In a matter of weeks, the Australian Electoral Commission will drop its draft boundary distribution, which could obliterate a teal seat ahead of next year’s federal election.
If the Liberals get their way, Warringah, held since 2019 by teal pioneer Zali Steggall should be merged with neighbouring North Sydney, which was picked up by fellow independent Kylea Tink at the last election.
That could make things a little awkward between the two crossbench comrades. But whatever the AEC decides, Tink’s intentions are pretty clear, with the MP, still best known for crusading on climate action while holding fossil fuel shares, amassing quite the little army. She’s recently been accepting applications for a $115,000-a-year campaign manager job on her team with a view to the 2025 election where, if North Sydney even exists, she’ll be taking on the Liberals’ pick, Salesforce executive Gisele Kapterian.
The lucky candidate will report to both the MP and Kylea Tink Independent Ltd, a corporate agent set up to support the independent. That company’s board of directors includes experienced company secretary Bridget O’Brien and trophy home collector Katrina Barter, whose husband Chris Barter who is a former Goldman Sachs Banker and co-founder of technology venture capital group King River.
That isn’t the end of Team Tink. The MP currently has 15 staffers working for her in some capacity, while a total of 23 have come through her doors since the 2022 election, according to parliament house staffing lists and LinkedIn. That’s an army that could outnumber a few ministerial offices.
It’s not a bad haul for an MP who, after being elected, was on the front foot complaining about the Albanese government cutting staffing allocations for independents. But hey, running an electorate like North Sydney is hard work. Especially when, as was the case for the first year of Tink’s term, the MP’s electorate office was open only between 9am and 3pm, Monday to Thursday.
PACK IT UP
A decade ago before he was Australia’s richest funemployed person, James Packer was hoping to expand his casino empire into Sri Lanka, enlisting the services of then Australian men’s Test cricket captain Michael Clarke to act as an “education ambassador” for the project.
But relations between Packer and the South Asian nation soured dramatically in 2015. When a new Sri Lankan government rescinded generous tax breaks, Packer pulled the $350 million project, leading the country’s then prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe to declare the billionaire nepo baby persona non grata.
James Packer withdrew from a casino project in Sri Lanka.Credit: Getty
Now that Packer is out of both Sri Lanka and the casino game, some old friends have stepped up, with Hong Kong-based Melco Resorts revealing plans for its US$1 billion Field of Dreams casino in Colombo last week.
That name is a familiar one to those who’ve kept an eye on Packer’s own tragicomic retreat from the world of casinos. In 2019, Melco, and its boss Laurence Ho, agreed to buy a 19.9 per cent stake in Crown, then owned by Packer, for $1.7 billion.
But after the first tranche of shares had been sold, the deal was effectively scuppered after a NSW casino inquiry started probing whether the sale would jeopardise Crown’s Sydney casino licence because of Ho’s father Stanley Ho’s alleged links to organised crime.
Melco sold its tranche of shares to private equity giants Blackstone for a $330 million loss, the same company that would come to take hold of Crown when Packer finally cracked his gambling habit.
EMPTY LOBBY
Next week, every lobbyist worth their salt will be heading down to Canberra for the annual budget week feeding frenzy.
Christopher Pyne has become a lobbyist in his post-political career.
And a good chunk of those holding court at Aussies Cafe will be former Labor apparatchiks. With the ALP holding power federally, and in every mainland state, it’s a particularly grim time for Liberal-aligned political lobbyists. Unless you’re Christopher Pyne, who’s managed to turn a successful trade working for the military industrial complex.
The current fortunes of Liberal lobbying firm Barton Deakin, forever associated with John Howard’s former chief of staff Grahame Morris, until he soft-retired into an emeritus role last year, are a case in point.
The firm currently does not have a single active client in NSW, according to the state’s lobbying register. Federally, Barton Deakin has registered just a single client since December 2021. In the same period, it’s lost more than 70. Last year, Barton Deakin shut up shop in Canberra, while the Sydney office is more or less solely handled by managing director Anthony Benscher, another alum of Howard’s office.
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.Credit: Bloomberg
But Barton Deakin insiders told CBD the whole situation, sorry as it might look on paper, was simply a reflection of the current political cycle. While the firm works exclusively with the Coalition, its parent company WPP also owns Labor-aligned Hawker Britton, which itself struggles when voters go the other way.
And despite the downturn, Barton Deakin has some reason for optimism. They operate across the ditch, where Christopher Luxon just led the conservative National Party back from the wilderness. And in Queensland, the firm is hopeful that October’s election could deliver a few nasties for Labor, and put them back in business in the Sunshine State.
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