‘Where is this broadcasting to?’
Earlier this month, we brought you all things weird and wonderful from former prime minister Scott Morrison’s ongoing book tour, including an interview with the hard-hitting Kyle & Jackie O Show. Oh, how we chortled at the questions about “Area 56” and UFOs.
As if to spite us, however, Morrison then surprisingly appeared on The Weekend Briefing podcast with Antoinette Lattouf to plug his memoir, Plans For Your Good: A Prime Minister’s Testimony of God’s Faithfulness.
Lattouf prodded Morrison a little harder than Kyle Sandilands had. There were enough long silences that the interview was titled: “Is this Scott Morrison’s most awkward interview ever?”
Perhaps Morrison’s team wasn’t prepared for a critical interview on a cushy book tour — indeed, in footage seen by Crikey that didn’t make the final cut, Morrison asks Lattouf: “Where is this broadcasting to?”
Lattouf told Crikey she “got the sense that Morrison wasn’t briefed before our interview. About who I am, or even where I [was].”
“I wonder if a publicist got a talking to afterwards.”
Steve Kamper’s sailing club ‘mates’
Last week, The Australian’s Margin Call column reported NSW Lands and Property Minister Steve Kamper was pictured hanging out with a corrupt former mayor, having dinner and chatting for more than an hour. Kamper’s office predictably sought to downplay the entire thing, saying that the ex-mayor, Con Hindi, barged in on Kamper’s dinner with family friends Ronnie Wardan, of construction company Wardan Group, and Wardan’s employee, Amanda Ghalloub.
When Crikey called Kamper’s office, we were told the same thing — that the original dinner, at Sydney’s St George Sailing Club in January, was between friends and no work was discussed, and that Hindi wasn’t invited. The person we spoke to also pointed out that the footage from the evening shows two different order numbers on the table, 278 and 258. That, according to Kamper’s team, is proof Hindi moved tables to sit with the minister.
Now, there’s a further wrinkle in the story, and it would indicate the NSW opposition has sat on some version of this story for months. During the state Parliament’s budget estimates hearings in February, Nationals MP Wes Fang asked Kamper a question that seems very likely related to the Hindi dinner.
The transcript shows Fang asked Kamper: “Minister, when was the last time you went to the St George Motor Boat Club at Sans Souci?”
After some shouts of “Order!”, interjections from Labor MPs (“You’re a grub, mate”), and an attempted point of order from a Liberal MP, Kamper responded: “I’m just thinking about it. It was a couple of weeks ago at a funeral service — there was a wake there.”
When reached by Crikey, Fang said he was asked to pose the question by a Coalition colleague — a common practice in estimates hearings — and that it was likely he was given the wrong boat club name. The motorboat club and the sailing club are both real places, located just a kilometre and a half from each other on the southern tip of San Souci.
The plot — whatever it is — thickens.
Unusual bedfellows
It’s unusual to see a trade union leader given a platform by the Financial Review — normally unionists feature in the business tabloid’s pages as figures to be smeared and portrayed as lawless, selfish threats to the economy. And one given a platform to attack the Coalition would be odder.
But that’s what happened this week with the head of the right-wing Australian Workers’ Union, Paul Farrow, appearing in the AFR under the headline “The Coalition must give up its nuclear dreaming”. Except, the Coalition is only mentioned three times, as is nuclear power — including once to note the AWU supports it.
The real target is the Greens, which Farrow attacks several times, and its opposition to gas, which is mentioned a dozen times. See, Farrow wants the Coalition to abandon nuclear and get on board with Labor’s complete surrender to the fossil fuel industry, a policy the AWU — the country’s most climate-denialist union — enthusiastically endorses.
A case of “come for the criticism of Peter Dutton’s idiot nuclear policy, stay for the spray at the Greens for wanting to end our reliance on fossil fuels”.
Australian High Commission owes £760
File this one under “diplomatic incidents you never thought you’d see”: the Greater London Authority has beef with the Australian High Commission.
Transport for London, the local government body responsible for roads in the British capital, as well as trains and buses, has published a sternly worded statement overnight on the various debts it claims it’s owed by several embassies and diplomatic missions, including Australia’s, with debts dating back over two decades.
The issue is London’s infamous congestion charge, a £15 standard fee paid by most road users in central London, introduced in 2003 to reduce traffic and pollution. According to the report, the American Embassy has racked up the biggest bill of anyone, with a claimed debt of £14.6 million (A$28 million). The Japanese have a bill in excess of £10 million (A$19 million), while other unlikely debtors include Nigeria at £8.3 million (A$15.8 million) and Kazakhstan at £4.6 million ($A8.7 million).
While Australia’s debt is relatively small at a mere £760 (A$1450), the statement made clear collection was on the mind of the UK government.
“We and the UK government are clear that the congestion charge is a charge for a service and not a tax. This means diplomats are not exempt from paying it,” the statement read.
Article 23 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which counts all UN member states as parties to it (with the exceptions of Palau and South Sudan), exempts diplomats from taxation when in other countries, with the exception of “payment for specific services rendered”.
“The majority of embassies in London do pay the charge, but there remains a stubborn minority who refuse to do so, despite our representations through diplomatic channels.”
A spokesperson for the US Embassy refuted it was on the hook for the bill, arguing that its “position is that the congestion charge is a tax from which diplomatic missions are exempt. Our longstanding position is shared by many other diplomatic missions in London.”
We tried to find out which of its two old friends Australia sided with in this diplomatic fight: the Americans or the Poms. We contacted the Australian High Commission in London and the minister for foreign affairs for comment, but neither responded in time for publication.
