The great and the good of the Liberal Party are set to gather on Tuesday night and party like it’s 1959. Party members will congregate to say sayonara to their former eastern Melbourne heartland seat of Higgins, which fell into Labor hands at the last election (oh no) but will now be killed off by the Australian Electoral Commission in a redistribution (oh well). The schadenfreude must be exquisite.
Former treasurer Peter Costello is preparing to say farewell to Higgins. Credit: Natalie Boog Attending the Higgins 200 Club bash to sink the saveloys and ingest the riesling will be a trio of former local MPs: Peter Costello , Kelly O’Dwyer and Katie Allen . Where are they now? Costello, the former federal treasurer, was chairman of Nine (owner of this column) until he resigned in June after a Canberra Airport scuffle with a reporter.
But he popped up again in CBD after joining the board of the Liberal-aligned secret fundraising body the Cormack Foundation. O’Dwyer is a non-executive director of listed companies Home Consortium and Equity Trustees as well as a non-executive director of upstart investment bank Barrenjoey. Allen, a medical researcher, lost Higgins to Labor.
But after the seat was abolished she turned to the neighbouring seat of Chisholm and blasted out the preselected candidate, local councillor Theo Zographos , as allowed under party redistribution rules. CBD is more interested in the money. While the Liberal Party’s local organisation, the Higgins FEC, is.
