Tuesday is shaping up as the big day for another attempt at an internal coup against Victorian Liberals leader Michael O’Brien and the insurgency’s leaders Matthew Guy and Tim Smith are risking more than their frontbench positions in the spill.
As both men made their exits from shadow cabinet on Monday they risked a serious hit to their take-home pay if their attempt to roll O’Brien fails.
Guy and his offsider both take home around $214,000 a year in their positions in their respective jobs as opposition finance and planning spokesmen. Stepping onto the backbench means they both stand to lose about $27,000 each in annual salary top-ups and expense allowances.
If they fail to knock off O’Brien this week, the rebel leaders are unlikely to be welcomed back to the front bench and will have to scrape by for the foreseeable future on their basic MPs’ wage of $187,000.
Benambra MP Bill Tilley, one of the lower profile members of the insurgent camp, walked away from a $20,000 annual salary top-up on Monday when he packed in his Opposition Whip’s job while the fourth man to walk, Brighton MP James Newbury, had considerably less skin in the game.
The job Newbury quit, assistant opposition spokesman for waste watch and freedom of information, didn’t come with any official Parliamentary top-up to the basic MP wage, although he would be hoping for bigger and better paid things if the coup is successful.
But the job that O’Brien is fighting to cling to, is where the real money is on the opposition benches, with a total salary topping $360,000, about on par with a cabinet minister.
Should either of the contenders go on to win next year’s election, then they’ll be collecting the cool $452,000 annual salary enjoyed by Dan Andrews.
Guy’s team talk
Talk of the leadership spill and the knock-on effects for the Liberal parliamentary team dominated Spring Street on Monday. But in smaller circles, chatter centred on the team that Matthew Guy was likely to put in place to run his office if Tuesday’s vote falls in his favour. Talk about a return to the future. On Monday afternoon, former Denis Napthine advisor Steve Murphy was regarded as frontrunner for the role of chief of staff to Guy if he was returned to the leadership. Murphy, of course, ran former premier Jeff Kennett’s media strategy in the 1990s and then returned to the Premier’s office under Napthine in 2014 with a brief to turn around the government’s lagging media performance ahead of that year’s election. More recently he is better known for the stonking wage he received during that time, with documents obtained under freedom of information rules in 2018 showing that he was paid a higher salary than the premier. Other names mooted on Monday included former communications director Tony Barry and one-time Liberal advisor James Campbell who is the Herald Sun’s national politics editor. While some regarded Campbell as an outside chance, others argued that his lawyer wife Roshena Campbell was likely to be the first of the two to score a parliamentary gig. After all, she is running for preselection in Tony Smith’s seat of Casey.
All’s well that ends well
Vaccination sceptic Michael O’Neill is looking to make a killing from a proposed property sale. The wannabe pollie who leads the Involuntary Medication Objectors (Vaccination/Fluoride) Party – now known as the Informed Medical Options Party – has listed the NSW North Coast wellness retreat he and his wife Barbara have owned for more than a decade.
They are asking for $9.5 million for the 182-hectare spread, down on the original price tag of $10 million when listed in December. The property in Bellbrook near Kempsey about six hours drive north of Sydney sleeps 20 people across multiple houses with facilities including offices, workshops, a commercial kitchen, tennis courts, even a church.
Michael O’Neill leads the Involuntary Medication Objectors (Vaccination/Fluoride) Party – which is now known as the Informed Medical Options Party.Credit:Illustration: John Shakespeare
It’s also got history. The Misty Mountain Health Retreat, as it is also known, was put under investigation by the national charities watchdog in 2019 after it received numerous complaints it was operating outside the bounds of being a charity. The resort was stripped of its status as “a health promotion charity” and the tax breaks that went along with it, with the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Authority boss Gary Johns saying such action was taken in “only the most severe cases”.
In 2019, one-time naturopath Barbara was banned by the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission for life following claims that, among other misleading advice, she had told people their cancer was a fungus that could be cured with bicarbonate soda.
The commission found O’Neill never held any membership with any accredited professional health organisation and had failed to obtain any relevant health-related degrees or diplomas and permanently barred her from providing health services, either voluntarily or in a paid capacity, or giving lectures.
In other words, the kind of gag order that makes running a health retreat tricky.
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