By Stephen Brook and Kishor Napier-Raman
Spotted: The tall guy, in a rush, entering the Toorak Hotel at 6.45pm. Such was former AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan’s hurry that he walked straight past CBD’s operative and grabbed a serviette off the counter, leaving a fellow punter marvelling at the celebrity aura in his wake.
The chief executive of betting company Tabcorp, who was last seen on Sunday in the American Express Lounge with wife Laura avoiding the rain at the Australian Grand Prix, immediately headed to the back of the Toorak Hotel’s corner bar on Tuesday evening. Waiting for him was none other than Victoria Racing Club chief executive Kylie Rogers.
Kylie Rogers with then-AFL colleague Gillon McLachlan at the 2023 Brownlow Medal.Credit: Getty Images
Don’t worry, we won’t tell NSW Racing boss Peter V’landys.
McLachlan sat back with his feet stretched out on a chair, looking like he owned the place. Which, given that this was Melbourne and he is Gillon McLachlan, is kinda sorta true.
Of course, the pair go way back. Rogers worked for McLachlan at the AFL, where she was executive general manager, customer and commercial, before jumping ship for the VRC gig. And Gill is mad for the horses. Strategy planning or Friends Reunited? We weren’t close enough to tell.
Palmer’s teal attraction
Clive Palmer works in mysterious ways.
Nobody is quite sure why the boy from Williamstown burned hundreds of millions of his own hard-earned over the past two election cycles to get a single senator – hello Victoria’s own Ralph Babet – elected at the last federal election.
Nobody can say why the billionaire mining magnate keeps wasting the High Court’s time with doomed legal battles – he’s 0-5 before the country’s top judges.
And similarly, nobody could quite figure out the logic behind Palmer’s decision to try to trademark the word “teal”, first reported by this masthead in January. A childish attempt to troll the current crop of independents? Some kind of elaborate 5-D chess electoral strategy? Palmer’s media minders, who themselves aren’t sure what he’s up to half the time, wouldn’t explain.
While the mystery of Palmer’s application with IP Australia remains unresolved, CBD can report that at least one of his applications has failed. The regulator objected to Palmer’s teal trademark, with IP Australia’s trademark examiner issuing an “adverse report” last month. That means Palmer can either let the application lapse, or respond to the examiner’s report, which he has until February to do.
Would Palmer, who loves an appeal, seek to keep on fighting for his trademark application? If so, his minders didn’t respond, leaving Palmer’s latest frolic a mystery, once again.
The high cost of loving
David Dicker luxuriously bearded founder of Dicker Data looks more like a cult leader or Tolkien character than a hardware and software logistics mogul.
Dicker Data’s David Dicker.Credit: Louie Douvis
And he certainly has the suitably fabulistic turn of phrase to match. Dicker left these shores in 2019 to live out of a luxury hotel in Dubai, describing Australia as an “authoritarian shithole”. He’s since bemoaned the way those in his home country who make lots of money are “abused and denigrated”, unlike Americans, who show appropriate fawning deference to their billionaires. They did just make one president. Twice.
Anyway, with deep pontifications like this, it’s no surprise that Dicker, the successful owner of a private jet and unsuccessful (so far) owner of a Formula 1 team, cops a bit of gentle denigration in columns such as ours.
While busy trying to break into F1, Dicker has also been dealing with the costly fall-out from his divorce with second wife Delwyn Dicker. Last year, he sold $200 million worth of Dicker Data stock – about 10 per cent of the listed company – with the proceeds set to go toward a divorce settlement.
And on Wednesday, the company announced Dicker was selling another 8.3 million shares, worth $67 million all up, again citing the divorce.
“The proceeds from the share sale is to fund David Dicker’s final divorce settlement instalment, along with other personal funding needs,” the company said in an announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange.
In 2021, Dicker sold $42.2 million worth of shares, with the proceeds going toward buying a second-hand private jet, and his Rodin hypercars. All those expensive toys, it seems, cost less than the divorce.
King George rises again
George Mladenov realised a lifelong dream when he appeared on Australian Survivor in 2021.
King George, as he’s known on the show for his Machiavellian dealings, became a fan favourite and is set to return to our screens again later this year.
George Mladenov kept viewers entertained in the 2021 season of Australian Survivor.Credit: Nigel Wright
But Mladenov can’t resist his other great love – politics. Mladenov, who spent a lifetime among the backroom brawlers of NSW Labor right, has gone back to where it all began. He’s now doing some staffing work for his old boss, NSW upper house MP Tania Mihailuk.
When the duo last worked together, both were still with the ALP. But Mihailuk dramatically quit the party in 2022, joining Pauline Hanson’s One Nation shortly before the 2023 state election. She went on to quit Hanson’s trainwreck of a party last year.
King George told CBD he was working as a short-term casual in the office of his friend of 15 years.
“I like to fill my time with fulfilling work; digging into policy and legislation at the coalface in state parliament is always exciting to me,” he said.
“Once a political operative, always a political operative.”