By Stephen Brook and Kishor Napier-Raman
CBD’s ears pricked up when we heard an item on 3AW’s Rumour File this week about a businessman buying his childhood home with ambitious plans to reno the joint and add a home theatre.
Turns out the unlikely nostalgic mystery buyer was billionaire mining magnate and perennial future prime minister Clive Palmer. He bought the four-bedroom Williamstown bungalow for $4.5 million late last year.
Clive Palmer’s childhood home in WilliamstownCredit: Realestate.com.au
That price, a fourfold appreciation since the block last traded in 2006, is chump change for Clive, and a far cheaper vanity project than his grandiose plans to reincarnate the Titanic, which he’s been at for more than a decade. Any day!
Palmer, who lives in a Gold Coast gated community called Sovereign Islands, is a secret Victorian.
In news for many that could not be less on brand, Palmer was born in Footscray and grew up in Williamstown in the 1950s in the four-bedroom, two-bathroom family home until he was aged about nine when his parents, prompted by concerns about his asthma aggravated by nearby industrial pollution, moved north.
Clive Palmer originally said his party would put the major parties “last” on how-to-vote cards.
Clive is, to us, pure Gold Coast. He made his first buck as a real estate agent during the 1980s property boom, when the White Shoe Brigade of developers were active while Queensland’s Hillbilly Dictator premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen ruled the roost.
We’re not sure Palmer, once a humble staffer for Sir Joh, turned political chaos agent and outspoken opponent of COVID vaccines, vibes with Australia’s most progressive state.
But this isn’t the first time Palmer has embraced his Victorian roots. 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 doorknock. Nobody was home. This all went down shortly after he’d twerked in the studio for Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O for some reason (the reason was Miley Cyrus’ Wrecking Ball had just been released).
We wanted to learn more about the Williamstown youth’s grand plans for the address – perhaps a Museum of Clive? But the billionaire was overseas, and his people none the wiser about this particular multimillion-dollar nostalgia purchase.
PARTY STARTED
The grand final party for Melbourne’s business elite has well and truly started judging by the vibe at the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Pitcher Partners grand final lunch in the Olympic Room of the MCG on Wednesday.
The speech by chief executive Paul Guerra (Bombers) proved an interesting case study in how learning a prominent person’s footy allegiance either reinforces a pre-existing view about them – or refreshingly upends it.
Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Paul Guerra.
It was a bad start to the day for state opposition spokesman for tourism, sports and events Sam Groth (Swans), who turned up to the event wearing a maroon jacket and blue shirt – Brisbane Lions colours. Talk about a wardrobe malfunction.
But his day turned around when Herald Sun cartoonist Mark Knight name-dropped him as a future leader of the opposition.
Who knows, especially with current Opposition Leader John Pesutto enduring the agonies of the defamation case brought by ousted Liberal MP Moira Deeming. CBD hears that Pesutto wisely dropped out of attending the Brownlow Medal count this week, fearing the potential bad optics.
Meanwhile, Groth convinced champion jockey Damian Oliver and just departed Richmond FC chief executive Brendon Gale to speak at his recent sold $180-a-head fundraiser at the Continental Sorrento. On a roll.
Back to the ’G, where everyone’s a footy fan: Treasurer Tim Pallas (Bulldogs) mixed with lord mayoral candidate Arron Wood (Essendon), Major Events, Sport and Tourism Minister Steve Dimopoulos (Carlton), Grand Prix Corporation chair Martin Pakula (Carlton), celebrity lawyer Justin Quill (Carlton) and Melbourne Fashion Festival chief executive Caroline “Ralph” Ralphsmith (Saints).
Star of the show was undoubtedly Mark Williams, coach of the victorious 2004 Port Adelaide premiership team, who personally spruiked to Dimopoulos his mini replicas of the MCG models. He said they were available sale at the MCG shop and made great souvenirs “whether for Taylor Swift or for the Commonwealth Games”.
BOM’S AWAY
Recent reports in this masthead of a toxic and chaotic workplace culture within the Bureau of Meteorology clearly caused a rumbling within the Commonwealth’s weather watching agency.
But we didn’t expect the aftershocks to be quite so seismic. On Wednesday, the BoM app pinged a tsunami warning to residents as far inland as the Canberra suburb of Kingston on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin.
Panicked weather heads were reassured that the alerts were simply a test of the BoM’s new tsunami early warning system. And the bureau did tweet this on X 14 minutes before the first alerts. But it did little to alleviate confusion, prompting further updates.
“There is NO tsunami threat to Australia,” a BoM spokesperson told CBD, capitals for emphasis. “The Bureau acknowledges and apologises for any confusion that this test may have caused.”
It’s good to be prepared, we guess.
BACK TO SCHOOL
It’s been nearly six years since billionaire Westfield co-founder Sir Frank Lowy retired to Israel.
But the 93-year-old mall mogul is back in Australia and was spotted on Tuesday night at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion in the front row of Moriah College’s Rise Up event, part of the esteemed Jewish school’s capital appeal to raise $100 million for a slew of upgrades.
The school had already raised about half of that. No doubt Sir Frank has helped out – he’s a patron of Moriah, and the family has donated well north of $5 million over the years. Plus his daughter-in-law Judy Lowy is the founding president of the Moriah Foundation.
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