By Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell
He may no longer be the king of Sydney talk radio, but Alan Jones is still a hot date across the political spectrum.
The octogenarian right-wing shock jock was spotted dining at Sydney establishment Machiavelli last night, along with former NSW Labor premier and Gillard-Rudd-era foreign minister Bob Carr, Carr’s wife Helena, and Jones’ baby-faced protege Jake Thrupp.
Alan Jones in the studio in April.Credit: Rhett Wyman
The party was seated directly under Jones’ portrait, which adorns the power-dining hotspot’s wall, and we’re told it was a night of delicious discussion.
“We canvassed the political landscape from horizon to horizon, leaving no lichen-clad stone unturned,” Carr told CBD.
Jones has kept his voice alive through online-only platform Australian Digital Holdings, where Carr was a recent guest, coming on to discuss the campaign to free Julian Assange. And while ADH generally sports a lineup of right-wing culture war types, the recent presence of NSW Opposition Leader Chris Minns is another sign of Jones’ lingering influence in the Premier State.
That influence seems to extend as far as Adelaide, where Jones is headed this week at the request of firebrand conservative Senator Alex Antic, who enlisted him to help rally the party’s right-wing troops and take the state division back from the moderates.
Joining them on that crusade is another conservative Sydneysider, failed Warringah candidate Katherine Deves.
Scomo joins union
Liberal backbencher Scott Morrison has been rather lonely since losing the election in May, widely mocked even by his party colleagues and subject to an inquiry over that weird decision to appoint himself minister for everything during the pandemic.
Still, it seems like there’s someone other than Sky News sycophant Paul Murray who’s keen to hang out with the former PM. Morrison has now declared his appointment to the honorary advisory board of the International Democrat Union, a global network of centre-right political parties whose conference he attended in Tokyo last month.
Scott Morrison finds a friend.Credit: John Shakespeare
He joins former Liberal federal director Brian Loughnane, who is the organisation’s deputy chairman, beneath former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper. Opportunity aplenty for Scomo to travel far and wide whenever the inevitable resignation from parliament comes.
The Secret’s out
A dramatic few years in the Australian political landscape have launched a flurry of insightful tomes, with the latest, The Secret, by this masthead’s state political editor Alexandra Smith, documenting former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian’s rise and fall.
Unsurprisingly, the book’s Tuesday night launch at parliament’s Preston-Stanley room (named for NSW’s first female MP) drew a who’s who of the state political scene.
From the Perrottet cabinet, Transport Minister David Elliott, Planning Minister Anthony Roberts and Families and Communities Minister Natasha Maclaren-Jones made an appearance.
The crossbench was represented by independent MPs Alex Greenwich and Greg Piper, with the Greens’ Jenny Leong making an appearance, dressed in a suit she and Berejiklian had once inadvertently outfit-clashed with.
And while Premier Dominic Perrottet and Opposition Leader Chris Minns both sent staffers to keep an eye on things, we couldn’t help but notice the real glaring absence of senior Liberal moderates, the former premier’s closest political allies.
Continuing that bipartisan theme Labor’s Carmel Tebbutt, the state’s first female deputy premier, and ex-wife of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, gave the main speech.
Tebbutt described admiring Berejiklian from across the aisle, while making clear that the former premier could be a ruthless political operator, with little love for the ALP. No wonder she went so far.
The show goes on
Good news for Australian fans of the Conservative Political Action Conference – the right-wing Coachella has officially secured a venue, going with the rather vanilla choice of the International Convention Centre in Darling Harbour.
In an email sent round to friends and foes alike, CPAC’s leadership, which includes former Labor national president and SBS board member Warren Mundine, claimed that they’d overcome attempts from the woke left to shut them down.
“The cancel culture mob tried, they lied but CPAC 2022 is alive and we will not hide!”
In years past, CPAC has faced protests, and a 2019 attempt by former Labor senator Kristina Keneally to get certain controversial attendees banned from the country over their bigoted views.
But this time around, CBD couldn’t find much evidence of anyone seriously trying to cancel CPAC, and the event’s national director Andrew Cooper didn’t return our calls.
We reckon it’s probably got something to do with the breakdown of relations with Sydney’s Luna Park, which denied claims made by the conference that it was set to host the conservative clown show. Looks like somebody didn’t check the fine print.
Aside from headliners Nigel Farage and Tony Abbott, CPAC will bring together the finest minds of federal Parliament’s hard right– step up Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Matt Canavan, Alex Antic and Jim Molan from the Coalition, as well as pint-sized One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts.
Setting Sales
CBD was briefly thrilled to hear the news, dropped via Mamamia founder Mia Freedman, that former 7.30 host Leigh Sales would be headlining the women’s website’s Skin Summit last night.
We were soon disappointed, as Freedman quickly pointed out her error. Another Leigh would be joining the summit, and anyway, Sales knew nothing about skincare.
Still, Sales has found ways to keep occupied since stepping away from one of Australia’s most prestigious journalism gigs in June. Next month, she’ll deliver a keynote address at the Property Council of Australia’s congress on the Gold Coast, and recently starred at a Business Chicks breakfast in Sydney. Sounds like a pleasant life away from the spotlight.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.