Kristina Keneally moves into Malcolm Turnbull’s old office
Will this be an inspired move? The Labor senator has taken up residence in the former PM’s old office ... but not because of COVID-19.
Kristina Keneally is operating out of a temporary office, but not because of COVID-19.
After Strewth! critiqued her bare office walls — with one lone Australian flag and empty bookshelves — during last week’s virtual COVID-19 committee hearing, the Labor senator and former NSW premier informed us she’s using a makeshift space while the Department of Parliamentary Services and Department of Finance find her a new Sydney office after a cladding issue.
Labor senator @KKeneally
— Alice Workman (@workmanalice) April 23, 2020
American with token #TeamAustralia flag. Empty bookshelf. Is that the roof? pic.twitter.com/U1uF48d0lM
Keneally’s current location was used as Malcolm Turnbull’s office for the past year and perhaps the desk where he wrote a few chapters of A Bigger Picture. Fingers crossed Keneally produces an equally scathing account of NSW Labor when her time in politics ends, whenever that may be.
And if you’re thinking that this isn’t the first time Strewth! has visited Keneally’s office, you’d be right. Her Canberra office — the former den of Liberal senator-turned-High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, George Brandis — features the $7000 taxpayer-funded “Brandis Library”, as it was nickamed by Labor staff. That’s not to be confused with the second $15,442 taxpayer-funded Brandis bookcase, which had to be built in 2014 after the Coalition won government and the first was deemed too large to move to his new Parliament House digs.
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Stokes quarantines in luxury
Billionaire Kerry Stokes and wife Christine Simpson Stokes made a surprise appearance in Canberra on Saturday for the Anzac Day commemorative Dawn Service at the Australian War Memorial, of which Stokes is council chairman.
Governor-General David Hurley and wife Linda were also in attendance, as was Defence Chief Angus Campbell and Labor leader Anthony Albanese. The Stokes were snapped laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and sharing a laugh with Scott and Jenny Morrison, around the same time the news broke that Stokes’s troubled Seven West Media had applied for the government’s JobKeeper program (as have Liberal and Labor HQs).
Hang on — doesn’t WA’s hard border mean they won’t be able to fly back west? Perhaps if you’re not part of the 1 per cent!
Strewth understands the rich-list couple are in Sydney and in no rush to return home. But Stokes and his wife (and his estimated net worth of $3.76bn) had already managed to get around the rules once before.
Billionaire Kerry Stokes and his wife, Christine, were excused on medical grounds from two weeks of forced quarantine in a Perth hotel room when they flew in from the US recently, the couple’s spokesman says.https://t.co/8U0phDcHpZ
— The Australian (@australian) April 23, 2020
They were granted an exemption from the mandatory hotel quarantine that came into place in late March on medical grounds when he returned to Australia from the US (where the couple were reportedly hunkering down in their $15m penthouse outside the Aspen ski fields) via private jet on April 8.
While thousands of other non-billionaire Aussies were locked in hotel rooms, the Stokes were allowed to serve out 14-days of self isolation at their riverside Perth mansion.
“Mr Stokes and his wife received an exemption because Mr Stokes recently underwent a medical procedure,” the spokesman said. Remarkably, Stokes appears to have recovered in time to head east for Anzac Day!
Despite Premier Mark McGowan instructing his state to stay home over the long weekend (yes, West Australians get Monday off) and avoid non-essential travel. WA lifted some social-distancing rules on Sunday but McGowan confirmed “our borders will remain shut”. Are billionaires essential workers? Asking for a friend.
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Power couple
There are whispers of a new power couple on the rise in NSW Labor. While COVID-19 dominates the news cycle, the state party has quietly made a few management changes.
Bob Nanva was unanimously voted in as state secretary on April 17 and Strewth hears Dominic Ofner — ex-NSW Young Labor president, current Australian Rail Tram and Bus Union official and side player in former secretaries’ snafus (Jamie Clement’s electoral roll boo-boo and Kaila Murnain’s Aldi bag of cash faux pas) — has been tapped to take over from Nanva as the Right’s assistant secretary in Sussex St.
Ofner is married to Phoebe Drake, a long-time staffer to Albanese. But not everyone is happy with NSW Labor’s cloak-and-dagger approach. Branch members want an expression-of-interest process and a vote. How outrageous!
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Tennis Albo
Albanese backed Team Australia on 2SM radio last week: “I’m a tennis player and there’s rules that have been introduced that now instead of shaking hands, you touch the end of your racquets. There are ways in which we’re adapting as a society. But the good thing is, this has reminded us, if we needed reminding, that we’re all interdependent on each other, that we’re a society, that we have to look after each other, we have obligations to each other, that we don’t exist in a bubble.”
What about the Canberra Bubble? The Opposition Leader — whose taxpayer-funded salary is around $390,000 — was a tad blunt when asked whether politicians could pitch in with a pay cut: “It’s not my decision. It’s the decision of the remuneration tribunal. And that’s important that I shouldn’t have a say.”
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Always listening
As well as messing with Malcolm Turnbull’s book sales, it appears the Prime Minister’s office has time to troll Albanese’s media interviews.
ABC Adelaide host David Bevan informed the Labor leader last week: “The Prime Minister’s office is listening, which is great. And they’ve sent us a text saying that Albanese is deliberately ignoring the amount of crude oil on shore, we have 56 days of fuel on shore per the International Energy Agency standards.”
Albanese replied: “Well, that’s just not right. It’s just not right … And I say to the Prime Minister’s office, who are just about 200m from where I’m speaking, that you are including in that stock on water. This is a government that has been complacent about this.” An early sign that the new normal nice politics is over?
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App-etising
For those with security concerns about the government’s non-tracking tracing app, we found this in COVIDSafe’s privacy policy: “We will ask your consent to the collection of your mobile phone number, name, age range, postcode … This will be easiest if you provide your full name, but you can use a pseudonym or fake name if you prefer.”
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Great, Scott
Even the Prime Minister has managed to score some downtime during the pandemic to do something other than cook curry.
Morrison told Macca on the ABC’s Australia All Over on Sunday morn: “Well, you do, and it’s important that you do because you’ve got to remain sharp and you try and keep a regime up. You get a bit of exercise, make sure you’re seeing the family as I do — they’re with me here in Canberra. And you’ve got to have those times and I’ll have a bit of that time today as well, which is important. I’ve actually, in that spare time, I’ve been reading about good old Joseph Lyons from many years ago and just finished a great book on Joseph Lyons. He was going through very similar times back there in the Depression.”
strewth@theaustralian.com
Libs should be-Ware what they say about JWH
Could things get any worse for the Liberals in Hughes? Well, strap in. Diary can reveal that Liberal candidate Jenny Ware once called John Winston Howard ‘out of touch’.
Believe in your selfie, Andrew
Kevin Rudd appears to have met his selfie match in Andrew Charlton.