By Kishor Napier-Raman and Stephen Brook
In 2021, news that an abandoned bowling club site in Paddington would be returned to a local Indigenous group provided a salve for inner-city Sydneysiders saddened by the cannibalisation of public space by rapacious property investors. Sydney MP Alex Greenwich said he “could not be more proud”.
But nearly three years on, the fate of the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council’s ownership of that prime parcel of eastern suburbs real estate sits with the High Court after a legal battle involving Australia’s (former) fourth-richest woman.
Sydney MP Alex Greenwich and Woollahra councillor Harriet Price, pictured with Friends of Trumper Park coordinator Melinda Hayton at the site of the former Paddington Bowling Club in 2018. Credit: Nick Moir
When former planning minister Rob Stokes determined the site was claimable crown land, paving the way for its return to Indigenous ownership, the leaseholder, Quarry Street Pty Ltd, challenged this in the Land and Environment Court. While that challenge was rejected, the NSW Court of Appeal subsequently quashed the minister’s decision and ordered the Indigenous owners’ land claim be rejected.
This week, the High Court granted the La Perouse LALC special leave to appeal that decision, setting up something of a blockbuster trial, date to be announced.
Now the arid law-speak is out of the way, who exactly are Quarry Street? When the first legal challenges were lodged, the company’s sole director was Tasmanian businesswoman-cum-philanthropist Jan Cameron, founder of outerwear brand Kathmandu, which she sold to private equity in 2006, an effort which vaulted her up the rich list.
Cameron is no longer in control because in March she was fined $8000 and disqualified from running a company for five years after being found guilty of using a Caribbean tax haven to hide her ownership of 14 million shares in baby formula company Bellamy’s. She’s appealing that decision.
The star witness in the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s case against Cameron was her former friend and business partner Jon Adgemis, the flashy KPMG rainmaker-turned pub baron and occasional wannabe Hollywood producer, who transferred ownership of the Paddington bowlo lease to her in 2021.
Adgemis, whose Public Hospitality Group is facing challenges of its own right now, is precisely the kind of Sydney business identity we’d expect to appear linked to a case such as this. Cameron, the secretive Tasmanian multi-millionaire with a crunchy environmentalist streak, less so.
The La Perouse LALC’s chief executive Chris Ingrey declined to comment, while questions to Quarry St’s new director, Hobart lawyer Ben Swain, went unanswered.
THE KING AND I
The itinerary for King Charles and Queen Camilla’s royal Australian tour was released with one glaring omission – His Majesty’s attendance at the race named in his honour.
CBD is personally invested in the King’s visit, given it was during an interview with us last year that Tom Parker-Bowles, the son of the Queen, accidentally dropped the truth bomb that the royal tour was happening.
Instantly the Victoria Racing Club, which runs the Melbourne Cup, and Australian Turf Club, which runs Royal Randwick, were fighting for the chance to get the royal bums on seats. Then came the news the Melbourne Cup, indeed the entire state of Victoria, was off the itinerary due to the King’s cancer recovery and a truncated tour. Now it is the same for NSW, which we imagine the Victorians are thrilled about.
Racing NSW boss, NRL head honcho and unofficial premier of NSW Peter “Showbags” V’landys, initially remained bullish about getting King Charles to attend the $5 million King Charles Stakes, named in his honour. What do you know, Everest Day, October 19, perfectly fitted the itinerary?
But the released tour talked of events on Sydney Harbour and Parliament House in Canberra, visits to the War Memorial, National Botanic Gardens, CSIRO, swapping cancer treatment stories with Australians of the Year Professor Georgina Long AO and Professor Richard Scolyer AO, plus that BBQ in western Sydney. And Queen Camilla will visit a library.
No mention of a day at the races. We put a call through to V’landys, but in an unprecedented development, he wasn’t at all keen on briefing the media.
But there are a few gaps in the tour schedule and the promise of some “surprises”.
Some at Racing NSW remain quietly confident and righteous in their conviction that His Majesty wants to come to the Everest. And in Sydney, nobody can manifest quite like V’landys.
Meanwhile, we note King Charles and Queen Camilla will drop the word “walkabout” from “royal walkabout” so as not to offend Indigenous communities. The pair will engage in officially sanctioned “opportunities to meet the public”. Bless.
But if the royal walkabout is being swapped out for the royal wokeabout, then a day trip to the sport of kings doesn’t exactly team with the theme.
CONSOLATION PRIZE
Upper north shore local Kerrie Edwards was expecting to be busy campaigning for a spot on Hornsby Shire Council by now.
But since the Liberals messed up their paperwork, she’s had to settle for a consolation prize. Edwards was the lucky winner of a selection of liquor from the personal cellar of Liberal elder statesman Philip Ruddock, who as CBD reported this week, donated some of his untouched booze to a party fundraiser before getting dumped as mayor.
Some you win, some you lose.