Governor gets (honorary) membership of an eclectic club

Melbourne’s famed private members’ clubs have long been bastions of high controversy over secretive networks, male-only status and, most recently, a Melbourne businessman with a history of family violence resigning as chair of The Australian Club’s house committee after revelations in The Age.

So it might come as a surprise to some to learn that the governor of Victoria has joined one as an honorary member. Of course, many refuse to admit women, even ones that exercise the constitutional power of the King of Australia in Victoria.

Margaret Gardner, governor of Victoria.Credit: Eamon Gallagher

But relax. Victoria Governor Margaret Gardner has been made a “distinguished honorary member” of the Kelvin Club, which admits women and has an inclusive, free-thinking vibe. It even boasts former Australian Sex Party MP Fiona Patten as vice-president.

The president is Su Baker, a professor at the University of Melbourne, who told CBD the club was “eclectic, diverse and there is a very big focus on the arts and sciences and an interest in what is going on now”.

Given the Guv is a former vice chancellor at both RMIT and Monash universities – that sounds very Gardner to us. Baker said Gardner would be involved in the club’s forthcoming 160th anniversary celebrations.

“She is a distinguished honorary member, and she has graciously agreed to launch our history of the club,” Baker said.

The club traces its history back to the founding in 1865 of the Fitzroy and East Melbourne Bowling Club, undergoing various relocations and a name change along the way. Its current site is in Melbourne Place off Russell Street.

CBD contacted Government House, but it was unable to provide a statement before deadline. A celebratory ceremonial dinner is planned for August 22.

The club has been undergoing post-COVID renovations and membership renewal.

The club’s manager and secretary is the redoubtable Miss Pearls, previously of rooftop bar Madame Brussels, who runs the club with the assistance of cavoodle Goldie Hawn-bags.

Despite modernisation, the ban on mobile phone use at the bar remained punishable by shouting a glass of port for everyone else at the bar.

Cormann 2.0 is the toast of Paris

Looks like Donald Trump has finally found an Australian politician he likes (former Ashfield deputy mayor turned next US ambassador to Malaysia Nick Adams excepted).

With the Trump administration’s support, Mathias Cormann has had his mandate as secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development extended for a second five-year term. Cigars all round!

Australia’s Mathias Cormann gets another term at the OECD. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

As finance minister in the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments, the Belgian-born Liberal senator for Western Australia had to shrug off global concerns about the Coalition’s recalcitrant approach to emissions reduction and climate policy to land the top gig in 2021.

Those concerns were given weight by Cormann’s former boss Malcolm Turnbull, who tried, unsuccessfully, to lobby against him.

Despite being a rank outsider initially, Cormann managed to beat out a field of 10 candidates, and scrape past Swede Cecilia Malmstrom, who had all the right sort of European credentials, in the final round.

Spurred by a frenetic burst of global lobbying by the then Morrison government, Cormann managed to go better than one-time wannabe United Nations boss Kevin Rudd and become the first Australian politician to lead a major international organisatio in the modern era.

No such dissent against Cormann getting a second term, with member states reaching a consensus, and the Trump administration firmly backing him.

Looking back over the yearbook of former high-profile Liberals from the last term, Cormann, a steady backroom operator who loved Senate estimates and won a degree of begrudging respect from the other side of the political aisle, wasn’t who we would have picked to land the biggest global profile after politics.

Julie Bishop, with the red shoes and the rizz, is merely a UN special envoy to Myanmar. Turnbull spends plenty of time in New York, but his biggest recent stepping out on the world stage was joining adult entertainment star Stormy Daniels for the US presidential election night coverage on UK network Channel 4.

Then there was CBD’s extensive coverage of Wyatt Roy, once Australia’s youngest minister, flying the Saudi Arabian flag while showing us the moves aboard an Aussie-made wake foil on a local lake – all part of his role as head of innovation at futuristic desert city Neom.

Only Cormann is working out of an 18th century Parisian castle. He will now be joined in the French capital by another Canberra ghost in former assistant treasurer Stephen Jones, who quit politics before the last election and was swiftly appointed as ambassador to the OECD by the Albanese government. There are worse places for former pollies to end up.

Awkward awards season

Well this is awkward. Heaps awkward, to use the Zoomer vernacular. About two weeks ago we brought you the strange story of Daily Telegraph senior reporter Clementine Cuneo, whose byline disappeared from the paper on June 30, only to reappear one day later on a listing page of the Federal Court, under the “breach of general protections” provisions of the Fair Work Act. About what, we were not quite sure.

But barely a week later, the Cuneo name disappeared from the court list as well.

This was due to her legal peeps at Thrive Workplace Consultancy & Legal, filing a motion of discontinuance.

Which we could only surmise was due to a redundancy gone wrong for Daily Tele owner News Corp, and a redundancy gone very right for Cuneo. Plus a wodge of cash as part of a settlement. But that’s just us. Usually media companies are well versed in the matter of making journos redundant to cut costs. They have sadly had enough practice.

All sides refused to comment at the time.

But now the Cuneo name is back in the paper, after she was nominated for a prestigious Kennedy Award as one part of a team of reporters for outstanding crime reporting following the saga around the discovery of the caravan found near Dural in NSW found laden with explosives (but no detonator) and antisemitic messages.

Of course, it turned out the caravan was an elaborate ploy by criminals to win leniency in the justice system.

Anyhow, all of this will add more than the usual excitement to the awards when they are announced at Randwick Racecourse in Sydney on August 15.

Although we reckon the non-disclosure agreements by which the parties are bound might put a sock in any banter.