Grant Kelley,the chief executive of shopping centre giant Vicinity Centres,put his family’s South Australian property on the market in November for more than $20 million.
Less than three months later,he appears to have changed his mind.
One of the reasons behind shelving the sale,according to sources who have spoken to Kelley,is that the businessman has some interest in running as the Liberal Party’s candidate in the South Australian set of Mayo,which is presently held by independentRebekha Sharkie.
Since former cities ministerJamie Briggs lost to Sharkie in 2016,the Liberals have struggled to regain ground in the electorate,once the long-time domain of former foreign ministerAlexander Downer.
Downer’s daughter,Georgina,made more than a hash of it at the last election. She not only managed a two per cent swing against the Liberals but unleashed the sports rorts scandal on the Morrison government by handing a novelty cheque emblazoned with the Liberal logo to the local bowling club (earning a Labor referral to the National Audit Office).
Kelley's family farm,the final piece of which was purchased from former Petaluma winemakerBrian Croser in 2016 for almost $7 million,is in the electorate.
Adelaide Liberals say Kelley has flirted with the idea of a run in Mayo for some time. Despite overseas stints at Apollo Global Management in Singapore and private equity outfit Colony Capital in Hong Kong,he's is well known in Adelaide. The Kelley family owns the Adelaide 36ers National Basketball League team and have holdings in several wineries.
Still,there are several years and serious factional hazards to wade through before any firm decision is made. Then there’s Vicinity,which owns stakes in the Queen Victoria Building and Melbourne’s Chadstone Shopping Centre. Kelley,who took home $2.3 million last year,declined to comment.
ALL STAR CAST
Opening night at the Sydney Theatre Company’s newMarta Dusseldorp production The Deep Blue Sea attracted a heavy-hitting crowd to Walsh Bay’s Roslyn Packer Theatre. Even Roslyn Packer was there.
The family matriarch arrived with her daughterGretel (who moonlights on the theatre’s philanthropic foundation) and granddaughterFrancesca.
The Deep Blue Sea,an adaptation ofTerence Rattigan's drama about the wife of a judge who leaves her husband for an air force pilot,is being produced courtesy of monetary assistance from film producer (and Penfolds family heiress)Rebel Penfold-Russell.
Also noted in the crowd was ANZ chairmanDavid Gonski (the theatre’s chairman until 2016),Education Department secretaryMark Scott and his wife Wenona School principalBriony Scott,philanthropistIan Darling and Labor’s federal arts spokesmanTony Burke.
Then there was television producerAndrew Dentonand journalistJennifer Byrne,authorKathy Lette,Boral and Snowy Hydro directorKaren Moses and former ABC managing directorMichelle Guthrie.
SECRET SARDINIA REDUX
On the subject of the public broadcaster,sometimes we wonder whatever happened to its prominent chief economics correspondentEmma Alberici?
Alberici had a tumultuous 2018 after a news story and analysis piece about the Coalition’s corporate tax plan was slammed by the then prime ministerMalcolm Turnbull,the Business Council and Qantas. (The ABC later identified nine mistakes in the two pieces.)
Last year,however,things went quiet. Alberici’s last piece was,a few weeks after she attended a hospital.
But ABC sources have told this column Alberici has been in Italy — not for family business — but because she is filming another episode forForeign Correspondent.
This is not the first time Alberici has reported on Italian affairs before. Last January,the program broadcastSecret Sardinia about the poisoning of the Italian island by military weapons.
That exercise drew the ire of filmmakerLisa Camillo,who had screened the documentaryBalenteson the same subject ... four months earlier. (Camillo worked on and appeared in the episode.)
What Aunty’s chief economics writer is doing filming Italian crime stories is beyond us. But hey,The Australian’s chief national correspondentHedley Thomas took a holiday to the Maldives in 2015 and! (.)
WEIGHT WATCHING
Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras starts in less than five days. It’s the perfect excuse for Labor’s new representatives at the parade —Anthony Albanese and his deputyRichard Marles,already a keen runner — to up their fitness regime.
Of course it wasn’t always this way. Labor observers reminded this column of when,in early 2012,Marles dropped four kilos after being told that he and Briggs looked like “tubby twins” standing next to one another (Briggs lost 17 kilos).
Then there was the time Marles couldn’t make it down the kids’ attraction on Adelaide’s beachfront. Or in his words:“I was way too fat for this ride ... I was an offence to physics.”
No such issues are expected this year.