New Year's Eve no longer planned for Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance
Last week, the country's top court heard an appeal by the Russian Federation against laws created by the Albanese government to effectively cancel a lease for Russia's new Canberra embassy, down the road from Parliament House, on national security grounds.
Top barrister Bret Walker. Credit: Steven Siewert
Russia claimed the lease cancellation was 'Russophobic hysteria', and quickly retained the services of Australia's foremost High Court winner, Bret Walker, SC, who led a challenge to the laws' constitutional validity.
The day after that hearing, the court announced it would consider another high-profile case, this time brought by billionaire Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. An industrialist with a stake in an alumina refinery in Gladstone and ties to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, Deripaska was sanctioned by the Morrison government following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The designation stopped Deripaska from travelling to Australia or profiting from his company's share in the Gladstone refinery.
Former attorney-general Christian Porter, now a Perth-based barrister. Credit: Trevor Collens
Deripaska has been fighting those sanctions ever since, arguing that they are constitutionally invalid because they stop him travelling to Australia to challenge them. Last week, the High Court granted Deripaska special leave to appeal a March decision of Federal Court judges rejecting his argument.
The sanctions against Deripaska, which aligns with similar decisions made by the United States, United Kingdom and European Union following the Ukraine invasion, were implemented by Marise Payne in her then role as foreign minister.
And at the centre of the oligarch's legal challenge is one of Payne's old cabinet comrades, former attorney-general Christian Porter, who quit parliament before the 2022 election after using anonymous donors to fund an aborted defamation case against the ABC after the public broadcaster reported a historic rape allegation against him (which Porter has always denied).
Porter, as CBD regulars would recall, has returned to the Perth bar with gusto, where he's acted in a series of high-profile cases. Which has now brought him into the orbit of a billionaire Russian oligarch, and paved the way for a dramatic return to Canberra. Steel yourself for a swim
Spare a thought for the residents of Kew, who have to schlep off to the nearby eastern suburbs of Balwyn or Hawthorn for a swim after promises of a new recreation centre came crashing down.
Kew Recreation Centre on High Street was knocked down to make way for a slick $73 million centre with pools, childcare, fitness rooms, indoor sports courts and a party room, all intended to be available from mid-2023. Unfortunately, like many knockdown-rebuild jobs, what came next was inferior to what it replaced.
The centre's roof collapsed overnight in 2022, triggering Victorian Building Authority and WorkSafe investigations, and a blame game that continues to this day.
The site of the Kew Recreation Centre construction collapse in October 2022. Credit: Jason South
The building authority has charged builder ADCO Group and its director, John Conroy, over the collapse, while WorkSafe's case against ADCO and facade contractor Colab Building are scheduled for a return to court next month.
Boroondara Mayor Sophie Torney has been assuring residents the new centre 'is taking shape' and will be all-electric when it finally opens.
So, when's the big day? Will the kids who should have learnt to swim there be adults by then?
Council minutes show it was once expected the new pool would open in early 2025. But the council's website now says doors will open in late 2026. Boroondara Council told CBD it was working with the contractor 'to determine the opening date of the centre'.
All going swimmingly then. Uncertainty maxes out for ADH TV
Ever since broadcaster Alan Jones was arrested and charged with dozens of indecent assault offences last year (to which he has pleaded not guilty), the fate of the conservative media ecosystem that revolved around him has appeared increasingly uncertain.
Jones was the face of online right-wing outrage merchants ADH TV, founded in 2021 by twenty-something chief executive Jack Bulfin and boosted by a very generous investment by billionaire nepo baby James Packer.
Jones was a conspicuous absence from ADH TV ever since this masthead first reported allegations of groping a year before the criminal charges were laid. Now, the company is struggling to adjust to life after Alan.
Alan Jones outside court in 2024. Credit: Rhett Wyman
First, its plans to acquire regional TV licences from Southern Cross Austereo fell apart after Seven West Media stepped in. That's left us a little sceptical about the success of ADH's $42 million bid to buy the radio assets of this masthead's owners, Nine.
But ADH's most newsworthy ploy is its deal to become an Australian launchpad for American conservative cable TV station Newsmax, a once niche Florida-based broadcaster which has had its influence turbo-charged by Donald Trump's rise.
ADH TV has since rebranded its online profile and social media accounts as Newsmax Australia, which the website said in January was 'coming soon'. But so far, nobody seems to know when that is, or what it will look like.
Rumours that Newsmax had enlisted former NRL Footy Show host Erin Molan as a flagship presenter turned out to be just that. Molan has since landed a rather bizarre gig hosting an Elon Musk-backed show called 69X Minutes on the platform formerly known as Twitter. Molan is also set to unveil an eponymous show on the Salem Network, a Christian family-themed American broadcaster financially backed by the president's failson, Donald Trump Jr. Which probably takes her out of the running.
Erin Molan on the set of 69X Minutes. Credit: Screenshot
Presenters at ADH TV who remained hopeful of broadcasting with Newsmax have no sense of when they'll be back on air, if at all. We've heard whispers of an October launch, but little more. Bulfin didn't return our calls. A complicated, and as yet, unsettled situation, it seems, that left CBD wondering whether Newsmax Australia would ever see the light of day.
Which to us, is a sad day for Australian media. ADH TV provided a welcome home for so many of the right's has-beens: former Australian Christian Lobby boss Lyle Shelton, arch-monarchist David Flint, twice-rehabilitated News Corp broadcaster Chris Smith and, for some reason, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price's husband.
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