By Noel Towell and Kishor Napier-Raman
Former senator turned “Transparency Warrior” Rex Patrick has used freedom-of-information laws to get hold of the prime minister’s official diary again, and this time Anthony Albanese’s people didn’t drag the process out for a year before capitulating in the face of the threat of legal action.
Progress, of sorts, we suppose.
The big end of town has had a lot to say to Anthony Albanese, pictured in Sydney last week.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
Anyway, Rex was kind enough to send Albanese’s diaries from last year our way, and my, this prime minister’s office is well and truly open for business, with a downright throng of CEOs and other big-end-of-town heavyweights getting through the door.
Albo had chats with Mike Henry, boss of minerals giant BHP, and Jakob Stausholm of BHP rival Rio Tinto. Climate warriors might not be pleased to learn that Meg O’Neill, CEO of oil and gas behemoth Woodside, got to chew the prime ministerial ear for half an hour in Perth in early February.
Let’s see ... we had Graeme Beardsell, CEO of Fujitsu Australia and NZ; and Jayne Hrdlicka, then CEO of Virgin Airlines. Business Council of Australia honchos Jennifer Westacott and Tim Reed also popped in for a natter and a cuppa in late July.
Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill was able to chew the prime ministerial ear for half an hour.Credit: Trevor Collens
Casting his net into international waters, Albanese sat down with Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of the US$10 trillion investment juggernaut BlackRock in San Francisco in November and caught up with Markus Krebber, CEO of German energy titan RWE in Perth in August.
By contrast, if this is a Labor leader in the pocket of the unions, everyone is being terribly discreet about it. Among a mere handful of meetings with the comrades throughout the year, ACTU president Michelle O’Neil and secretary Sally McManus would be the only ones you’d have heard of.
The big sporting codes are not excluded from the PM’s presence, fans will be relieved to hear, with former AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan; NRL supremo Peter “Showbags” V’landys; Cricket Australia’s Nick Hockley; Tennis Australia’s Craig Tiley; and even Gianni Infantino, president of soccer’s world governing body, FIFA, securing audiences with Albanese.
But in the end, the people outside his inner circle that Albanese is hanging out with most – apart from FM radio jocks (he spends a lot of time talking to them) – might not be that surprising.
Greens leader Adam Bandt and Liberal leader Peter Dutton jointly top the charts with seven meetings each with his Albo-ness last year, followed by state and territory leaders.
Makes us wonder why they’d even bother to keep all that secret.
LOBSTER LADS
Sticking with the prime minister’s busy schedule, Albanese made a big speech in Western Sydney on Friday about how he too could feel voters’ cost-of-living pain.
Nothing says “I feel your pain” more than eating lobster with a billionaire. Which is just what the PM was doing three days earlier, CBD’s spies told us after they spotted him entering a private dining room with Merivale boss Justin Hemmes at the man-bunned pub baron’s swanky new restaurant Good Luck in Sydney’s CBD.
Albo, who had spent the morning opening an affordable housing project in Westmead with Treasurer Jim Chalmers, Housing Minister Julie Collins and Sydney backbenchers Andrew Charlton and Sally Sitou, was followed into the private room by three live lobsters, pulled out of the tank, our spies reported.
At Good Luck, a kilo of lobster will set you back $250. An average Southern rock lobster weighs between 600 and 1200 grams, and while maths never was CBD’s strong suit, we can work out that it wasn’t a cheap lunch.
Neither Albanese’s office nor Hemmes responded to CBD’s request for comment.
HOME GROUND
We brought word a couple of weeks ago of footy commentator Hamish McLachlan and his eye-catching multimillion-dollar South Yarra house-swap deal with Herald & Weekly Times chair Penny Fowler.
Now, we’ve got another member of the AFL aristocracy preparing a big property play, as the chairman of the – so far – all-conquering Sydney Swans, Andrew Pridham, proceeds with plans to demolish and rebuild his Sydney harbourside mansion, Hopetoun, which he picked up for a then suburb record $25 million in 2018.
The $8 million job involves razing the six-bedroom mansion for a new pad with pool, cabana, guest residence, boat ramp and private beach access.
Sounds dreamy.
Incidentally, Olympian turned Sunrise host Matt “Shirvo” Shirvington got the council green light for a $2.1 million renovation to his seven-bedroom Mosman trophy home, around the corner from Pridham’s place, which he’d been trying to sell as recently as January this year.
BOOKISH BURKE
Few cabinet ministers have more on their plate than Tony Burke, who not only leads the government’s tactics in the House of Representatives, but also has to carry the can for industrial relations reform.
Then there’s his side hustle as arts minister, which on Thursday night took him to a Sydney Writers’ Festival side event put on by the Irish consulate.
The minister was spotted deep in discussion on Irish poetry with the night’s entertainment, reigning Booker Prize-winner Paul Lynch. We hear Seamus Heaney was a mutual favourite.
When asked by a member of the Irish delegation how he got time to read, Burke said he’d already powered through eight novels so far this year. Despite his workload, we’re not surprised by his book-worminess.
After all, he named new translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey as his top reads of 2023, a step up from the dad histories, Churchill biographies and Tim Winton novels that make up our political class’s standard reading fare. No wonder the Booker winner wanted a chat.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.