Rupert AGMs, Trump conflicts, Walkleys incident 10 years on, ASA update, vets cricket, AGM season, Hannans grab PMP, pokies, Mayne Pharma, Boral and plenty more

Dear Mayne Report readers,

Greetings for the first time since our last bumper email edition on November 5. If you'd rather not receive these occasional email newsletters, click here to unsubscribe.

First up, today is the 10th anniversary of a certain Walkley Awards incident. Yes, it was November 30, 2006, when a drunken Glenn Milne gave your publisher the shove off the stage at Crown Casino in Melbourne live on national television.

The immediate impact was a massive deluge of publicity here and abroad as even Time Magazine ran the vision as their "video of the day". Media Watch used it for the following year in their opening sequence.

It was also the subject of far too many jokes at subsequent journalism award nights and there was even an attempt to have the two of us hug and make up at a subsequent Walkleys as a sign that peace in the Middle East was possible. Alas, SBS canned that proposal at the last minute, not wanting to remind viewers of this notorious incident, which also delivered the best ever Walkleys ratings for SBS.

Milne's behaviour was obviously appalling but he wasn't sacked by News Corp. We eventually extracted this apology out of Rupert Murdoch during one of his Adelaide visits and then News Corp spindoctor Greg Baxter also finally handed over $50 to pay for the physio bill from the slightly strained ankle a year or two later.

Milne left journalism a few years ago and but his legacy remains a lesson for all about the dangers of mixing alcohol with migraine medication, as his famously said during his morning after apology door stop.

Visiting Rupert in Los Angeles

Many thanks to all the Mayne Report readers who funded our recent trip to Los Angeles to attend the News Corp and 21st Century Fox AGMs on November 10, just one day after Donald Trump won the US Presidential election. We have written 2 Crikey stories so far about what happened in LA as follows:

Challenging Rupert Murdoch on his failure to allow free speech
Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Record pay protest vote at Fox AGM
Friday, November 18, 2016

There's plenty more to add.

Without wanting to sound disrespectful, Rupert was really struggling. He was looking all of his 85 years, gasping his way through two 4 minute presentations with multiple water breaks along the way. Have a listen to the News Corp and Fox webcasts and decide for yourself.

The anti free speech paranoia was also as bad as we've ever seen. The intolerant old man is in the bunker and will do anything to avoid questions and scrutiny as this partial transcript from the News Corp AGM demonstrates:

Rupert Murdoch: As noted in the rules of procedures for the conduct of the meeting that were provided to you when you registered today, each person is limited to two questions which should each be no longer than a minute in length. We ask that you comply with the rules and procedures of the conduct of the meeting so we can conduct an orderly meeting.

Stephen Mayne: Look, just as a procedural matter before hand, I'd like to propose an amendment to the meeting procedures. At point 7 where it says “each speaker is limited to a total of no more than two questions”, I'd like to formally propose to the meeting, and I'll be seeking a seconder, that the word “two” be changed to “five” so that each speaker is limited to asking no more than five questions.

Rupert Murdoch: You are out of order … you know the rules, you read the rules last year [I didn't go last year] and again this year when you came, just ask a question.

Stephen Mayne: OK, my first question. One of the newspapers displayed out the front here is The Australian and it has the front page headline “PM, Triggs in in open battle on 18c”. It goes to this long campaign that we have been running in Australia for free speech. You are arguing that the laws should be changed because of these limitations on free speech so my first question is how can a company which campaigns for lifting restrictions on free speech which would never allow its journalists to tolerate a politician saying you've got two questions, one minute each. How can this entire board of directors and you chairman, with your 60-year history in free speech, possibly continue to support this thoroughly undemocratic almost North Korean attempt to oppress minority shareholders from being able to express their views at the one meeting of the year where shareholders get a voice? So please, why are you not allowing shareholders to have a proper debate, rather than these 20- and 30-minute meetings? Why are you continuing to conduct AGMs which are designed to minimise attendance? Meeting in a parking lot! I mean, Disney gets 300 shareholders, Warren Buffett goes for eight hours with thousands. We have got five shareholders here today. We had six this morning. You are deliberately trying to make this a non-event and it goes against your full history and I just ask you chairman, why are you doing this?

Rupert Murdoch: We have not changed our practices at all. If 300 people wanted to come they would be very welcome, we would love to see more people.

We landed in LA at 7am on November 10 and made it in good time to the 21st Century Fox AGM which started inside Fox Studios at 10am. Only 6 shareholders showed up at the parking lot to register and then catch the company shuttle, but at least 4 of us asked questions. