Simon says kill the story
When the Australian Financial Review publishes its Power List each year, it asks those who make the cut to pose in all manner of ridiculous get-ups.
We can’t reproduce the images for copyright reasons, but suffice to say the results usually disempower the dignity of participants in the most ironic of ways given the nature of the list they are being added to.
Some flatly refuse to cooperate, and they are the list members worthy of applause. True power usually doesn’t involve playing the role of court jester for a photographer.
Last year’s power list included climate change campaigner, and son of Australia’s first billionaire, Simon Holmes à Court.
He was added to the list for the first time for the influence he has over the gaggle of teal independents whose electoral success owed no small amount of thanks to the money Holmes à Court fundraised and injected into their campaigns at the 2022 election.
Presumably his financial support will be just as important at this year’s election.
The narrative about him making the list published in the AFR included attempts by Holmes à Court to get himself removed from it.
A teal MP (Allegra Spender) and a former staffer of a teal MP (Jim Middleton who worked for Zoe Daniel but now works directly for Holmes à Court’s Climate 200 fundraising not-for-profit) both contacted the AFR requesting he be taken off the list.
Climate change campaigner Simon Holmes à Court (pictured) initially made attempts to have his name removed from the AFR’s Power List before agreeing to take part in the feature
Their arm twisting didn’t work. In the end, Holmes à Court even participated in the pictorial.
Of course, his ability to convince others in the teal movement to do his bidding and contact the AFR was real-life evidence that Holmes à Court did (and still does) wield power behind the scenes, as much as he likes to downplay it.
Once the story was published, teals were up in arms at their behind-the-scenes efforts to influence the media being outed publicly.
That’s because the images of these virtuous non-major party political types depend on their integrity and transparency being paramount.
Zoe Daniel said the call made by her former staffer was done ‘out of concern that the paper planned to imply on its Power List that Simon Holmes à Court holds a position of male power over the female community independents on the crossbench’.
I’m not sure the AFR saw it in such gendered terms, but I guess that’s exactly the power he holds, if one chooses to see this issue through such a prism.
If Holmes à Court was behind requests to get his name removed from the Power List, which Daily Mail Australia has confirmed he indeed was, then according to Daniel the man himself was the one concerned about the optics of male power over female MPs.
Before cooperating with the pictorial anyway.
Teal MP Allegra Spender (left) and a former staffer of another teal MP, Zoe Daniel (right), both contacted the AFR requesting he be taken off the list. Daily Mail Australia understands Holmes à Court was behind requests to get his name removed from the Power List
Frankly, I’m not surprised teals were so quick to do his bidding. Climate 200 donates millions of dollars to teal campaigns, which can be the difference between winning and losing. It employs others within the teal movement, giving them a means of earning a living.
In the case of Daniel, Climate 200 donated a whopping $710,000 to her 2022 campaign. Not exactly small beer!
While Holmes à Court is no Clive Palmer when it comes to throwing his money around, his financial support is central to the success of the teal movement.
And he’s not what you might call a silent investor.
I believe Holmes à Court’s interests in the movement derive from his ideological belief in climate action, not the fact he has financial investments in renewables.
Some might think it’s a chicken-or-egg debate, but in my view his investments reflect his passion, not the other way around.
Either way, to deny Holmes à Court’s influence over the teal movement is silly. To try and peddle influence to avoid it being outed is downright stupid. To get caught when doing so is perhaps a sign the movement has a ways to go before it’s refined into the sort of smooth political operation that can embed itself in the body politic.
If that can happen, Holmes à Court really will deserve his place amongst the powerful in Australian politics. And he can happily pose for another pictorial.
Missing politics yet, Julie?
The knives appear to be out for the now-retired longest serving deputy leader of the Liberal Party, Julie Bishop.
These days the former foreign minister is the Chancellor of the Australian National University, which is facing all manner of institutional challenges.
So much so that the union is calling for her to be sacked. And Ms Bishop thought getting out of politics would end such shenanigans!
The ANU Union is calling for the university’s chancellor (and former foreign minister) Julie Bishop to be sacked. Ms Bishop is seen with Jackie O at last year’s Australian Fashion Week
Oscar Wilde once said the fights at universities are so vicious because the stakes are so low, and as Chancellor, Ms Bishop doesn’t even draw a salary for the headache she’s putting up with trying to deal with ANU’s many problems.
One is insolvency. ANU has a $250million black hole it needs to fill. That means job cuts, which Bishop has already authorised, and the union is understandably upset about that.
Ms Bishop has two years left of her seven-year term as chair of the board
But to be fair what else can an institution do to cut costs when the majority of its expenditure goes on staff salaries?
The wheels often turn slowly at large institutions like ANU, so maybe Ms Bishop will get to the end of her seven-year term as chair of the board before the heat is really turned up.
She only has two years left to survive! If she leaves early, boy she’ll miss the lost income that goes with it!
Ms Bishop must be seeing red now that the union has her in its sights. Remember those iconic scarlet shoes she wore to stand out from the blokes while still in politics?
When Tony Abbott became PM she was the only woman in his cabinet.
In contrast ANU has 11 women on its 15 member board, known as the University Council, so she’s not outnumbered in the way she once was.
But reports are suggesting she doesn’t have the full support of those around her at ANU, even if a coup seems far less likely than what happens in Parliament House.
