By Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell
Seems like everyone in the Labor family is on board with the campaign to ban deadly silica from kitchen benchtops.
From the upper reaches of Anthony Albanese’s cabinet – OK, it’s Tony Burke – to the party’s litigation wing Maurice Blackburn, to the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union (CFMMEU) – which brought hundreds of building types onto the streets of Sydney on Thursday calling for a total ban on the substance – the red team has been singing from the same hymn sheet.
Not everybody in the Labor family is singing from the same hymn sheet when it comes to banning silica from kitchen benchtops.Credit: Rhett Wyman
Until now.
Lobby shop Hawker Britton – to say they’re Labor-linked doesn’t even come close – has been hired, discreetly, by Caesarstone, the biggest player in the local engineered-stone industry with about half the Australian market, to push its case in the corridors of power against a total ban on the product.
Fair play to Caesarstone’s managing director David Cullen for taking a broad approach to pushing his company’s position. He’s also hired the decidedly un-Labor-linked Clive Mathieson to help with the media side of things. The former editor of The Australian and senior staffer to erstwhile Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull now runs a comms shop with Sue Cato.
And Clive was earning his money when CBD came calling, with a stylishly crafted “no comment”.
We were naturally desperate for a chat with the Hawkers about all of this. Their normally voluble managing director Simon Banks told CBD he would not be discussing the firm’s work with Caesarstone.
But.
“We are a Labor firm with Labor values,” Banks says.
And we’re sure the lads at the CFMMEU will be very pleased to hear it.
Tony Sheldon needs to figure out what to do with his Qantas sharesCredit: John Shakespeare
ABSENT FRIENDS
If Friday morning’s Qantas annual general meeting ain’t the most anticipated gathering of investors in Australian corporate history, then it’s squarely in the top five.
OK, Alan Joyce doesn’t have to face the investors to explain himself after the airline’s year from hell, but the Irishman’s successor as chief executive Vanessa Hudson and chairman Richard Goyder – who has finally announced his late departure from the airline – will be facing the music at Melbourne’s Convention Centre.
So, a hot ticket, but CBD can’t help but notice one bloke who’ll be conspicuous in his absence. Labor Senator Tony Sheldon, one of those federal politicians vying for the mantle of Qantas inquisitor-in-chief recently, won’t be rocking up after all.
Which is strange because not two months ago, when CBD asked Sheldon why he had invested in some of the airlines’ shares, the NSW senator told us he had done so to gain access to the AGM and continue his interrogation of Hudson and Goyder – if the chairman was still around.
We noticed on Thursday that Sheldon was instead planning to front a press conference with Transport Workers’ Union national secretary Michael Kaine outside the Sydney court hearing a SafeWork prosecution of the airline.
Say, what? We asked Sheldon’s office, who explained that the senator had vowed to rock up to the AGM if Goyder had not taken “responsibility for his illegal sacking of 1700 people” and that the chairman’s resignation – effective next November – constituted a change of circumstances.
But what about the “number-one” agenda item, according to Tony, of “how the board plans to claw back Mr Joyce’s $24 million pay cheque”, or whether directors will charge fees for their efforts this year?
Maybe Sheldon can dial in those questions remotely.
JOSH ONBOARDS
Josh Landis is slowly getting back on his feet after being sacked as Clubs NSW boss in January after a bizarre spray about then-premier Dominic Perrottet’s “Catholic gut”.
Since then the pokie-machine lobbyist has dipped his toe into the world of freelance political lobbying and, more recently, started doing a bit of work for the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies. CBD regulars might recall that, much like Landis’ old patch Clubs NSW, it’s been a bit of a rough few months for the board. Former chief executive Darren Bark departed rather abruptly back in July, leaving behind more questions than answers among the local Jewish community.
We hear Landis hasn’t been brought on for any kind of major government relations role, but is instead doing a bit of voluntary community work.
CRAIG LISTS
More scuttlebutt from the world of Liberal Party preselections: CBD brought word recently that City of Sydney councillor Craig Chung was nominating to help win back John Howard’s old seat of Bennelong from Labor.
Chung reportedly pulled out last week, citing “family, community and business”, but has since set his sights on the state seat of Epping, which will soon become vacant whenever former premier Dominic Perrottet retires. That’s meant to be imminent, and could be before the end of the year (whenever someone gives Dom a new job).
Chung currently has the backing of Perrottet and former finance minister Damien Tudehope, but it might be Labor that poses the real worry there – the Liberals’ margin was whittled down to under 5 per cent after copping a stonking swing at the election last March.
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