By Stephen Brook and Kishor Napier-Raman
There’s no date for the looming federal election as yet, but one MP already has her out-of-office on.
That would be Michelle Ananda-Rajah, outgoing member for the abolished federal seat of Higgins. Ananda-Rajah is also something of a regular CBD attendee of late. The one-term Labor MP for the south of the river seat that takes in parts of Prahran and Toorak is striving to avoid political extinction and become a senator for Victoria.
Good times: Michelle Ananda-Rajah campaigns with Anthony Albanese in 2022.Credit: Alex Ellinghuasen
Earlier this month, constituents who emailed her office received a standard automated response thanking them for getting in touch and explaining the office received many emails and phone calls each day.
“We will aim to respond to your query as soon as we can,” the reply said.
But this week constituents who emailed the Higgins MP received a very different response.
“Thank you for your email. The seat of Higgins has been abolished. I will be running for the Senate at the upcoming federal election,” an automated reply states, referring voters to different local MPs whose own electorates will absorb parts of Higgins in the electorate carve-up.
A spokesman for the MP declined to comment. Maybe her office is just being helpful by listing constituents’ new electorates. But Ananda-Rajah is still the official elected representative – for now.
The Australian Electoral Commission told us: “Higgins has been abolished but the new boundaries don’t apply until the election. So, the member for Higgins continues to represent Higgins (as the boundaries were at the 2022 federal election) until the writ is issued for the 2025 federal election.”
There you have it. Ananda-Rajah is still officially the elected representative until 6pm on the day the election is called.
But it’s just that she is not really that available. The automatic reply ends thus: “Only personal issues of an urgent nature will be dealt with by this office. Yours sincerely, Michelle.”
Flyer watch
Regular readers have expressed disappointment that Ananda-Rajah has been using taxpayer funds to distribute far beyond the bounds of her electorate a pamphlet about her achievements as outgoing member for Higgins. They question if this is a waste of taxpayer money.
The Higgins electorate update.
But the Department of Finance, which manages MPs’ costs, has given the green light.
“In relation to the use of public resources by Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah MP, member for Higgins, the department can confirm it has reviewed the matter in accordance with the protocols and will take no further action.”
And still no one will tell us how much the pamphlet cost.
Readers tell us the pamphlets are spreading across the state, including near Benalla, in the north-east Victorian seat of Indi.
While Ananda-Rajah will be wanting voters far and wide in Victoria to vote for her in her Senate bid, do people in regional Victoria really need to hear about how “serving in Higgins has been an honour”?
South Gippsland reader Robert Leslie writes: “We live in Glen Alvie, near Wonthaggi. One of Dr Ananda-Rajah’s flyers has shown up in our letter box. WTF. I voted Labor last time, but they’ve lost the plot obviously.”
Hot tickets
It was opening night fever in Melbourne on Thursday: Kylie Minogue at Rod Laver, the Melbourne Theatre Company’s Never Have I Ever at the Arts Centre, the Melbourne Art Fair at the Convention and Exhibition Centre, the first night of Asia TOPA (Triennial of Performing Arts) around town.
And in Sydney? Not so much. Well, they’ve always got that harbour.
Also opening in Melbourne was the adaptation of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None featuring the actual actor who played the teenage Friedrich Von Trapp in The Sound of Music film – Nicholas Hammond. It’s not so much a whodunnit as a who/where/why/howdunnit, with a splendid murder by poison – real foaming at the mouth stuff. The play is at the inappropriately named Comedy Theatre.
McBride v McBride
Whistleblower and integrity cause celebre David McBride was jailed for five years and eight months last year over disclosure of classified military information. Meanwhile, the former military lawyer’s other, more personal, legal matter appears at an end, after he reached a settlement with his barrister sister, Louise McBride, in a dispute over their late mother’s estate. Finally.
David McBride outside the ACT Supreme Court last year.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
The McBride family saga is its own kind of legal gothic melodrama. The late family patriarch, William McBride, was the hero obstetrician who alerted the world to the dangers of the drug thalidomide. But he was later struck off as a doctor for fudging research in an attempt to discredit a different medication, following a Gold Walkley award-winning investigation by the ABC’s Norman Swan.
The upper-crust family’s stunning fall from grace meant that when David McBride’s mother, Patricia, died in 2021, an apartment in the Sydney harbourside suburb of Neutral Bay was about all that remained of her estate. That was left to Louise, and in 2022, David, who got just $10,000, sued his sister for a greater share.
Now, the siblings have finally reached a settlement after a dispute that hinged on interpretation of the delightfully termed Felons Act was resolved – specifically, the question of whether David McBride, who was a free man when the dispute with his sister began, could continue the proceedings while incarcerated without obtaining leave from the court.
Neither the act nor past case law provided much guidance on McBride’s peculiar case, involving someone who had begun legal proceedings before being convicted and jailed.
We won’t bore you with the arid legal jargon, but NSW Supreme Court judge Michael Meek noted the proceedings had a “long and somewhat torturous history” with “significant legal costs [and] ... a heavy emotional toll on the parties”.
Meek allowed the whistleblower to bring, maintain and settle the proceedings even though McBride was behind bars. He also made orders that McBride receive a lump sum of $75,000 from his mother’s estate.
Meanwhile, this isn’t Louise McBride’s first rodeo as far as intriguing court cases go. In 2014, she sued auction house Christie’s for selling her a fake Albert Tucker painting and, in a celebrated judgment, won.
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