Launching a frog

  Pictured left: artist John Olsen, his frog sculpture and Lucy & Malcolm Turnbull.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and "First Lady" Lucy Turnbull did the honours as artist John Olsen's "frog" sculpture was launched outside the uber harbour-side restaurant Catalina in Rose Bay this morning.
And what a gorgeous sunny Winter day for the event.
Hosts Michael & Judy McMahon, owners of Catalina laid on a superb lunch, as is their wont, and it's difficult to image how better to spend a lazy Sunday in Sydney. Catalina has an afinity with the water. It's superb balcony that extends over the harbour is often visited by two pelicans. Nearby are Sydney's famous seaplanes that deliver the well-heeled to their Palm Beach weekenders.

Locals join the PM: L-R Suzanne Dougall * Glen Marie Frost * Malcolm & Lucy* Victoria Morish

Left to Right : artist John Olsen * PM Malcolm Turnbull * Lucy Turnbull * the Frog* Catalina owners Michale & Judy McMahon

Malcolm's beach party

Whispers has been privileged to attend a shindig at Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull's exclusive Point Piper mansion (pictured above) . It was charity fundraising event and well before Malcolm was Prime  Minister, merely the local MP.

It's a splendorous house with magnificent harbor views and it's own tiny beach at the base of the garden. Now a small group of protestors have taken up residence on that beach to agitate about the controversial proposed Adani coal mine in Queensland which it's claimed will do untold damage to the World Heritage listed Great Barrier Reef.
The freezing weather has driven off the protestors for the moment but I'm reliably informed that they have more plans to enliven life in genteel Point Piper- the most exclusive and expensive suburb in Australia. Meanwhile Mal & Lucy are residing at The Lodge (above right) in Canberra. It's freezing there as well. Not in the Lodge itself but Canberra. Winter in Canberra is something else. Life is just tough sometimes.

Fudging figures..

Alas Whispers missed the official launch for the exciting new cook book Conversations in The Kitchen authored by radio host Alan Jones and former Labor Party leader Mark Latham who has forsaken his former left leaning comrades and veered well and truly to the far right via various steps beginning with Sky News and now The Rebel Media. (you can read more about Latham here).

In the meantime a minor twitter dispute has broken out between Jones' critic Mike Carlton (who coined the term The Parrot to describe Jones) and publicist for the book, the effervescent Max Markson (last seem shepherding the strange Milo Yiannopoulos around town).
Markson claims the book has sold 6000 copies. "Not so" declares Carlton- at best 89 copies as the official figures shows.
We're not taking sides in this dispute having met all parties involved !

Meanwhile the wondrous MailOnline / Daily Mail is still having problems identifying colourful characters. As we revealed some time ago they mistook the Aussie actress Little Nell of Rocky Horror picture fame for the mother of British comedian Tracey Ullman.

Now they've discovered Lucy Turnbull, wife of our industrious Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull may have jumped into a time machine and found her teenage self to accompany Mal to the recent charity Gold Dinner.

It's a serious subject but the Mail recently posted this caption on the figures of male suicide in the UK. Rubbery figures surely ?

exclusive: Cher hits town

The annual Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras is in full swing for it's 40th anniversary. Here is our exclusive 'selfie' sent poste haste to Whispers from the PM himself, Malcolm Turnbull. Pictured is Malcolm, Cher, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Lucy Turnbull. What fun !

Cartoonist Bill Leak farewelled

The late News Ltd cartoonist Bill Leak (left) who died suddenly at the age of 61 was farewelled in a memorial service today at Sydney's Town Hall. 

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and wife Lucy were there along with former PM John Howard. Media personalities who attended included broadcasters Richard Fidler and Wendy Harmer, dozens of Leak's former News' colleagues and comedian Barry Humphries who was a long time pal of Leaks.

Humphries drew a round of applause when he claimed the only memorial service he'd like to attend was one for the Human Right's Commission which had been locked in a battle over some of Leak's more controversial cartoons. President of the Commission Gillian Triggs (pictured above) has held her ground while under a sustained attack by the right side of politics.

Whispers found Leak's cartoons a tad on the old fashioned side but we enjoyed his many Archibald portraits which we have included below. Leak never won the main prize but he did win the Packer's Prize once.
All part of life's rich tapestry in Sydney's never dull social life.

arriving at the memorial: Barry Humphries & Lizzie Spender * Malcolm & Lucy Turnbull

Bill Leak Archibald portraits : Sir Les Patterson * Paul LePetit *  Bob Hawke * Graham Richardson * Dame Edna Everage

Friends in High Places

Michael and Judy McMahon are stalwarts of the Sydney restaurant scene and their harbourside eatery Catalina in Rose Bay is right at the top of the very best spots for a bite to eat in the Eastern Suburbs. It even has it's own tame pelicans to charm diners and next door is the base for the quaint flying boats that deliver passengers to ritzy Palm Beach.

