Betoota Advocate, Kate Ceberano among Midwinter Ball’s cultural celebrities

All eyes at Wednesday night’s Midwinter Ball in the Great Hall of Parliament House will be turned to the table bought by little-known Sentiment Agency.

The annual ball, hosted by the Parliamentary Press Gallery, was delayed until late winter this year due to the federal election. It’s being staged so late this year the magnolia is already in bloom around Parliament House.

The event is open to full-time pass holders of Parliament House, press gallery members, MPs, senators, staffers, their guests and admirers. Tickets are $150 each for journalists and guests and $200 for civilians (everyone else).

CBD hears that the Sentiment Agency, founded by former David Pocock staffer Holly Rankin, has booked a table and assembled a pleasing roster of cultural celebrities the likes of which are not seen in the national capital.

Rankin, who records under the moniker of Jack River, is the executive director of the company, which she founded to build bridges between culture and politics.

Star recording artist Kate Ceberano will be a guest at the Sentiment table, along with her hubby musician Lee Rogers. They will be joined by First Nations TV presenter Tony Armstrong and his partner, Rona Glynn-McDonald, founder of Common Ground, a First Nations storytelling platform.

Paralympian tennis champion and former Australian of the Year Dylan Alcott will also be part of the posse.

“We are bringing some leading voices of culture to the Midwinter Ball,” Rankin told CBD. “It is obviously politics’ night of nights, and we thought it would be great to have these people in the room.”

Special guests include The Beetota Advocate boys, who will MC the event (talk about hitting the mainstream) as well as Jonathan Biggins and Mandy Bishop, CBD favourites who starred for 25 years in The Wharf Revue, the annual skewering of the Australian polity which hung up its boots at Easter.

We can only fervently hope Biggins brings out his masterful impersonation of Paul Keating.

True crime

To the NSW upper house, where two political frenemies are beefing over Ivan Milat.

Legalise Cannabis MP, true crime buff and friend of this column Jeremy Buckingham has been leading a bit of a crusade to get a parliamentary inquiry to investigate whether the notorious serial killer was responsible for dozens of other unsolved murders around the country.

Premier Chris Minns conceded he was open to the idea last week. Buckingham’s amateur detective work has earned him plenty of trolling from upper house colleague Mark Latham, who has continued to use his various soapboxes to troll people rather than show a skerrick of shame over the great disgrace he’s brought upon Macquarie Street, what with the allegations of sexual abuse by a former partner (which he denies) and the claims he filmed sex tapes in his parliamentary office (which he denies having seen).

Last week, Latham launched into a series of posts on X claiming that “Bucko” (as he calls the former Green) should be considered for the next NSW Police Commissioner. The two later took things offline, engaging in a bit of verbal sparring in the press gallery last week.

Said sparring continued in budget estimates on Tuesday morning, when Buckingham gave Latham a unique introduction.

“We will now turn to some questions from the crossbench, Mr Lecter, I mean, Mr Latham,” Buckingham said.

The things you can get away with under parliamentary privilege.

Butting out

CBD has been keeping an eye on a long-touted plan to crack down on smoking in the corridors of power which has left the few remaining analogue durry-munchers among the inmates of Parliament House rather displeased.

We brought word last year that the Department of Parliamentary Services had begun a review into the big house’s smoking policy, the official reason being that new electronic doors had rendered the old policy obsolete. Unofficially, we hear that Senate President Sue Lines had taken a dim view of smoking in various parliamentary courtyards, unlike Liberal predecessor Scott Ryan, who was partial to the occasional lung lolly.

A draft policy was circulated in June and signed off on by Lines and House of Representatives Speaker Milton Dick late Monday night. And although our ever-efficient friends at DPS sent around a six-page policy document rather than a simple map, we were able to glean that the number of smoking areas in Parliament House has been reduced, with darts now banned from outside the Senate entrance, a spot favoured by the press gallery’s puffers.

Very inconvenient, was the feedback we received. Not to mention right before the Midwinter Ball. But as of Tuesday afternoon, the new rules weren’t being enforced, with one of CBD’s spies gleefully informing us they were smoking in one of the restricted areas. Naughty.

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