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Well, this sounds like it’ll be a hoot. Liberal Party MP Simon Kennedy has been billed as the headline act of a fundraising dinner that appears to be co-hosted by the party’s Caringbah branch president, Marie Simone.
The name might look familiar: in 2021 Simone made news in this masthead for falling short in Liberal Party pre-selections ahead of local elections. At the time, she and her husband, Rene Licata, were known for driving matching Maseratis. Licata was also chief executive of the property developer the Manta Group, which fell into administration in March last year.
Still, the Manta Group name appears to live on. Or at least the failed property developer’s website domain does. Simone, funnily enough, is still using a Manta Group email address. And it gets better: Simone’s Manta Group email address is listed as the contact on the NSW Liberal Party event listing.
But Simone’s name isn’t the only one that caught our eye. The “exclusive dinner”, which will go ahead at The Loft on Pyrmont’s Jones Bay Wharf, also promises guest appearances from shadow treasurer Tim Wilson, and none other than NSW Liberal frontbencher Chris Rath, who the ICAC last month confirmed helped party operatives avoid a parliamentary inquiry.
That hasn’t stopped the NSW Libs from wheeling Rath out for the party faithful. (Regular readers will no doubt recall he was a special guest at NSW Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane’s sleepy Coogee campaign launch late last month.) So our guess is Kennedy and Wilson are feeling pretty relaxed about the whole thing, too. Kennedy declined to comment and Wilson’s office didn’t get back to us by deadline.
Politico’s podcast playbook
It’s only been about a month since Politico set up shop in Australia with the launch of its Canberra Playbook newsletter. Now it’s mulling plans to ratchet up its output.
Next month the buzzy insider publication will launch a new podcast, according to people familiar with the plan. The podcast is set to go live in the sitting week beginning October 12 and will be hosted by Amanda Copp, currently a federal political reporter at the Nine Network (which is owned by Nine Entertainment, owner of this masthead).
On top of the podcast, Politico’s Australian launch editor Ryan Heath is also considering a second daily edition of Playbook, we’re told, in line with the dual AM and PM editions sent out in Washington, DC.
No word yet on when exactly Politico Australia will start sending a second edition but our guess is it’d begin only after the arrival of reinforcements. For the last month Heath has had two reporters: Finn McHugh, formerly of Capital Brief, and Miriam Webber, who joined from The Canberra Times. They’ll soon be joined by Paul Karp, who seems to be there in spirit already but has still been serving out his notice at The Australian Financial Review (also owned by Nine).
ABC’s new news era
The ABC finally has a new news boss. Simon Robinson’s arrival at the broadcaster has been hotly anticipated since the ABC announced that he’d been appointed as successor to Justin Stevens as the broadcaster’s next director of news in late May.
On Monday the day finally arrived. Robinson, who joined the ABC following 16 years at the well-respected global news agency Reuters, has mostly spent his first few days in the job getting to know colleagues from the broadcaster’s Ultimo headquarters, we’re told, and heading out to meet the troops in Parramatta.
But for many of the ABC’s news division staff, Thursday will be the first time they get a real sense of their new boss when he addresses staff at a town hall in conversation with ABC presenter Leigh Sales. Going into Thursday the expectations were high.
Robinson was most recently the deputy to Reuters editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni, who oversees a newsroom of about 2600 people, many of them in bureaus around the world with a reputation for breaking accurate news on everything from war zones to financial markets with speed.
In a more-than-1000-word note to staff on Monday, Robinson hinted at some of his priorities. There were the obligatory “trust matters”, a focus on “getting the basics right”, following the reporting, acknowledging errors, being transparent about addressing them, and so on. There was also the obligatory focus on “accountability”. No doubt managing director Hugh Marks wishes he’d had Robinson around a little earlier! The ABC declined to comment.
But Robinson also showed a little ambition. “We already do so much that is world-beating. I want us to be excellent in everything we do – on screen, on radio, online and in the country’s inboxes,” he wrote in the sprawling Monday email, seen by CBD.
“Specifically, I think we can become even stronger at covering breaking news, the bread and butter of almost all newsrooms, and at breaking more news ourselves.” We look forward to hearing how Thursday goes.
John Buckley is a CBD columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.From our partners
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