Clive Palmer is taking the name of his United Australia Party very literally, deploying a nationwide approach — with an international twist — to financing the UAP’s (long) shot at electoral glory in Victoria this month.
Credit:John Shakespeare
With the state’s strict campaign finance laws proving a barrier to Palmer’s preferred electoral game plan — blow $100 million, get one bloke elected — the Palmer friends and family network is doing what it can to bolster the cause on the southern front.
We brought word this week that Palmer’s international fugitive nephew, Clive Mensink — last seen in Bulgaria hiding out from the investigation into the collapse of Palmer’s Queensland Nickel — had chipped in a few grand to the party from his Euro hidey-hole.
Now it turns out that Mensink’s son, Ryan Mensink, has chucked in the maximum amount allowed, $4320, with Ryan’s wife, Amanda Schunemann, matching her husband’s effort dollar for dollar.
Not to be outdone, Palmer’s wife, Anna Palmer, has donated $4320.
Chrome Advertising, the lucky Brisbane agency that got to book all that media for the federal campaign, has chipped in $4320. We reckon Chrome’s managing director, Theo Coroneo, can afford it. Palmer described Coroneo this year as “probably the wealthiest advertising agent in Australia”, on the back of the UAP election spend.
James McDonald, the UAP national secretary who described Palmer in court as a “composer” when Universal Music was successfully suing the party for copyright breach over the use of the Twisted Sister anthem, We’re not gonna take it, in its 2019 federal campaign, is also on the donor list — $4320. Ker-ching.
Andrew Crook, Palmer’s Gold Coast-based spinner-in-chief, who managed 191 primary votes in a 2020 Queensland election effort with the slogan “an honest Crook for George Street”, is helping out his Victorian brethren with $4000.
Also chipping in, to the tune of that lucky number $4320, is Suellen Wrightson, who stood for the Palmer party against Tony Abbott in the Sydney seat of Warringah in the 2019 federal election but managed to have a bunch of her promotional material distributed in suburban Adelaide.
This is what CBD loves about this crew: they just don’t let geography stand in their way.
OUT THE DORE
When The Australian’s editor-in-chief, Chris Dore, abruptly resigned on Wednesday, News Corp did little to stop a million conspiracy theories coursing through the gossipy local media world.
A note to staff from the company’s executive chairman, Michael Miller, alluded to Dore’s “personal health issues”, and stressed the editor, who’d only just returned from a trip to the United States, would also be undergoing surgery this week.
The Australian’s editor-in-chief, Chris Dore, in 2012.Credit:Daniel Wilkins
Beyond wishing Dore the best, it was a dry statement that provided little praise for the departing editor, instead outlining the number of roles he’d held during a 31-year stint at the empire, and noting Miller had asked Michelle Gunn to continue editing the paper.
The Australian didn’t publicly acknowledge the change until a non-bylined Wednesday evening news story went up, a good hour after this masthead broke the news.
It’s no surprise then that staffers at the paper’s Holt St, Sydney headquarters were shocked and blindsided – such announcements at News Corp are usually dropped on a Friday afternoon and tend to strike a far jollier tone. This all felt a little quiet, abrupt and poorly stage-managed.
BACK TO BED
After some pain-free months, veteran broadcaster Alan Jones is sadly back in hospital, recovering from another round of back surgery.
The 81-year-old spent much of the early part of 2022 on the operating table — 28 hours over four procedures — for “unconscionable” nerve pain.
Alan Jones is back in hospital for back surgery.Credit:Janie Barrett
“I was hanging onto the bed screaming, they could have heard me at the South Pole,” Jones said in April.
The pain has returned, we’re sorry to report, and the former 2GB and Sky News host is expected to remain at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital for another month after going under the knife on Tuesday.
Those close to him said he was feeling better but would be out of action for the rest of the year.
These days, Jones streams his own nightly program from a studio in Sydney’s inner west through Australian Digital Holdings, aided by the likes of Nick Cater, boss of Liberal Party ideas factory The Menzies Institute, and we’re told Jones will be back “on air” early next year.
TROUBLED WATERS
Melbourne Water is a company that’s been in the news of late, over its decision way back in 2006 to allow the Victoria Racing Club to build a flood wall at Flemington racetrack which is being blamed by some furious locals for the flooding that devastated their homes last month.
So what a time for its “Reputation Tracking Survey” to hit the government tender website, with the company retaining Sydney outfit RepTrak for about $126,000 to dip its toe in the water (sorry) of public opinion about the utility.
Melbourne Water tells us they have been doing these surveys since 2014 and there’s nothing unusual about this year. Fair enough, but CBD suggests that if they’re going door-to-door with a survey, they might give postcode 3031 a wide berth.
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