Alan Jones' former conservative home still waiting for Newsmax relaunch

Sydney Morning Herald

a day ago

Loading
To us, that is a sad moment 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 Jacinta Price's husband, for some reason.
Where would we be without them? Red scare
Brace yourselves. The Russians are coming for the High Court of Australia.
Last week, the country's top court heard an appeal by the Russian Federation against laws to effectively cancel a lease on its new Canberra embassy on national security grounds.
Russia claimed the lease cancellation by the Albanese government was 'Russophobic hysteria', and quickly retained the $25,000-a-day 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 the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The designation stopped him from travelling to Australia or profiting from his company's share in the Gladstone refinery.
Loading
Deripaska has been fighting those sanctions since, arguing 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 the Full Federal Court 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 former foreign minister Marise Payne.
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 in 2022 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 the ex-minister 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. His reinvention has brought him into the orbit of Deripaska, who he is now representing, and paved the way for a dramatic return to Canberra.