Judy has just turned 60 so that's as good a reason as any to hold a shindig so she gathered some old pals at Catalina for lunch which included our esteemed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his lovely wife Lucy as our snap shows with birthday girl Judy. And the menu? : glazed Toothfish and braised octopus with couscous to start with followed by roast lamb with roasted baby beetroots washed down with Pommery Rosé Champagne. We reckon Malcolm needed a spot of relaxation. For Tuesday & The Census was just around the corner.

Tony Abbott & Political Lesbianism !

How their words come back to haunt them. A recording has surfaced of  The Man Who Would Be King (but probably won't be) from 2 decades ago.

Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott was once a fiery University student . Unlike other students Tony railed against further money for Universities and demanded the government cut funding because it produced "left wing thinking" and as he says scathingly, courses at Sydney University like The Politics of Lesbianism.

Abbott has been referred to as a 'Manchurian Candidate' due to his adoration of Cardinal George Pell and his worship at the lap of the strange right-wing Catholic Bartholomew Augustine Santamaria 
B.A.Santamaria (1915-1998) was warning of conspiracies long before they were invented and in his Catholic Worker newspaper railed against Communism, the USSR and Socialism but claimed Capitalism was an even greater threat.
Fast forward to 2012 and Tony Abbott's sister Christine Foster -seen her in our snap from Deborah Thomas' council campaign launch last week- has not only declared herself to be a card carrying lesbian but a politcal one at that !. Chrsitine is standing in the September council elections against Sydney  Lord Mayor Clover Moore. Hear a young Tony at this link:

http://media.crikey.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Nationwide.mp3 
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And the man who most likely will be Opposition Leader when Julia Gillard wins again in November 2nd, 2013 with a slightly increased majority (take it from us-we know these things) Malcolm Turnbull has paid a touching tribute to the late Robert Hughes in Parliament today.
Hughes was the uncle of Malcolm's wife Lucy Turnbull and the pair cared for him after his shocking car accident. During the speech Malcolm cruelly taunts his leader Tony Abbott :

Malcolm Turnball: “It was the year of the republican referendum and Bob, first in a wheelchair, and then with his calipers became a prominent advocate for the yes vote. I think he had a swing at you Tony in one of those debates."
Tony Abbott:  "He missed"
Malcolm Turnball: "He missed? What a loss to the nation it would have been if he had connected."
Ouch!

an invite

A stiffy arrives with a request to share Christmas drinks at the splendiferous Point Piper mansion of Federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull and his charming wife Lucy, former Sydney Lord Mayor.

Rhodes scholar Turnbull, a cousin of the famous US based British actress Angela Lansbury and Lucy, the niece of art critic Robert Hughes are under attack from within the Liberal Party as the rather odd Kevin Andrews announces he will challenge Malcolm this week for the leadership role.

Andrews-who fortunately has a head of wavy hair that grows blacker as he ages, is one of the reasons his party was thrown into the wilderness 2 years ago. It was he that bungled the Dr Mohamed Haneef debacle when the hapless Indian doctor was arrested at Brisbane Airport on his way home to visit his new-born child and incarcerated illegally for nearly 3 weeks by Federal police, following the Glasgow Airport terrorist bombing.

Haneef was a distant relation of one of the bombers and despite a Scotland Yard terrorism expert visiting Oz and declaring there was nothing in the matter, Andrews solemnly intoned there was a case to answer-as the cards came crashing down around him.

Dr Haneef now lives in the Middle East and is still negotiating a compensation settlement some say will be as high as $5M.

Turnbull-urbane, intelligent and very very rich, inexplicably  incurs suspicion from his party colleagues and the public alike and is possibly more to the left of the political spectrum than the ruling Labor Party. As a former merchant banker and solicitor to media mogul Kerry Packer he is worth about $200M. As a barrister he successfully defended former MI5 boss Peter Wright when the UK government attempted to ban his 'Spycatcher' book about his life as a top spy and prosecuted the case in the English courts for compensation over the Maralinga nuclear bomb testing site.

Although it seems unlikely he will topple the most popular PM ever, Kevin Rudd, the Liberals would be foolhardy to ditch him this soon. RSVP-invite accepted !
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footnote : The Maralinga bomb site makes Australia the most nuclear weapon bombed country on the planet with 8 major devices and numerous small ones being exploded between 1955 and 1963.