By Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell
As England’s men’s cricketers look to salvage their struggling Ashes campaign in Leeds over the next few days, it warms CBD’s heart to deliver news of another sporting shellacking handed to the mother country.
Net gain: Paul McNamee was a capable replacement for Anthony Albanese.
A team of British politicians from the House of Commons and House of Lords were well beaten by a side representing the Australian parliament in a friendly tennis challenge at Roehampton on Wednesday.
Labor’s Peter Khalil and Don Farrell put aside political differences with their Nationals antagonists Sam Birrell, Darren Chester and David Gillespie to down their opponents 3-1.
We can’t help but wonder if things might have been different had the man originally slated to captain the Australian team, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, not been replaced with former world No.1 doubles player Paul McNamee.
But what CBD really wants to know about all of this is whether some of the bad blood swirling around following Australia’s victory in the Lord’s Test last Sunday spilt over into the “friendly” politicians’ match.
Sorry, no, says Andy Turnbull of the Australian Parliament Sports Club, which puts these on.
“Tennis was the winner and the challenge was played in great spirit enhancing the relationships between our countries in a way only sport can,” Turnbull told us from London on Thursday.
We are reliably informed, though, that the Australians copped a few good-natured sledges when their British opponents realised they had to face McNamee.
The two parliamentary teams were due to take to the cricket field on Friday morning, Pom time, though, so hope is not entirely lost.
Going postal
Australia Post has swung a sharp axe at its own workforce recently, culling more than 400 positions amid poor financial results and the prospect of the Commonwealth-owned behemoth posting its first loss since 2015.
There is talk among staff that there could be more redundancies coming – maybe because the federal Labor government declined the opportunity a few weeks back to assure remaining postal workers their jobs were safe. And amid the upheaval, chief executive Paul Graham’s communication style is starting to grate on some.
The former Woolies chief supply officer signs off every internal message and video presentation with the catchphrase “be safe, be kind”.
Credit: John Shakespeare
“The ‘be kind’ message has worn very thin from [a] guy wielding a very sharp axe, chopping ‘fat’ where [former chief executives] Christine Holgate and Ahmed Fahour couldn’t find it,” a nonplussed insider told CBD, on the condition of anonymity.
An Australia Post spokesperson told us on Thursday that there was a serious intent behind the boss’s breezy sign-offs.
Graham is an evangelist for the cause of safety in the transport and logistics industry – one of the most hazardous for psychological harm – and chairs the Healthy Heads in Trucks and Sheds initiative formed to try to improve things.
The spokesperson also poured cold water on the idea of further job losses, saying the most recent round of departures “mostly completes” the process of moving to the corporation’s “future operating model”.
Chrysanthou too busy
CBD reported on Thursday that top defamation silk Sue Chrysanthou, SC, was set to be reprimanded by the NSW Bar Council for unsatisfactory professional conduct over accepting a brief to represent former attorney-general Christian Porter.
Sources close to Chrysanthou suggest an appeal either internally or to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal is unlikely, given the decision is already out in the open two years after the complaint was first hatched, and such a slap on the wrist won’t harm the barrister’s booming practice in the slightest.
Chrysanthou certainly has a hefty caseload. A defamation case against the ABC brought by former special forces commando-turned-OnlyFans model Heston Russell heads to trial before the Federal Court next month.
She’s also been retained alongside the cream of the bar Bret Walker, SC, to act for One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, who is defending a racial discrimination complaint brought by Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi. That case is expected to go to trial early next year.
All that high-profile work leaves little time for trifling with the council, whose decision has already rubbed a few in the Sydney bar the wrong way.
Toplace maverick
Despite being in indefinite exile in either Lebanon, the Philippines or Singapore, colourful Sydney property developer Jean Nassif can’t escape the headlines, which he was reading in copies of The Sydney Morning Herald delivered by donkey.
On Thursday, Nassif and his company Toplace were banned from operating, with a review pending on whether their building licences should be suspended.
In unrelated matters, Nassif, famed for buying his wife a yellow Lamborghini, faces an arrest warrant for an alleged fraud over which his daughter Ashlyn Nassif has been charged. Officers from the Independent Commission Against Corruption also want to speak to Nassif over an investigation into alleged impropriety at the Hills Shire Council.
Safe to say if Nassif does ever return home, he’ll need all the help he can get – so it’s handy that Toplace has been registered since 2020 as a client of Premier State, the firm run by Liberal moderate powerbroker and lobbying supremo Michael Photios.
Unfortunately, that relationship seems to have aged, and Nassif may have to look elsewhere, with Photios telling CBD he had not worked for Toplace for many years.
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