By Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell
The sudden departure of Andrew Thorburn just 24 hours into his stint as chief executive of AFL club Essendon over links to an anti-gay church unsurprisingly drew outrage from the religious right, with the Australian Christian Lobby claiming he’d been booted for his beliefs by the club.
At least nobody is trying to cancel the ACL, despite their commitment to a brand of Christianity that seems to include making sure religious people can be a bit nastier to the LGBTQ community.
The lobby has managed to secure the Great Hall of Parliament House for the Canberra leg of its Babylon series, this month in which its boss Martyn Iles lectures true believers about the evils of godless modern life.
Martyn Iles of the Australian Christian Lobby.Credit:
Turns out it’s not all that hard to book an event at Parliament. You just need to cough up $9000 for venue hire and prove to the right bureaucrats at the Department of Parliamentary Services that your event is acceptable to the majority of MPs, will uphold the dignity of parliament, and is not likely to cause offence to a significant part of the Australian community.
That final qualifier could’ve been a hard one for Iles to meet. Just recently he has attacked acknowledgments of country and the Uluru statement as “paganism” and argued against attempts to ban gay conversion therapy.
There are also his views on Ukraine – Iles has criticised Russia’s invasion and some elements of Vladimir Putin’s regime, but conceded the Russian president “is right in many ways . . . [and] has promoted some conservative and some decent values.”
Fortunately for the lobby, a DPS spokesperson told CBD the event was unlikely to cause significant offence because it was only open to ticketholders. So much for cancel culture.
Governor’s gripes
All is not well beneath the Gothic revival turrets of NSW Government House.
In an all-staff email last Friday, Governor Margaret Beazley’s official secretary Michael Miller announced, with a “heavy heart,” the resignation of Her Excellency’s personal assistant.
According to CBD’s spies inside, this is the fourth assistant to quit Beazley’s employ since her reign began in 2019. We asked Government House what was up with that, but our repeated media requests were ignored.
The Governor, Margaret Beazley, looks on at the ANZAC Day dawn service in Martin Place.Credit: Cole Bennetts .
In happier news, Beazley, who before her governorship was a trailblazing judge and the first female president of the NSW Court of appeal, returned to her alma mater Sydney Law School on Wednesday night, where she spoke of her “unusually long” 40-minute audience with Queen Elizabeth II just months before her majesty’s death.
European sojourns aside, it has been a slightly chequered term for Beazley, who was investigated by the premier’s department last year over bullying allegations, including claims she’d left employees “in tears at their desks”. The outcome of that investigation remains shrouded in secrecy.
Smoke and mirrors
The Hospitals Contribution Fund of Australia – as private health insurance giant HCF officially goes by – bills itself as the place “where your health comes first”.
And it has just pulled off a major recruitment coup, with the highly experienced Scott McIntyre joining as the head of corporate affairs after more than 20 years in this area, including a stint at biopharmaceutical outfit MSD Australia.
But the work experience that caught our eye was Scott’s six years with British American Tobacco, aka big tobacco, where your health definitely does not come first. You may remember McIntyre on TV arguing against the Gillard government’s plain cigarette packaging laws.
So you might think HCF’s hiring seems counterintuitive, but with the private health insurance sector battling to convince punters that its products are worth the money, a bloke like Scott is probably just who it needs.
Strained relations
Speaking of PR, there’s a bit of a turf war going on in the industry. The Public Relations and Communications Association, which bills itself as the world’s largest professional PR body, just announced its expansion into Australia this week, after launching an Asia Pacific chapter in 2021.
This news did not go down all that well with the Public Relations Institute of Australia, which is, you guessed it, the domestic body. In an email sent by president Shane Allison on Thursday, the PRIA delivered a reminder of whose territory the foreign body was entering.
“We welcome any organisation that can add value to our industry, but will not be distracted as we focus on delivering value to our members and supporters like you,” Allison harrumphed.
Meanwhile, the PRCA has managed to sign on a fair bit of local industry talent to join as founding members, including Ogilvy Australia chief executive Richard Brett, Jack Morton and Weber Shandwick boss Helen Graney and Fifty Acres founder Jo Scard.
Taxing Times
CBD likes to keeps its focus onshore, but we couldn’t look past the drama playing out between Papua New Guinea’s largest superannuation fund, Nambawan Super, and some of the PNG government departments occupying its buildings in the capital Port Moresby.
After a long dispute over about $67 million of unpaid rent, Nambawan made good on its threats to lock the departments out of their offices.
But we can’t help wondering if including the impoverished nation’s tax department, the Internal Revenue Commission, in the lockout was the best idea.
After all, it’ll be hard to raise money to settle the arrears if the nation’s tax officials can’t get to work.
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