By Kishor Napier-Raman and Stephen Brook
What is it about Australia and Katy Perry?
Elsewhere, the 2010s-era pop star is a has-been, long overshadowed by the unstoppable Taylor Swift juggernaut.
But on these shores, Perry remains an inexplicable drawcard.
Last year, she played a private gig at billionaire cardboard king Anthony Pratt’s mansion, Raheen, attended by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and former Victorian premier Dan Andrews among others.
Melbourne’s love affair with Perry continued when the AFL paid millions for a set at last year’s grand final. The Cronulla Sharks recently returned from the NRL’s Las Vegas season opening junket with a Katy Perry endorsement (little good it did them on the field in Sin City).
And then, there’s the court case. Perry has been locked in a 15-year trademark dispute with Sydney-based fashion designer Katie Taylor, who sells clothes under her birth name, Katie Perry, a saga that could finally be entering its final stages after years of legal fireworks.
Taylor first received a cease and desist letter from Perry’s American lawyers in 2009, demanding she withdraw an Australian trademark application.
The designer would eventually launch Federal Court proceedings in 2019, achieving a partial victory in 2023, when Justice Brigitte Markovic ruled that Perry had infringed Taylor’s trademark in a series of tweets and Facebook posts.
“This is a tale of two women, two teenage dreams and one name,” her honour wrote in the opening to that judgment.
Perry launched an appeal, and as CBD reported last year, though the pop star was in Australia while the hearing was under way, she didn’t even show up at the courtroom, much to her opponent’s dismay.
But the full court of the Federal Court subsequently sided with Perry on appeal, ordering the cancellation of Taylor’s trademark. The loungewear designer is now seeking special leave to appeal to the High Court, which will hear the application on April 11.
Taylor has repeatedly described this matter as a David v Goliath legal fight. Next month, it’ll be the last chance for David to get the last laugh.
Jobmaker
By now, even we’re getting sick of the joke about former prime minister Scott Morrison having more part-time post-political jobs than secret ministries.
But what are we to do when Scomo keeps adding miscellaneous filler roles to his CV? The latest is a gig on the strategic advisory board of Wellington Advocacy, a Canadian lobbying firm, which the former PM revealed to his LinkedIn followers last week. That’s number eight, for those counting.
“The links between Australia and Canada are strong, and I am looking forward to supporting even closer investment and business connections,” Morrison wrote.
We wonder how all Morrison’s new friends in the MAGA-verse feel about that.
The firm’s tagline on its website is “We Help You Win”, so who better to sign up than the guy responsible for the Liberal Party’s great 2019 miracle? More recently, Morrison led the party to its lowest seat share in the House of Representatives since 1946. Scomo contains multitudes, we guess.
Fire sale
For about five minutes last year, Comedor, a well-reviewed Mexican eatery in a refurbished warehouse on the fringes of Camperdown Park in Newtown, was one of the hottest tables in town.
But Comedor won its first Good Food hat almost as quickly as the whole project unravelled. First, the restaurant’s plans to build a kiosk over the park stoked outrage among locals unhappy about anyone daring to commercialise a patch of public space used by teenagers to get drunk and do nangs.
Then came the reports in this masthead that Comedor’s owner, former lawyer Walter Shellshear, had a record of alcohol-fuelled behaviour, underpaying staff and threatening to kill and deport employees. Shellshear denies those allegations, but the restaurant has remained closed since December.
Its website has been taken down completely and is devoted to posting Comedor’s old payroll records, “in response to the largely fictitious claims about Comedor”.
According to a message on the site: “Comedor remains temporarirly [sic] closed as we work on new and exciting projects”.
But those projects certainly won’t be happening on Australia Street because it looks like Shellshear is selling up. A listing for the reimagined Newtown warehouse appeared on real estate agency Colliers last week, spruiking “one of Sydney’s most prized restaurant and small bar opportunities”.
For the sake of anyone employed at the new business, we hope the future owners take Comedor’s demise as a cautionary tale of how not to run a restaurant.
Winner winner
Our southern siblings at The Age wiped the floor at the Melbourne Press Club’s Quill Awards on Friday night, taking home a record 14 gongs. Predictably, The Age’s Building Bad investigation into the CFMEU, helmed by Nick McKenzie, Ben Schneiders and The Australian Financial Review reporter David Marin-Guzman, walked off with the Gold Quill.
Meanwhile, there were gasps when former prime minister John Howard appeared during the video tribute for the lifetime achievement award that went to News Corp executive Peter Blunden. Howard was sporting a massive bruise on his left eye and down the side of his face, having had a fall.