possibly be tempted towards the Docklands given his allegiance to the Kangaroos in the AFL, who play out of Marvel Stadium.

On his appointment last year from afar, the then-UK boss of the Royal Bank of Scotland noted that the Roos weren’t “travelling very well”.

And how true blue can a chief executive get?

McEwan has just secured a Holden, one of the last on the lot given their sad exit from Australia.

He grabbed an SUV to get the bikes on board as they head out of town on the weekends.

The Melbourne contingent on the 10-person board at NAB is growing, with three members now calling Melbourne home, up from one this time last year.

Aussie offspring

Aussie John Symond might need a bigger house. The mortgage broker has become a grandfather for the first time.

Symond’s daughter Deborah has given birth to a baby boy with husband Ned O’Neil, the son of millionaire property developer Denis O’Neil and interior decorator wife Charlotte.

The proud 72-year-old and wife Amber have been quick to see Beau, who settled in at his own home yesterday in his baby-blue nursery.

The birth at Mater, Sydney’s leading private hospital, was last Thursday.

Mum has kept her near 30,000 followers up to date, indeed through the whole six months since the pregnancy announcement, and a spotting at Terry Berry’s Double Bay fashionable clothing store.

Not sure what the eastern suburbs mums will do with Berry and her sister Kaylene Hansen closing their premises Adrienne & The Misses Bonney on Bay Street.

There will no doubt be a tug of war between the grandparents on which direction Beau takes in life: home loans or property development, or maybe a bit of both.

At 38 weeks pregnant, Deborah ensured all eyes were on her by wearing a glamorous white feathered $861 midi-dress from Ganni and a trendy pair of $1125 silver lace-up stilettos by Gianvito Rossi to her baby shower.

Boyd bonanza

The family of the late Australian artist David Boyd are selling some of his artworks at auction next month. It’s billed as the single biggest privately owned collection of Boyd’s with some 49 artworks, headlined by his oil canvas Tall Ships Returning, which he painted in 1988.

It’s expected to sell for between $25,000 and $35,000.

Mother Beasts Attacking will also go under the online March hammer, with hopes of $20,000 to $30,000.

They are being marketed by artmarketspace, which has launched a new auction system that offers cheaper buyer commission rates than the traditional auction houses, suggests artmarketspace co-founder and CEO Lee Street.

Boyd’s granddaughter Jesamine Boyd will oversee the disposal.

Boyd, who died in 2011, is from the Boyd artistic dynasty. Led by his parents, Merric and Doris Boyd, the Boyds are an Australian family whose members over several generations contributed to the arts in the fields of painting, sculpture, pottery, ceramics, literature, architecture, poetry and music.

Boyd’s priciest known sale was of his figurative work King Found, an oil that sold for $215,100 in 2008, regarded as the boomtime year for art sales.

2017 saw the biggest Boyd disposal when retired Pitt Street lawyer John Fowler sold 14 artworks at auction.

The busiest Boyd year was 2003 when 210 paintings were auctioned for a total of $1.23m, according to Australian Art Sales Digest.

Bushfire support

It was a speech from NSW Roads Minister Andrew Constance about his electorate’s anguish that helped raise needed funds for the latest initiative to help bushfire victims.

Around 850 people made it to the Fullerton Hotel’s grand ballroom to attend John Brogden’s Lifeline Australia chairman’s lunch yesterday.

John Brogden. Picture: Dylan Robinson

It wasn’t quite the same showbiz razzmatazz as the big Sunday fundraiser that saw a line-up including Queen and Adam Lambert, but John Williamson’s True Blue was just the tonic needed.

Shane Fitzsimmons, the commissioner of the NSW Rural Fire Service, helped set the agenda for the fundraising for the new Lifeline Bushfire Recovery Line.

Brogden brought the family, including his 87-year-old dad Gilbert, a longtime community volunteer, and wife Lucy, the chair and commissioner at the National Mental Health Commission, and her parents Frank and Susan Hooke.

The fundraiser lunch was to expand the helpline service with the launch of a special number — 13 HELP — devoted to supporting bushfire-affected people and communities with Lifeline’s traditional suicide and crisis support.

Woolworths, with chairman Gordon Cairns and CEO Brad Banducci in attendance, donated $300,000.

Energy company Santos donated $250,000, Fantastic Furniture gave $50,000, with AMP and Toga donating $30,000 and $20,000 respectively.

The fundraising stood at $1.18m before it was advised Premier Gladys Berejiklian had committed $500,000 from the NSW government.

Those dining on the roasted lamb rump included former NSW Liberal minister Michael Yabsley, corporate affairs dynamo Sue Cato, former first lady Lucy Turnbull and former Transfield chairman and now GWS Giants chairman Tony Shepherd.