Tech Council boss says bye-bye after Byron Bay WFH experiment

In a great rebuke to the work from home experiment, it turns out you can’t run a major industry lobby group from Byron Bay.

On Wednesday, the Tech Council of Australia’s Byron-based chief executive Damian Kassabgi announced his departure after just 16 months in the job, citing the overwhelming demands of trying to do it all.

“The reality for me being in regional Australia with a young family means that I am looking to find a better and healthier balance (than being on planes all the time),” he said in a statement on Wednesday.

In a recent interview on tech policy podcast burning platforms, Kassabgi opined on the prospect of tech giving people the freedom of a three-day work week. Clearly he didn’t manifest that soon enough.

Kassabgi’s run with the peak body, which counts Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar as chair and Tesla chair Robyn Denholm as a board member, had its share of drama. Last year, the council was caught flat-footed when its then-board member, Wisetech founder Richard White, was engulfed in a sordid scandal involving his LinkedIn lechery. White eventually resigned of his own accord after the council failed to push him out. That said, we hear that Kassabgi’s performance as CEO wasn’t a concern for the council’s star-studded board.

Despite the end of that brief stint at the Tech Council, Kassabgi remains a man with plenty of ambition. Before starting that gig, he was an adviser to Labor prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, and then jetted off to Singapore and Silicon Valley to hold public policy jobs at tech titans Google, Uber and Afterpay.

It was thanks to that final job that Kassabgi became fabulously wealthy when Afterpay was acquired by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s Block for $39 billion in 2022. He subsequently made a Northern Rivers sea change, buying a splashy $13 million pad and diving headlong into the local tennis scene with the zeal of a former Rudd-Gillard staffer.

In 2022, he helped form the Suffolk Park Tennis Club, which in January hosted NSW Premier (and Kassabgi’s close mate) Chris Minns, for a match.

But Kassabgi is no longer involved with the club after declining to stand for re-election at a special general meeting last month. Days later, he set up a new charity, the Northern Rivers Tennis Foundation Limited, which managed to nab the rights to play on courts in nearby Mullumbimby.

Will Minns be invited back? We won’t be shocked, especially with rumours swirling around Byron about Kassabgi and his fashionista wife Courtney Miller both considering a tilt at either state or federal politics. We also hear Kassabgi’s planning to write a book, so often the sign of someone who isn’t done yet, beautiful home in paradise be damned!

Season of giving

What do you get for the man who has everything?

In Donald Trump’s case, the answer, it seems, is a model submarine.

Anthony Albanese’s meeting with the US president went about as well as the prime minister could’ve hoped. But the obligatory gift exchange lacked the friendly vibes of Albo’s interactions with former president Joe Biden.

Albanese didn’t offer details of what he’d given Trump until pushed by journalists.

“We had a gift for Melania. We had jewellery, we had a submarine model for the president, and we had some Ugg booties for the president’s newest granddaughter to come along, and I’m sure they will be very well received,” he said.

As for what Trump gave him?

“I’ll probably get whatever has come to us in about three years and six months after it goes through all the security things and PM&C, all of that. I’ll just leave it there. Thanks very much,” Albo said, ending the press conference.

So far, so mysterious. The PM’s office didn’t offer further clues.

But when Biden gave Albanese a custom-made turntable ahead of a 2023 state dinner, we knew straight away. And when Albo gave Biden a personalised air force leather jacket, he mentioned it straight up. To be fair, it’s a little more thoughtful than a toy submarine.

Another gift from Biden to Albo was a watch from Detroit-based manufacturer Shinola, whose pieces retail in the low four figures. Albanese must’ve really loved it, because he was wearing it on Monday, during his meeting with Trump in the Oval Office.

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