Billionaire Anthony Pratt
Billionaire Anthony Pratt (Image: AAP/Mick Tisikas)

Who could have foreseen flaws in a system that not only allows people to buy their way into conversations with the world’s most powerful people, but allows those powerful people to be Donald Trump?

In quite sublimely ridiculous news that dropped on Friday, the former and possibly future US president is alleged to have shared sensitive information about US nuclear submarines with Australian cardboard billionaire Anthony Pratt in April 2021. Pratt allegedly then shared the information with “at least 45 people”, including “six journalists” and not one, not two but three former Australian prime ministers.

Trump allegedly told Pratt “the supposed exact number of nuclear warheads they routinely carry” and “exactly how close they supposedly can get to a Russian submarine without being detected”. Within months of this alleged conversation, Trump was blithely telling his former chief-of-staff’s biographers about “highly confidential” documents full of “secret information” regarding a “plan of attack” against Iran.

Meanwhile, Pratt has a history of, well… when it’s a billionaire and Australia’s most prolific political donor, the word we use is “eccentricity”.

A hard-earned thirst

In what feels like a deeply 2016 embarrassment, Pratt was found to be following several young women on Instagram who might qualify for what the kids then called a “thirst follow” (we make no claims to know what the kids call anything now). Even more notable was that one of the young women in question, one Shalana_J_Hill, was apparently trying to communicate with him directly, layering her posts with hashtags like: #sugardaddy, #bigdaddyP, #redking, #papermill, #mistress, #hemybigdaddy, #bigred, #pratt, #bestkeptsecret, #futurekids, #companyneedssons and #bigdaddypratt.

A spokesperson for Pratt told the Australian Financial Review he was quite unaware of the posts, and as if to demonstrate that he was more than adequately hydrated, Hill — along with users ms_candyyyy, Veronica Rose, MsLoveFLo and ivy.x.o.x.o — were swiftly culled from his follow list.

Burt by sea

At some point in what looks like the late ’90s, Pratt had the idea that what the world needs now is Burt Bacharach covers except with the words changed to be about cardboard boxes. That’s not the strange part. The strange part is that Bacharach himself decided to be involved.

Footage was posted on his Instagram — alas, at some point between then and now it appears to have been deleted — of Pratt and Bacharach doing a packaging-themed take on “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again“.

Clearly the pair thought this joke really had legs. When Pratt hit the news on Friday, comedian Mark Humphries reminded the world of the collab — except the footage shared is a version of Bacharach’s “What the World Needs Now Is Love”, where instead of “love” Pratt sings “Visy box”. Did they do a whole concert, with increasingly mangled references to boxes and paper mills retro-fitted in?

And this isn’t the only radio-friendly crooner classic Pratt has twisted in this way. At Visy’s 1999 launch party for its Georgia plant, he did a duet about box-making to the tune of Sinatra’s “My Way” with its author Paul Anka.

This is part of Pratt’s ongoing fondness for celebrity. A few days after the death of Muhammad Ali, the AFR talked to Pratt — because who the hell else would the AFR ask about the life and legacy of the titan of sports, culture and civil rights but an Australian cardboard magnate? Pratt recalled that he asked Ali when they first met if he had any advice for Pratt if he got in a fight. Ali apparently said “run”. Pratt repaid him by doing what every white guy of a certain age feels the need to do when they get a picture with Ali, cocking a fist in his direction as part of a 2004 advertising campaign.

Trump cards

Pratt has most frequently made the news in recent years thanks to his ongoing friendship with Donald Trump, starting with the $100,000 he put on Trump to win in 2016 (what a lark!), and his paid membership of Mar-a-Lago — Trump’s Palm Beach retreat. Pratt went further, taking out ads in The Wall Street Journal commending the president and appearing on Fox News channels endorsing Trump’s economic policies. As The New York Times reported, Pratt was one of many figures seemingly buying their way into Trump’s favour.

In 2019, in a crushingly awkward and fawning public appearance, Pratt, Trump and then-prime minister Scott Morrison opened the businessman’s factory in Ohio.

Pratt told Trump that Morrison was “the Don Bradman of Australian job creation” before realising who he was talking to and shifting to a baseball equivalent.

“Oh wow,” Trump replied, proving he’s much funnier when trying to be polite than he is when being deliberately rude.