Latest news with #Yarra
The Guardian
14-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Captain Cook memorial will not return to Melbourne park after repeated vandalism
A contentious Captain Cook memorial repeatedly damaged by vandalism is to be scrapped. The City of Yarra on Tuesday voted unanimously not to restore the memorial, which stood at the entrance to Edinburgh Gardens in Melbourne's inner north. The granite monument was toppled and graffitied on the Australia Day long weekend and is now in council storage. A council report found that it would cost about $15,000 to repair and reinstate after it was toppled and spray painted with the words 'cook the colony' last year. More than $100,000 has been spent over the past 25 years to maintain the memorial. The report described the memorial as of 'little or no significance' and said conservation work should be prioritised elsewhere. It also noted the memorial was 'contentious within the community and Cook is a contested figure in relation to First Peoples'. It also noted the memorial's 'poor condition and structural integrity'. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email It recommended against a $250,000 option to refabricate and reinstall the memorial 'including a truth-telling marker'. Yarra's mayor Stephen Jolly said removing the memorial would eliminate the yearly maintenance costs. 'It's a waste of ratepayers' money,' Jolly told ABC Melbourne. The memorial has been vandalised several times since 2018. In 2020, the memorial's plaque featuring Cook's face was spray-painted, with the words 'shame' and 'remove this' scrawled beneath it. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion A similar statue of Captain Cook was hacked off at the ankles in St Kilda, and another statue of Queen Victoria near the city's Botanic Gardens was splattered with red paint on the eve of Australia Day, last year. Jolly denied council was giving in to vandals. 'I don't think it's a good idea to destroy statues of people from the past … but we simply can't afford it,' he said. 'If we wanted to keep it there permanently, we would probably have to have security guards there (and more) lighting. I just don't think the locals want that.' The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, described the vandalism of monuments as 'deeply disrespectful' and called for community division to end. 'It is disappointing,' she told reporters on Wednesday. The bronze plaques, which belong to the memorial, are expected to be given to the Captain Cook Society, which celebrates the British explorer.
The Guardian
09-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Sarah Witty v Adam Bandt: how an unlikely Labor champion took down a Greens giant
Labor could hardly be considered a metaphorical David in most federal election contests. But in the progressive seat of Melbourne, where the now-beaten Greens leader Adam Bandt had reigned for 15 years, there are similarities to the oft-told biblical story. On 28 March, when Anthony Albanese called an election date for May, Melbourne appeared on no one's list as a battle to watch. Just five months before the campaign began, Labor's candidate against Bandt, Sarah Witty, had unsuccessfully run for a seat on Yarra city council. She came third behind independent and Greens candidates. By February, less than two months from polling day, Witty was Labor's choice to run in Melbourne against the long-serving Greens MP. From the outset, the seat wasn't on federal Labor's radar. 'I don't think we even had it in the winnable column,' a Victorian Labor source said. A Greens insider said there had been no indication Melbourne was in trouble, noting the party didn't have the resources for single-seat polling in the way the major parties do. Both the Greens and Labor will reflect on the unexpected result in the coming weeks to figure out what happened. For the Greens, it will be a sobering look at how Bandt, regarded as a unifying leader within the party, lost the seat he had held for so long. Local Labor volunteers from the Melbourne and Richmond branches were out on the hustings daily. Even Witty's social media was run by a volunteer, who updated the page in their free time. How-to-vote cards were supplied by the national campaign but rank-and-file members had to fundraise through raffles and auctions to pay for campaign shirts and corflutes. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email A senior Victorian Labor source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, described Witty's campaign as 'run on the smell of an oily rag', with donations from the active Melbourne and Richmond branches. Another Labor source, who helped the campaign, said: 'It was a very, very sparsely funded campaign, all raised from locals. It wasn't like there were massive amounts of money coming from a national office.' The idea of Labor as David in a battle against the Greens Goliath doesn't sit well with the Greens camp. They argue that Labor's federal megaphone gives even the most under-resourced campaigns a big chance. While the 'people-powered' campaign is credited by Labor sources as the reason Witty ousted Bandt, a 'perfect storm' had also hit. The Greens leader's chance of winning a sixth term in office was dampened by three key factors, the electoral analyst Kevin Bonham said. The electoral boundaries for the seat shifted before the election, lowering Bandt's primary vote from 49.6% in 2022 to 44.7%. On a two-candidate preferred basis, it had dropped from 60.2% to 56.5%. After days of tense post-election vote counting, Bandt on Thursday conceded to Witty, saying a Greens win in Melbourne was like 'climbing Everest'. 'We needed to overcome Liberal, Labor and One Nation combined, and it's an Everest that we've climbed a few times now, but this time we fell just short,' he said. Bonham said preference flows had not favoured the Greens this time around. More Liberal and One Nation votes went to Labor than previously. The rightwing activist group Advance ran a campaign against the Greens to reduce its vote in both houses, claiming Bandt's defeat as a win. Social media advertising analysis showed the group had spent no money on targeted ads in the seat during the campaign. A source inside Bandt's camp said a post-election review would look at third-party campaigns against the party to understand their impact on the inner-city seat. Bonham said another factor against Bandt couldn't be written off as easily: the Greens leader's primary vote dipped just enough, even after the boundary redistribution, to set the wheels in motion for his loss. 'It's a perfect storm,' he said. 'He had a lower baseline, he had a swing against him on the primary vote, and he had a swing against him on preferences. 'Those three things combined have got rid of him.' Swings against Bandt in progressive booths, including Fitzroy and Collingwood, will require further analysis to determine how the Greens came undone in the lower house. A Victorian Labor source from the left faction hoped the Greens 'looked critically' at their failings. 'I really do see the value of having strong leftwing crossbenchers in the parliament,' they said. 'I think it's good for democracy, and I think it's really good for the Labor party when we do have a viable leftwing minor party. 'So I really hope that they take some time to critically look at their failings.'
