Stoush means no place for public art at Barangaroo

Barangaroo engenders mixed feelings when it comes to aesthetics, so it’s sad to learn that a major piece of public art will no longer be strung up over the harbourside precinct.

We can reveal a multi-million dollar work has been cancelled in the midst of a spectacularly stupid and very private two-year stoush between arts patron Simon Mordant (backed by Lendlease) and James Packer’s Crown Resorts (backed by a phalanx of dowdy bureaucrats).

Illustration: John Shakespeare.Credit: Fairfax Media

After four years in the works, Lendlease and Mordant, the chair of its public art advisory panel, have been told in no uncertain terms to give up on artist Tomas Saraceno's (yet to be announced) $16 million “Sundial” work they planned to suspend over Waterman's Cove.

Saraceno, who “imagines alternative possible scenarios for futures”, has his work strewn across Europe from Paris to Munich. But not in Sydney.

Arts Minister Don Harwin will have to find a ribbon cutting ceremony elsewhere.

Barangaroo Delivery Authority chief executive Craig van der Laan, once the general counsel at contractors Leighton Holdings, delivered the news late last month, according to people familiar with the saga.

And it turns out this might have all been Lendlease’s fault after all.

They told van der Laan that Crown Resorts, which is building the neighbouring tower, had been consulted and had no significant objections.

Not the case, according to lawyers working for Packer’s gambling empire.

In July, they informed van der Laan that it hated the plan.

But don’t feel too bad for Mordant.

He’s probably kicking back with his animals on his Umbria farm by now, or perhaps in New York.

Organic matter

It’s been one month and one week since cashed up fund manager Hamish Macquarie Douglass up and left the top job at Magellan Financial (and is now the chairman), and he’s already settling in with the rest of us outside the chief executive’s suite.

He was spotted yesterday, sans tie, joining the lunchtime rush for a Nudefish Poke bowl downstairs from the Magellan office in the MLC Centre’s food court yesterday.

Who could begrudge the hardworking Magellan team their $17 ponzu organic tofu?

They're EXPERTS IN GLOBAL INVESTING after all (and don’t take our word for it, take theirs).

New threats and old faces

Bruce. Hawker, an adviser to Kevin Rudd, has reappeared in Macquarie Street to plan Labor's question time strategy.Credit: Andrew Meares

We laughed, we cried, we laughed again.

NSW Labor catastrophically imploded last week as Luke Foley was shuffled off after accusations he inappropriately touched an ABC journalist (he denies this) but by Friday we were back talking about Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s government.

A deal to fix up the factional dispute to embarrass all other factional disputes — Treasurer Dominic Perrottet wanted to move from his seat of Hawkesbury because it is too far to drive— looked somewhat lopsided after Liberal MP Damien Tudehope was not endorsed for the Upper House.

Tudehope had agreed to move so Perrottet could have his seat of Epping.

Both are in the party’s Right faction.

Perrottet and the faction’s other heavyweight, Planning Minister Anthony Roberts, blamed the new flare-up on Simon Fontana and Rommel Varghese, the chiefs of staff of their Cabinet colleagues Family Minister Pru Goward and Multicultural Affairs Minister Ray Williams.

Both are in the Centre Right.

Apparently they even wanted them sacked.

That was not going to happen, and tensions have eased.

But if Tudehope isn’t given the rubber stamp this week, the Centre Right’s Natasha Maclaren-Jones could be torpedoed out her safe Upper House position.

Over in the offices of new Labor leader Michael Daley, a few old (old) faces.

Kevin Rudd’s political adviser, Bruce Hawker, is back to advise on question time strategy, as is another Hawker Britton staffer, former Julia Gillard-era press officer Eamonn Fitzpatrick.

Meanwhile, Foley’s head of policy, Chloe Bennett, has taken over as acting chief of staff following the departure of veteran Seven Network news man Chris Willis.

Once upon a time in... Brisbane

Morgan Financial, headed by Brian Sheahan, has caught one of its brokers using "non-public information" to trade.Credit: Rob Homer

No surprises the world’s lamest stockbroker, Brian Sheahan-chaired cowboy shed Morgans Financial, has been caught in the world’s most pathetic insider trading scandal.

Between the miracle elixir salesman act flogging Corporate Travel to their poor clients (and having to reach more than a dozen confidential settlements after providing terrible advice), one genius has been caught on tape using “non-public information” on trades.

Former stockbroker, we should say.

Having been rapped over the knuckles for insider trading with the corporate regulator’s velvet ruler in late 2015, it took Morgans just ten months to do it again.

You can find the disclosure by hauling out the telescope and pointing it at the fifth page of the latest submissions made public by Kenneth Hayne’s financial services royal commission.

And the best part?

We hear the trade, in a two-bit mining services company, made them all $200 richer.

Now that’s the big time, baby!