With a federal election due in the next 12 months, and with some in the government tipping it could come by the end of this year, depending on when the Reserve Bank cuts interest rates, there have been a few senior Labor staffers on the move.
CBD recently brought news of the high turnover rate in the offices of Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil and Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones, while Prime Minister Anthony Albanese recently lost his long-time climate adviser Moksha Watts, and added veteran staffer David Epstein as his principal private secretary.
Anthony Albanese is among the senior Labor MPs to have lost staff recently.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Also leaving recently was Albanese’s governance director (no, we don’t know what that is, either) Chris Owens, a veteran politico who worked for Kristina Keneally in opposition, as well as for former ministers Nicola Roxon and Kate Lundy in the last Labor government.
Owens recently wed his long-time partner Dan Holland (plenty of former Labor staffers were on hand, if Instagram is any guide) and apparently decided to call it a day soon afterwards and return to the private sector.
Chloe Bennett, who was deputy policy director in the PMO, has stepped in to take over the job that, apparently, nobody else wanted.
And it’s not just Jones, O’Neil and Albo shedding troops.
Health Minister Mark Butler lost Kate Grieve, a former COVID adviser to Victorian health minister Martin Foley, in September last year, after just a year and two months in the position.
He’s also lost policy adviser Genevieve Siddle, who moved over to the office of junior health minister Ged Kearney this year.
We hear that frustrations with Butler’s chief of staff Nick Martin played a part in both cases.
Martin is a former deputy national secretary of the ALP but is best known as the ex-husband of Sabina Husic, the hard-charging communications chief for former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews, and sister of Industry Minister Ed Husic, to boot.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers lost Amber Austin-Wright from his office in January.
We’ll be keeping an eye on who else pulls the pin in the coming weeks and months, ahead of what is sure to be a gruelling election campaign.
LAST DRINKS
Any twenty-something can attest to the fact that being a renter in one of Australia’s capital cities is an often demeaning, demoralising experience.
But it isn’t just the youth, and Albanese’s tenant, who are suffering at the whims of fickle landlords. This week, the Australian Monarchist League – that old bastion of stuffy boomerdom chaired by former Liberal Senator Eric Abetz – is being forced out of its Goulburn street offices after copping a rent increase.
When we contacted the League’s veteran leader Philip Benwell on Sunday, he recounted an all-too-familiar tale of housing woe. The League had only moved into the new space, which had been vacant for some time, last year, and had gone to considerable trouble sprucing up its new digs.
“We even put the NBN in!” an incredulous Benwell told CBD.
But upon discovering their rent was increasing, and that the building’s owners were listing it for sale without telling the letting agents, the League decided to cut its losses and move out. Besides, with last year’s Voice referendum fail likely scaring off any republican push for some time now, it’s not like the monarchists have anything to fight.
The residents of many an inner-city share house have marked their landlord-forced evictions with a night of raucous partying. And the League, perhaps determined to prove constitutional monarchists know how to have a good time, are doing something similar.
On Thursday evening the League will host a “Last drinks hurrah” at the old space. It’ll cost you $15 a head, another sign even the monarchists are doing it tough.
VICE-REGAL VIBES
On Monday, incoming Governor-General Sam Mostyn, whose appointment by the Albanese government last month triggered plenty of conservative convulsions about the rise of wokeism, is set to meet NSW Governor Margaret Beazley at Government House in Sydney.
While the pair no doubt have important vice-regal matters to discuss, perhaps Beazley could share a few pointers with Mostyn about how to avoid ending up in CBD, where the former judge is something of a fan favourite.
A vice-regal affair … Incoming Governor-General Sam Mostyn is set to meet NSW Governor Margaret Beazley.Credit: Peter Rae
Unless Mostyn’s husband, top barrister Simeon Beckett, develops a penchant for spontaneous sing-alongs, we reckon our next governor-general might be safe. At least for now.
RACE TAMER
Sunday was not a day of rest and relaxation for activist and former Australian of the Year Grace Tame, who took out first place in the ultra-marathon (that’s 60 kilometres) at the Great Ocean Road Running Festival, clocking in at four hours and 43 minutes.
Also among the runners was Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, who has fallen for that most Canberra of hobbies. Marles settled for a more sedate half-marathon, finishing in a little more than two hours.
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