Sydney universities queue up to award doctorates to Julia Gillard

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Julia Gillard’s dignified approach to post-prime ministerial life has won her adoration from the public which was absent when she was Australia’s first female leader in The Lodge.

Gillard, largely based in London these days, rarely injects herself into party political squabbles like a miserable ghost. She isn’t giving “strategic presentations” to Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company either (That’s Scott Morrison, by the way). Instead, Gillard has been the subject of a hit one-woman Sydney Theatre Company production, is set to chair the Women’s Prize for Fiction next year – and has just received two more honorary doctorates in the span of a few days.

University of Sydney Vice Chancellor Mark Scott with Julia Gillard.

Gillard was feted by Macquarie University last week at a ceremony led by Governor-General Sam Mostyn. Then, on Wednesday afternoon, Gillard received a gong from the University of Sydney. In a speech at the sandstone uni’s Great Hall, she told students “the rise of a privileged and powerful uber-rich, the embrace in the United States and many other parts of the world of a more authoritarian form of politics, and an alarming backlash against gender equality” were all global challenges antithetical to USyd’s values.

The former PM also hit out at the Trump administration’s assault on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as the big corporates such as Meta and Amazon which have fallen into line behind the prez.

Her latest awards mean Gillard has at least seven honorary doctorates. Meanwhile, Kevin Rudd is still telling anyone who’ll listen about his 2022 Oxford PhD.

Comings and Owens

Did far-right provocateur Candace Owens really expect to come to Australia?

Hours after the High Court rejected Owens’ appeal against Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke’s decision to deny her a visa, the phone number for her tour promoter, Rocksman, was disconnected.

Owens, known for spewing all manner of garbage online, including claims Israel is a “cult” and “secret Jewish gangs” control Hollywood, planned to tour Australia last year, before Burke cancelled her visa.

But she refused to go away, hiring silk Perry Herzfeld, SC, to argue the visa denial infringed the Constitution’s implied freedom of political communication. That argument was unanimously denied by the High Court, noting Burke denied Owens’ visa on the basis her “extremist and inflammatory comments towards Muslim, Black, Jewish and LGBTQIA+ communities” had the capacity to “incite discord” in the community.

We have no idea how much Owens coughed up for the appeal, but retaining a silk, plus a junior barrister, on top of solicitors’ fees isn’t cheap. The court also ruled she would be on the hook for the government’s legal costs in the latest challenge.

Owens is also defending a defamation case in the United States brought by French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte over her baseless claims the country’s First Lady is transgender.

But despite the High Court ensuring Owens won’t be coming to Australia any time soon, and her promoters going silent, tickets for her (no?) show at Perth’s Riverside Convention and Exhibition Centre scheduled for January 2026 were still available for $95 a pop on Wednesday afternoon. With about half the theatre sold out, that’s a lot of refunds.

Where’s Al?

To hospitality news, celebrity Melbourne chef Guy Grossi recently confirmed plans to sell the much-loved Grossi Florentino restaurant, and a string of other venues on Bourke Street, that have been managed by his family for 26 years. The sale followed an investigation revealing allegations of Grossi’s inappropriate behaviour, which Grossi denies, stretching back more than a decade.

Corporate filings provide more details of the sale to the hospitality group run by Rebecca Yazbek, who owns Nomad in Sydney’s Surry Hills and Melbourne’s Reine & La Rue, which is recovering from its own semi-recent public relations crisis.

Documents filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission show Yazbek signed the deal to take over Florentino on September 18 for an undisclosed sum, using an ABN linked to a Sydney bar that closed last year called Beau Bar. Grossi, meanwhile, is doing a residency at a Hawksburn venue, Bar Bianco, owned by almost billionaire biohacker Tim Gurner’s property group.

Rebecca’s husband Alan Yazbek stepped down as a co-director of the company after displaying a Nazi symbol at a pro-Palestine rally last year. He pleaded guilty but escaped conviction and was handed a conditional release order. He also promised to spend some time at an ashram in India.

When our reporters contacted Rebecca and her representatives last week about the deal, she steadfastly refused to confirm any sale – only insisting her husband Alan had nothing to do with “any deal with the Grossis”.

Corporate records obtained by the reporters confirm she signed the deal on September 18 and has transferred the Florentino business name to a company registered to her home address – owned jointly by the married couple.

Maybe they won’t talk shop around the kitchen table.

In the can

Never tweet.

This was a lesson Bulldogs General Manager and NRL personality Phil ‘Gus’ Gould learnt the hard way this week.

On Wednesday, Gould wanted his 75,000 X followers to know he was sitting on a public lavatory.

“Toilets, where the doors come all the way down to the floor … Who thinks of this stuff? … Brilliant …”

That post was accompanied by a photo of said toilet door. But it was a very shiny, polished toilet door in which viewers could get a glimpse of Gus’ full reflection, dropped trousers and all.

We’ll spare you the actual image, but you get the picture.

Subject to a barrage of snarky replies, Gus handled the whole thing with a sense of humour.

“Whoops … How funny … #costanza,” he replied. That’s a Seinfeld reference by the way. We hear Gould is a mega-fan of the show.

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