News.com.au
25-04-2025
- Business
- News.com.au
Criterion: ‘Outstanding' value is emerging in the small caps sector, but investors need to kiss a lot of frogs
A lower Australian dollar is likely to spur takeover activity in the small-caps sector Yarra Capital Management insists on meeting management and walking the shop floor in its selection process The firm likes stocks that service the mining, energy and data centre sectors A confluence of factors including the weak Australian dollar has created 'outstanding' opportunities in the small caps sector, according to Yarra Capital Management's chief minnow whisperer. One compelling reason is that the flailing Aussie dollar is likely to result in more takeovers – a trend that already has become apparent. The other is that a weakening currency is linked to expectations of imminent interest rate cuts – another tailwind for the sector. 'The last couple of years have been tough for the sector generally,' says Yarra's microcaps portfolio manager Joel Fleming. 'When rates go up, people avoid risk assets. 'Now there's some outstanding value on offer, with some great companies doing great things.' Merger mania takes hold Fleming says small caps already have been a 'wonderful hunting ground' for mergers and acquisitions. This week, online broker SelfWealth (ASX:SWF) was taken over by Syfe group after a three-way contest. Smartpay has attracted a non-binding offer from Tyro Payments (ASX:TYR). Mayne Pharma (ASX:MYX) is almost certain to be subsumed by US dermatology company Cosette, while Pointsbet (ASX:PBH) has fielded offers from Mixi Australia and Bluebet (ASX:BBT). As Fleming puts it, there are 'good, bad and indifferent' small caps, with the latter two categories outweighing the former. Have a crack, not a croak So how do astute investors identify the next Fortescue (ASX:FMG), Pro Medicus ProMedicus (ASX:PME) or Afterpay (subsumed by US payments giant Square, Block Inc (ASX:SQ2), for $39 billion in 2021)? Within an hour he will know whether the company can achieve greatness by observing how happy and engaged employees appear to be. 'It's about sitting down with management and working out what they want to achieve and whether they have the skills and balance sheet in place to go and have a crack,' he says. 'You need to kiss a lot of frogs.' 'Agnostic' approach Yarra is agnostic in terms of sector or size, with its investments range from a $250 million market cap to as little as $50 million. Fleming says this market sector is a great space for value sniffers, as it gets little or no analyst coverage. Usually, management is up for a chat. As a result, discrepancies between a company's valuation and its 'real' worth have not been exploited. The firm embraces resource stocks, but will baulk at biotechs and explorers, which rely on a binary outcome such as a positive trial or drilling result. The fund currently around $100 million under management across 50 stocks. Yarra's tips Fleming cites Energy One (ASX:EOL) which provides software to the energy utilities – notably in Europe. 'As electricity networks evolve, it is creating opportunities as the market changes,' Fleming says. A provider of software to the mining industry, RPM Global (ASX:RUL) has tie ups with some of the world biggest miners. Fleming adds the company is more focused after selling its expert report (consulting) business for a tidy sum. The data centre sector has run hard and Yarra was an early investor in NextDC (ASX:NXT) and Global Data Centre Group (ASX:GDC), which held an investment in Airtrunk (acquired by Blackstone last year for $24 billion). These days, Yarra prefers tangential exposures such as Southern Cross Electrical Engineering (ASX:SXE), which provides electrical services to these digital repositories. What's more, the 'picks and shovels' Southern Cross has a diversified exposure to other sectors needing in-demand sparkies. We failed Fundies are notorious for crowing about their successes and sweeping their failures under the Axminister carpet. Fleming says his worst failure was investing in NextEd Group (ASX:NXD), which provided education for global students. NextEd got caught out in the pandemic and then missed changes in government policies aimed at stemming migration. The stock has lost 97% of its value over the last five years. Happily, Yarra's portfolio princesses outnumber the warty toads. Managed by Yarra, the UBS Microcaps Fund returned 21% in the yar to March and has yielded 12.7% since its inception in August 2014. Over that time the ASX small-ordinaries index has returned 6%.
