Tips and rumours, Sep 30, 2015

From the Crikey grapevine, the latest tips and rumours …

Feast of Christophers. Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre was packed last night to see what host Sally Warhaft called a “Feast of Christophers”, with Innovation and Industry Minister Christopher Pyne and shadow treasurer Chris Bowen sitting down to speak about their recently released books. Both are published by Melbourne University Press. Pyne’s memoir, A Letter to My Children, and Bowen’s analysis of Australia’s most important treasurers, The Money Men, though markedly different, led to an entertaining evening.

While Bowen offered valuable insight into how different treasurers approached their roles, Pyne’s charm and humour stole the night, as he poked fun at himself, current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and former PM Tony Abbott. When speaking about the difference in political debate between the ’80s, ’90s and now, Pyne compared the styles of Turnbull and Abbott without prompt, to much audience mirth:

“Malcolm is a very different fish to Tony Abbott, just in listening to Malcolm on the 7.30 Report or at press conferences he does actually try and answer the question, which is unorthodox. It’s very refreshing I think to a lot of people. I mean, he listens to the question and then he tries to answer it, now I think that will be quite refreshing to the public.”

Ms Tips’ recording of the event includes her companion’s commentary of “oh snap!” and “sick burn, Pyney” during this marked criticism of his old boss.

Pyne and Bowen both spoke about their political mentors, with Pyne explaining the lengths he went to when first working for Amanda Vanstone, and Bowen revealing that he is in regular contact with former prime minister Paul Keating. “I speak to Paul Keating most days,” Bowen said. “He’s full of advice, he rings me up with suggested lines for interviews, many which I can’t use.”

Speaking of friendships across the party divide, Pyne expressed his great disappointment that John Howard had abolished the non-members’ bar in Parliament House, and while he was reminded that the space now houses a childcare centre, he did mourn for the bar.

“It was a very good clearing house for pressure, which is now the gym. and I don’t go to the gym, I’m waiting for the bar to be reopened.”

Pyne also noted the ways in which the architecture of new Parliament House has changed interactions between politicians and the media. He said that leadership changes would be detected by the media far earlier if governing still took place in the old building, where the journalists’ offices weren’t so far away from the politicians’.

“Things happen in the new Parliament House because of the architecture that would never have happened in the old Parliament House, which is rather interesting … and Michelle Grattan is very vexed by it, she likes to know everything that’s going on all the time.”

The night wasn’t completely devoid of policy talk, with Pyne leaving the door ajar on the future of higher education deregulation. Warhaft asked if it was gone, to which Pyne answered: “We’ll see”. We’ll see, indeed. The recording of the event will be uploaded by the Wheeler Centre here later today.

No photos! Crikey has previously reported on the camera-shy billionaire heading up TPG, David Teoh, and his reluctance to appear in the spotlight, but he made a rare public appearance today in announcing a new $1 billion deal with Vodafone. Essentially, Vodafone is using TPG’s fibre to improve its mobile network, while TPG is going to resell Vodafone’s mobile services.

Our spies on the ground report that gathered media were told they couldn’t take any photos at the event in Sydney because allegedly the network maps being shown at the event were highly sensitive. But bear in mind that much of the network coverage information can easily be gleaned from looking at Vodafone’s website. It couldn’t at all be because Teoh is camera-shy, could it?

Teoh was also said to have taken a long time to answer when questioned on whether he had recently flown to London to discuss buying Vodafone’s Australian operations from the global parent company, and said he would only talk about today’s announcements.

Philanthropic bonanza. The world of philanthropy is about to be turned upside down, reports a tipster. The first huge tranche of Australia’s biggest-ever philanthropic donation — the $3 billion foundation created by businessman Paul Ramsay, who died last year — will be giving away $150 million every year, starting soon. This would make it not only the biggest annual philanthropic injection from any fund or foundation in Australia, by a large amount, but will increase the pool of philanthropic largesse by a large percentage. Under law, registered philanthropic funds must make a minimum distribution of 5% of their corpus every year.

Spotted. We have tipsters everywhere, including in the bathrooms in Brighton, England:

“High Commissioner Alexander Downer is in Brighton for meetings at the Labour Party Conference. Settling himself in one of main conference locations at the Hilton, he went to the bathroom for a break. Leaving the restroom, he almost ran into the cleaning lady, and laughingly made a joke with her as she wiped down sinks, ‘that’s the Labour Party for you … Very messy!’ The cleaning lady clearly had no idea what he was talking about, looking quizzically before he turned on his heel and went off back to the Hilton lounges.”

Spotted again. Our tipsters seem to be all on holiday at the moment, with another spying Opposition Leader Bill Shorten in Queensland:

“A friend was in Palm Cove today for lunch and spotted Bill Shorten and family at Sea Temple. Shouldn’t he be at work on a Tuesday instead of relaxing in the North Queensland sun?”

We wont begrudge him the holiday, he’s got to think of a new attack plan, now that Malcolm Turnbull has hijacked the “innovation” line of argument.

Substance-free PR. Finance Minister Mathias Cormann sent out the transcript of a speech on Monday night, but the subject line of the email read “insert title here”. Lacking substance perhaps?