By Kishor Napier-Raman and Stephen Brook
Forget the Met Gala. For CBD’s subjects – politicians, lobbyists, random Canberra grifters – it’s all about the second Tuesday in May, when Treasurer Jim Chalmers unveils his federal budget.
Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton.Credit: John Shakespeare
More than a handy bit of political theatre, it’s a chance for big business to beef up the Labor coffers as we head into an election year.
As CBD reported in March, tickets to a big sit-down dinner at Hotel Realm with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, which is now sponsored by Visa after previous hosts PwC cancelled themselves for good, are going for $5000 a pop.
But the more laid-back $1500-a-head stand-up event over at the National Press Club, where you don’t even get a proper meal, just ghastly nibbles, has emerged as the hottest ticket in town on budget night. It’s already sold out, and hopeful punters are being put on a waitlist.
Maybe even the donor class are starting to feel the cost-of-living crisis and opting for a more low-budget affair. The big end of town certainly seems unwilling to fork out for the Liberal Party. CBD hears the opposition is struggling to fill tables for its own fundraising event after Peter Dutton’s reply speech next Thursday.
We anticipate a similarly lacklustre affair for the moderate faction’s Bradfield dinner, hosted by that electorate’s MP, Paul Fletcher, at Old Parliament House. Last year, it drew about 45 people, and insiders are anticipating a similarly weak turnout. By contrast, 400 showed up in 2022, just months before the Liberals were voted out. How the mighty have fallen.
VALE VEXATIOUS VITO
CBD isn’t normally in the obituary business. But today we bring you news of the sad demise of Vito Zepinic, a former security chief for Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic, who notched up criminal convictions for pretending to be a psychiatrist, before becoming the Don Bradman of vexatious litigants.
In 2017, a NSW Supreme Court justice Michael Pembroke declared Zepinic a vexatious litigant, after a flurry of unsuccessful legal battles stemming from a decades-long dispute over renovations to his Turramurra home. Since then, he notched up a further 24 court losses.
That number would doubtless have grown had Zepinic not died on January 26 this year, midway through appealing against a Local Court decision regarding a dispute over $10,000 he gave to a former partner. His death was revealed, appropriately enough, in a recent ruling on this dispute by District Court Judge Alister Abadee.
Vito continued to lose in court even from beyond the grave.
While no application had been made by Zepinic’s estate to continue the proceedings, Justice Abadee ruled that “the deceased’s application is so misconceived that no practical injustice would result if it was disposed of now”.
WENTWORTH WOES
It wasn’t long ago that the harbourside electorate of Wentworth, adorning Sydney’s most prestigious harbourside real estate, was one of the Liberal Party’s crown jewels.
But nowadays, few are jumping at the chance to take on incumbent teal independent Allegra Spender.
On Wednesday night, Wentworth Liberals gathered at the Woollahra Golf Club to endorse former Deloitte consultant Roanne Knox as their preselection pick, pending state executive approval.
Knox, who is also deputy chair of the Ascham Foundation and runs a tween-oriented clothing brand, was the only person to put their hand up for the seat.
Her uncontested win puts to bed rumours that Peter King, who held the seat for the party before getting knifed at preselection by one Malcolm Turnbull, and who now runs the local federal electorate conference, was going to have another crack.
A return of the King, whose stuffy conservative old white maleness probably wouldn’t be much of a vibe for teal voters, isn’t the most hare-brained idea local party operatives have floated.
Some Liberals were supposedly so despondent about their prospects of reclaiming the seat that they floated the idea of wooing Spender to the party room. Allegra was not interested.
SLIPPERY STEVE
Cumberland Councillor Steve Christou is doubtless thrilled with all the attention he’s getting over his successful push to ban a book on queer parenting he’d never actually read.
While Labor councillor Mohamad Hussein’s vote for the ban has caused a bit of grumbling among the party’s state MPs, Christou himself was, for many years, a member of the ALP family, sensationally quitting while mayor in 2019.
One of those Labor types grumbling about Christou’s latest stunt was former veteran MP Laurie Ferguson, who employed the councillor on his staff for nearly a decade and even gave him a shout-out during a 2016 valedictory speech in parliament.
It’s fair to say relations between the two have cooled substantially.
“He actually worked with me for nine years, unfortunately,” Ferguson told CBD.
“When people defect, they often have to justify their new existence. And for that, he’s drifted more and more in a very extreme direction. He’s now very close to One Nation,” the former MP said.
While Christou won his book ban motion, he was less successful in a recent push to get a seat on the Parramatta Leagues Club board, winning just 3.5 per cent of the vote.