Tips and rumours

From the Crikey grapevine, the latest tips and rumours …

Adam Giles: beware of the kids. For those of us outside the Northern Territory, it can be hard to fathom the defence of the NT government’s “tough on crime” stance over the past few days, especially in light of the revelations of abuse at the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre. A tipster pointed us to this post on Chief Minister Adam Giles’ Facebook page from May, when Giles wrote: “Enough is enough. We give rogue youth every chance, but they still break in to our homes, smash up our cars and cause trouble.”

Giles says the government will remove the presumption of bail for “bad youths”: “Nobody wants to see a kid in jail, but nobody wants to see our cars getting smashed up and our houses getting broken in to.”

Donald Trump’s (almost) AMA. While the Democratic National Convention dances on in Philadelphia (there is lot of dancing), Republican nominee Donald Trump did an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit. He answered 12 questions with fairly stock-standard responses on topics like Obamacare, the biased media, “crooked Hillary”, voter fraud and the police, and even a question from recently-banned-from-Twitter Milo “Nero” Yiannopoulos about immigration.

It was a fairly tame affair, although reading the comments from Reddit users who are Trump fans is a fairly horrific way to spend a morning (Ms Tips hopes you will keep her in your thoughts). While Trump only answered 12 questions, it appears it wasn’t an actual “ask me anything”, with one user saying he was banned from the sub-reddit for asking Trump why he won’t share his tax returns …

The curious case of the missing APN shareholding. A substantial shareholding notice filed yesterday with the New Zealand and Australian Stock Exchanges by NZME, the recently spun-off and listed New Zealand publishing and radio arm of APN News and Media, has confirmed News Corp has a 14.99% stake in the company. That’s not a big surprise because News Corp has a similar sized stake in APN.

But does it? Disclosures to the stock exchange have been confusing. The 2015 list of top 20 shareholders for APN shows “News Limited” with a 10.19% stake. There was no other holder with 4.80% to make the 14.99% for NZME, but the substantial shareholding notice from NZME on Wednesday reveals:

“On 30 June 2016, News Limited acquired a relevant interest, as legal and beneficial owner, in 22,325,238 NZME ordinary shares, as a result of the distribution of NZME ordinary shares by APN News & Media Limited to its shareholders. It also acquired a relevant interest, as beneficial owner, in 7,056,283 NZME ordinary shares, as a result of the distribution of NZME ordinary shares by APN News & Media Limited to its shareholders (the shares were distributed to Dervat Nominees, who held the shares as nominee for News Limited).”

Even though News’ holding in APN was revealed in March 2015, Dervat Nominees did not show up in the top 10 or in another list of major shareholders on the APN website. That updated the News Ltd holding to 11.2% on March 14, 2016. That still leaves News well short of 14.99%, and there was no sign of Dervat Nominees in that list. The March 2015 notice showed Dervat and News with holdings in APN — and that’s when the penny dropped. Dervat was the company used by News to hold APN shares the Murdoch company was quietly accumulating without any direct link to itself. Dervat’s stake in March 2015 was equal to a 4.8% stake in APN, just under the 5% substantial shareholding disclosure level.

Mystery solved! But here’s another: why did the latest change happen at the end of the financial year on June 30 this year? A bit of tidying up, or was it for financial/tax reasons …?

Have a little patriotism, Eric Abetz … Senator Eric Abetz has weighed in on former prime minister Kevin Rudd’s bid for United Nations secretary general this morning, to make sure we were doubly sure of his opinion (it’s no surprise). The statement begins:

“According to his former colleagues, Mr Rudd is a narcissist, a micro-manager, an impulsive control freak and a psychopath — just to name a few. Any cursory glance at Mr Rudd’s temperament and capacity would show that Mr Rudd is poorly qualified for this role and if Australia were to seek to inflict Kevin Rudd onto the United Nations, it would be a mistake.”

Which seems a tad unfair to Ms Tips — surely jingoism must win out. Just like Our Cate, Our Nicole and even Our Warnie, Rudd is Our Psychopath and must be treated with respect accordingly.

… who is the biggest loser. Speaking of Abetz, psephologist Kevin Bonham has analysed Tasmanian Senate ballot papers to find that Abetz holds a very important position. Not only was he the first elected senator, but among the (admittedly very small) number of people who bothered to number every single box below the line, Abetz was also the most popular option for 58th position:

“Voting all the way below the line (1-58 in this case) is the best way to make your vote as powerful as possible if you have strong views about particular candidates as opposed to just parties, but not that many voters do it. I have done a quick sample of the top 5% of the Tasmanian data-entry voting and find that in this sample 1.8% go all the way to put someone 58th.  

“Last time the honour of most last places was fiercely contested by The Greens and Stop The Greens but I had a sneaking suspicion there would be a runaway winner this time around. It looks from the first 5% of the data-entry voting that of the few voters going the distance, a massive 35.3% have put Eric Abetz (Liberal) last. He is followed distantly in this sample by John Tucker (bottom of the Liberal ticket) on 9%, Anna Reynolds (bottom of the Green ticket) 6%, Nick McKim (Green) 5.3% and then the bottom Christian Democrat and One Nation candidates.  For everyone but Abetz the sample size is inconclusive so I may check the full list as time allows. (My computer is a bit old for processing spreadsheets with over 300,000 rows quickly.)”

Bonham’s full list of quirks and oddballs from the Tasmanian count is here.

*Heard anything that might interest Crikey? Send your tips to boss@crikey.com.au or use our guaranteed anonymous form