By Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell
CBD is heartened to note that even global pop royalty like Robbie Williams, with a “tell-all” Netflix doco to promote, still finds time to keep up with the international political and economics scene.
Credit: John Shakespeare
Williams was eager at his Melbourne show on Wednesday to prove he’d been paying attention to current affairs, especially this week’s bizarre decision of Argentinian voters to elect far-right eccentric Javier Milei.
The one-time Take That star also threw in a few unkind jibes about the South American nation’s seemingly never-ending inflation problem, advising the Argentinians in the audience to “sort out your economy” and then maybe Williams might tour there.
“Your inflation’s f---ed,” the performer observed.
“Your new president, have you seen him?” he asked, describing the newly elected leader as “like a car invented in England in the ’70s with hair”.
Who needs The Economist when quality analysis like that gets thrown in for the price of a concert ticket?
DINNER DIME
Washington, DC isn’t a cheap place to live. Fortunately the expenses of Australia’s ambassadors – from barbecues and cocktail parties to private dinners with visiting pollies – are all covered by the taxpayer.
And, thanks to a trove of documents released under freedom of information, we’ve now got a glimpse at how much our man in DC Kevin Rudd and his predecessor Arthur Sinodinos have spent on wining, dining and entertaining various guests.
During Sinodinos’ time, notable events included the “Great Aussie BBQ” (total cost: about $600) and a $750 Australian-election viewing gathering last year, which can’t have been a pleasant evening for the former Liberal senator and chief of staff to John Howard.
More intriguing is the relative price of dinners with various figures. Everyone knows the Kennedys come with expensive tastes, and a hefty entourage. So, no surprises Sinodinos’ formal dinner with the US Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy shortly after her confirmation came with a $1500 price tag.
Former NSW health minister Brad Hazzard wasn’t cheap, either, his dinner costing the taxpayer nearly $500. All this now makes it seem like High Court Chief Justice Stephen Gageler got stitched up on the hospitality front – he and Sinodinos dined for just a shade over $50.
Most of Rudd’s dinners are sadly redacted, although CBD was amused to discover the former PM’s first event was a barbecue and Easter egg hunt for embassy families. At a cost of more than $1000, they must’ve been very big eggs.
EXIT RIGHT
The life of ABC Radio National’s token Tory can’t be an easy one, so CBD salutes Tom Switzer and his nine-year shift on the station’s Between the Lines show, a clarion call for personal liberty and free enterprise amid all that collectivist noise the national broadcaster puts out.
Aunty announced on Thursday that Switzer’s time behind the mic would end in a few weeks, when he would return to what many would consider his more natural habitat, conservative ideas factory the Centre for Independent Studies.
Switzer was once a senior staffer to then Liberal leader Brendan Nelson and had a dip at preselection for Nelson’s seat of Sydney seat of Bradfield after the boss left politics.
Switzer has also been a prolific opinionator in his day, banging out op-eds for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Financial Times, as well as some others you’ve probably never heard of, and had a memorable stint as opinion editor at The Australian.
Switzer told us that even though he may have been a bit different from his ABC colleagues, they were nice enough to almost never mention it, except for the couple of times he had former British cabinet minister and climate denier the late Nigel Lawson on the show.
But variety is the spice of life, they say, and Switzer told us on Wednesday that intellectual diversity was the lifeblood of any media organisation.
“On some ABC television shows and, indeed, Sky News television shows, the panel will all be agreeing with each other, so it’s good to have different views,” the departing presenter said.
And we won’t disagree with that.
SELECTION DAY
In three days the NSW Liberals will have picked a new senator to succeed Marise Payne, and CBD will have a preselection-shaped hole in its life.
With endorsements locked and loaded, the phones were working overtime as the many contenders battled to usurp former transport minister Andrew Constance as the frontrunner.
One such endorsement causing a bit of eyebrow-raising is Business Council of Australia boss Bran Black’s reference for Monica Tudehope. The pair both worked in former premier Dominic Perrottet’s office, where Black was chief of staff.
Now, we don’t take the BCA for a bunch of raving lefties, but the endorsement from the head of an ostensibly neutral lobby group, staffer or not, did elicit some chatter.
Meanwhile, we briefly heard rumours that CBD’s favourite candidate Lou ‘Who’ Amato was considering pulling out. Unlikely, given he’d put out another one of those “Make Australia Great Again” emails late Wednesday night, putting the party that gave him eight years in the NSW upper house on blast yet again.
“I doubt those who formed our party saw themselves as glorified middle management, too afraid to tackle significant issues,” Amato said, lamenting the party’s lack of a “big-picture vision for Australia”.