Tony Abbott addresses the faithful at Tory party conference

Tony Abbott has been very busy.

As CBD reported recently, the former prime minister turned industrious Substack-er is launching his new history of Australia in Melbourne next week, despite the southern city’s reputation as an unsafe space for conservatives.

But this week, Abbott was further north. A good deal further north, it turns out – in Manchester at the British Conservative Party conference, where he was set to address the troops in dialogue with UK shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel on Tuesday afternoon, Greenwich Mean Time.

As some local observers quipped, Abbott’s appearance meant there were more former Australian PMs addressing the conference than former British PMs. And the Tories have plenty of those, cycling through five PMs in less than a decade – a revolving door that put the Abbott-era Liberal Party to shame. But much like Tony’s Liberals, most former leaders are burdened with too much baggage to show their face at such events.

Abbott, the perennial Anglophile, has always gotten on rather well with the British Tories. He had a close friendship with Liz Truss, who before going on to serve a disastrous 44 days in Downing Street gave Abbott a trade adviser gig, which he lost after Labour swept into power last year. Abbott also wrote a reference for Conservative opposition leader Kemi Badenoch during her push for the top job.

Abbott’s speech comes a week after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese addressed Labour’s conference in Liverpool, where despite plenty of angry shrieking from Libs at home, he received a rock-star reception from his British comrades. Next to Britain’s Sir Keir Starmer, the country’s most unpopular PM on record with all the charisma of a toothbrush, just about anyone looks inspiring.

So fresh

The only people in Australia to have as disastrous an election campaign as the Liberals were the political consultants at Freshwater Strategy, who conducted the internal polling for the party that convinced enough insiders that Peter Dutton had a decent chance of winning.

That polling turned out to be a load of garbage as Anthony Albanese won 94 seats, leaving Freshwater with egg on their faces. The upstart polling firm landed the Liberal contract when the party’s long-term strategists, CT Group, stepped away. Party conservatives never quite vibed with that firm’s work on the Indigenous Voice to parliament Yes campaign.

Now, as the Liberals figure out when and how they can potentially decouple from Freshwater, the pollster has lost another client, having been dumped by our stablemates at The Australian Financial Review.

CBD hears the Fin is shifting its political polling to Redbridge and Accent Research. Redbridge, a bipartisan firm run by former Labor strategist Kos Samaras and Liberal Tony Barry, which works with largely corporate rather than political clients, had a far better campaign than Freshwater, with its polling pointing to a Labor win. After seeing what happened to Freshwater, they know exactly what the price of inaccuracy is.

How Sydney won Melbourne Cup

The Melbourne Cup carnival is galloping towards us, so on Tuesday, Lexus launched its marquee and menu for this year’s carnival in Sydney – where else?

The luxury carmaker flew key media, its staff and the cup itself up from Melbourne for the event at Canvas restaurant at Sydney’s harbourside Museum of Contemporary Art.

Former MasterChef judge Melissa Leong (and proud Lexus ambassador) took a break from promoting her memoir Guts to interview chef Josh Raine about his inspiration for the marquee’s food offering. Raine freely admitted he used ChatGPT to help him compose the menu.

Because we view everything through the prism of interstate rivalry, CBD cheekily asked Lexus Australia chief executive John Pappas if the Sydney launch was the latest shot in the ongoing war between Racing NSW, headed by Sydney supremo Peter V’landys, and Racing Victoria.

After all, Lexus was backing up from the AFL’s season launch in March at Sydney’s Luna Park in March.

However, over a lunch of kingfish sashimi and Wagyu beef with smoked eggplant, while overlooking the sails of the Sydney Opera House, Pappas assured us the bitter rivalry was “nothing to do with it”.

“To be honest, we wanted to bring the Lexus Melbourne Cup, firstly, to Sydney,” he said. “We wanted to be able to showcase that Josh has worked in Sydney – his restaurants are here as well.”

Barnett joins the bar

A big shoutout to the 23 NSW barristers appointed to senior counsel last week, earning the right to add those two highly prized initials to their name, and of course, wear silk robes.

An even bigger shout-out to Lyndelle Barnett, who has been on the frontlines of some of the biggest recent courtroom battles over public interest journalism in Australia.

Barnett was on the legal team for Nine, owner of this masthead, which recently successfully defended a defamation case brought by disgraced celebrity orthopaedic surgeon Munjed Al Muderis. She was also one of the barristers acting for this masthead in the landmark Federal Court victory in a defamation case brought by war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith. In that trial, the Nine team was led by Nicholas Owens, SC, who was subsequently made a Federal Court judge. That case has been quite the career-maker.

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