By Stephen Brook and Kishor Napier-Raman
When we brought you the exclusive that billionaire mining magnate and 100 per cent Queenslander Clive Palmer had forked out $4.5 million to nostalgically buy his boyhood home in Melbourne’s Williamstown, the news softened our concrete hearts.
But only a little. Now the project has run into hurdles.
Clive Palmer outside his old childhood home on the election trail in 2013.Credit: Jason South
When CBD visited Williamstown, the onsite builder said he had just erected a fence around the family home, which the boy Palmer lived in before his family relocated to the Pineapple State.
The builder, who was reluctant to be identified, also added that he had been on the job for only four days, and was unaware the fate that had befallen his predecessor.
CBD was unable to ascertain the nature of the circumstances that led to the previous builder parting ways with the mining magnate.
The Palmer house is undergoing renovationsCredit: Jason South
The renovation was also news to the local Hobsons Bay Council.
“Thank you for bringing this to council’s attention. We will investigate, and if any action is required we will do so in line with our policies and procedures,” a council spokesman told CBD.
There were no planning permits or registered building permits with the council related to the property, he added.
Not that every renovation requires a local council permit, of course.
Regular readers will recall that Palmer was born in Melbourne’s hard-scrabble suburb of Footscray and grew up in the bayside Williamstown in the 1950s in the four-bedroom, two-bathroom family home. When he was about nine, his parents moved the family north, prompted by concerns over the impact of nearby industrial pollution had on young asthmatic Clive.
While Palmer doesn’t appear to have personally inspected his renovations, he did visit his old family home in 2013, during his first national election campaign (the only time he actually won a seat for himself).
Palmer showed up to visit the suburban house for a surprise door-knock. Alas, nobody answered.
A Palmer spokesman was unable to enlighten us further by publication time.
To be fair, Palmer owns more than 100 properties, plus his Palmer Coolum Resort, formerly the Hyatt Coolum Resort on the Sunshine Coast, which is undergoing a slow-burn $150 million renovation. So that is understandable, we guess.
Watching the watchers
Ever since Media Watch host Paul Barry announced his impending retirement, the question of who would step up to deliver the public broadcaster’s solemn Monday night sermons on the state of journalism has been the hottest tea in the news business.
Outgoing Media Watch host Paul Barry.Credit: ABC
Now that we’re towards the end of the year, with the ABC’s upfronts around the corner, Aunty still hasn’t locked in a new host for the high-profile role.
The show’s executive producer, Tim Latham, is also set to depart by the end of the year, and CBD hears that ABC top brass wanted to fill that role before settling on a host, just to make sure chemistry and vibes were right.
That role has now been filled, with investigative reporter Mario Christodoulou, currently with radio program Background Briefing, getting the nod.
As for hosting duties, CBD hears that ABC investigative journalist and former foreign correspondent Linton Besser is firming as a frontrunner for the gig.
Former Sky News host Janine Perrett, who filled in for Barry earlier this year and was considered a favourite, is now becoming a more remote shot.
But it’s still anyone’s guess because new ABC chair Kim Williams, who has done oh so much shaking at the public broadcaster since landing the top job in March, no doubt has his own strongly held views on the matter.
Klan’s copyright clash
We don’t expect many punters, even our dear readers, to feel too sorry for journalists. Even if, as former News Corp scribe turned independent investigative reporter Anthony Klan believes, journos could get a better deal when others use their work.
Klan, who founded his one-man news site The Klaxon, is running for a seat on the board of the Copyright Agency, the not-for-profit public company appointed by the government to administer royalty payments to creators, including journalists, on behalf of media monitoring companies, libraries and the like who might use their content.
Byron Bay-based Klan’s pitch takes on a bit of a shareholder activist rabble-rouser vibe – arguing that the royalties paid to journalists and artists from this process are not what they used to be and could be higher.
“Some years ago it was not uncommon to receive payments in the thousands of dollars a year,” Klan wrote on his candidate statement. “Now many of us would be lucky to receive $50.”
This is true, anecdotally at least. Your humble columnists are still waiting for their thousand-dollar novelty cheques.
Klan is running on a pitch “to get funds flowing again”.
According to the Copyright Agency’s most recent annual report, it distributed $143 million in the 2023 financial year across its almost 40,000 members, including $8.58 million to people working at newspapers. The report also details having paid out hundreds of members involved in “media publishing”.
Klan left The Australian ahead of the 2019 election, later accusing the Murdoch-owned broadsheet of spiking his stories he believed would have stopped Scott Morrison’s miracle victory, and being in the pocket of mining lobbyists. Klan is running for one of three author-director spots on the 11-person board, with voting set to close in mid-November.
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