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In addition to his long and well-documented career as an industrial relations mediator and debt collector, controversial Melbourne identity Mick Gatto also helps run an autism charity, founded by him and wife Cheryl Gatto. The couple have a grandson, Dominic, who is on the spectrum.
CBD is frequently surprised by Gatto’s ability, for someone with such a chequered past, to recruit famous types to support his charitable efforts — his annual charity gala night regularly features famous faces.
Mick Gatto.Credit: Eddie Jim
And the next big fundraising for the charity, Equal Access for Autism foundation, “Laps for Love” walkathon on December 3 at the spiritual home of the Collingwood footy club, Abbotsford’s Victoria Park — has attracted some big names already.
Magpies bad boy-turned premiership hero Jordan De Goey looks set to be confirmed as an ambassador for the event — although not yet 100 per cent locked-in — joining club vice president and 182-gamer Paul Licuria, and fellow former Pies players Peter McKenna and Rene Kink, as well as celebrity chef George Colombaris.
De Goey’s management has not responded to CBD’s request for comment, but Gatto told us that it was the power of the cause that allowed him to talk people into lending their names to his fundraising effort.
“It’s such a great cause,” he told us. “If anyone didn’t want to get on board, they would just be silly.”
ABSENT FRIENDS
If Friday morning’s Qantas annual general meeting ain’t the most anticipated gathering of investors in Australian corporate history, then it’s squarely in the top five.
OK, Alan Joyce doesn’t have to face the investors to explain himself after the airline’s year from hell, but the Irishman’s successor Vanessa Hudson and chairman Richard Goyder — didn’t he say he was going somewhere? — will be facing the music at Melbourne’s Convention Centre.
Tony Sheldon needs to figure out what to do with his Qantas sharesCredit: John Shakespeare
So, a hot ticket indeed. But CBD can’t help but notice one bloke who’ll be conspicuous by his absence. Labor senator Tony Sheldon, one of those federal politicians vying for the mantle of Qantas inquisitor-in-chief in recent months, won’t be rocking up, after all.
Which is strange because not two months ago, when CBD asked Sheldon why he had invested in some of the airline’s shares, the NSW senator told us he had done so to gain access to the AGM and continue his interrogation of Hudson and Goyder — if the chairman was still around.
So then we noticed on Thursday that Sheldon was planning to front a press conference with Transport Workers Union national secretary Michael Kaine outside the Sydney court hearing a SafeWork prosecution of the airline.
Say, what? We asked Sheldon’s office, which explained that the senator had vowed to rock up to the AGM to question Goyder if he had not taken “responsibility for his illegal sacking of 1700 people”, and that the chairman’s resignation — effective next November — constituted a change of circumstances.
But what about the “No.1” agenda item, according to Tony, of “how the board plans to claw back Mr Joyce’s $24 million pay cheque” or whether directors will charge fees for their efforts this year? Maybe Sheldon can dial those questions in remotely.
DUST UP
Seems like everyone in the Labor family is on board with the campaign to ban the deadly silica dust from kitchen benchtops.
From the upper reaches of Anthony Albanese’s cabinet — OK, it’s Tony Burke — to the party’s litigation wing at Maurice Blackburn, to the maverick outlier construction union the CFMMEU, (which brought hundreds of building types onto the streets of Sydney last week calling for a total ban on the substance) the red team has been singing from the same hymn sheet.
Until now. Lobby shop Hawker Britton — to say they’re Labor-linked doesn’t even come close — has been hired, discreetly, by Caesarstone, the biggest player in the local engineered stone industry with about half the Australian market, to push its case in the corridors of power against a total ban on the product.
Fair play to Caesarstone’s managing director David Cullen for taking a broad approach to pushing his company’s position; he’s hired the decidedly un-Labor-linked Clive Mathieson, former editor of The Australian and senior staffer to Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and who runs a comms shop with Sue Cato, to help with the media side of things.
And Clive was earning his money, when CBD came calling, with a stylishly crafted “no comment”.
We were naturally desperate for a chat with the Hawkers about all of this, but their normally voluble managing director Simon Banks, not so much, telling CBD that he would not be discussing the firm’s work with Caesarstone.
But. “We are a Labor firm with Labor values,” Simon says. And we’re sure the lads at the CFMMEU will be very pleased to hear it.
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