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Venus Behbahani’s impending book could still provide some fireworks for Alex Waislitz and his fiancee Rebekah Behbahani.
As for the Pratt clan, they can now focus on the legal battle orchestrated by the siblings’ half-sister Paula Hitchcock, claiming a slice of the family trust that would entitle her to a share of assets valued in the tens of billions of dollars.
Pleadings closed last month and that matter is next listed for a hearing in November.
A new Pope
It has taken a long time – nearly 12 months – but the new commissioner for the Australian Electoral Commission will be announced soon.
Ex-cop Jeff Pope was announced as acting commissioner last October, and set about sailing the ship through the May election. Now he is a hair’s breadth away from being permanently appointed to the top public service job.
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Special Minister of State Don Farrell, who everyone knows is a prominent South Australia ALP factional powerbroker, is the minister in charge of the AEC. We hear he has freely told staff that Pope – acting in the role since December – is the man for the job.
Pope joined the AEC in 2016 and has been deputy electoral commissioner and chief operating officer.
His interesting hinterland includes being an assistant commissioner at Victoria Police, once registering notorious lawyer Nicola Gobbo as a source, and eventually shutting down the rogue police informant unit that later used Gobbo as a gangland informant. Gobbo accused Pope of having an affair with her, which he denied in the royal commission.
“Jeff Pope’s appointment as AEC commissioner is likely to go to cabinet next week,” a source said.
“He’s highly regarded by the government and was seen to do a great job running the last election.”
Looks like cabinet is not waiting for the conclusions of the just-announced Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the May federal election, for which it is inviting submissions.
More good news in the Pope family: daughter Annalise was admitted as a lawyer in Victoria.
The admission was moved by lawyer Perry Q. Wood, immediate past president of the Australian Institute of Administrative Law, in the Victorian Supreme Court, before Chief Justice Richard Niall. Alongside the chief justice on the bench was Justice Susan Kenny, who is also chair of the AEC board. We have said it before, folks – all things are interconnected.
Dicker’s last pay packet
Entrepreneur and petrol-head David Dicker and Dicker Data are no longer.
Dicker founded a run-of-the-mill wholesale tech distribution business which made him fabulously wealthy. This week, he receives his last pay packet from the sale of his last stake in Dicker Data – $250 million, to be exact – to pursue his far more thrilling goal of Formula 1 glory.
David Dicker is now focused on his Formula 1 aspirant, Rodin Motorsport. Credit: AFR
Dicker announced his departure from the Dicker Data executive team in May to “embark on new ventures”. And having decided decades ago that his Australian birthplace is “an authoritarian shithole”, we could not track him down for an update on his spending plans. But it’s not hard to guess.
His first attempt to crack Formula 1 got derailed in 2023, and Dicker has had to bide his time with his Rodin Motorsport group racing in the lower-tier FIA World Endurance Championship and F4 competition. No doubt the fresh funds will help with another crack.
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He will presumably be flitting between Rodin’s New Zealand – where he built his own racetrack – and European operations with the Global Express 7500 that he purchased last year as an upgrade of his Bombardier Global XRS.
“The XRS was pretty cheap,” he explained to The Australian Financial Review last year.
There is nothing about his other toys which include – according to Bloomberg – 25 Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsche, McLarens, and a replica of the Ford Interceptor made famous in the Mad Max films.
Bowled over in Parliament House
SPOTTED: Cricket legend Adam Gilchrist strolling the corridors of power in Parliament House on Wednesday, leaving several hard-bitten journalists in his thrall with a cheery “hello mate” to people he obviously didn’t know.
Turns out Gilchrist was there to host a University of Wollongong dinner. In something of a PR coup, the university has long engaged the former Australian cricket captain, or as they term him, “UOW’s global brand ambassador and renowned cricketer Adam Gilchrist”.
Think of wonders he can achieve among those high-spending Indian students.
The dinner was chiefly for members of the press gallery. As one attendee put it, the night promised “a little talk on higher education and heaps of talk about the Ashes”.
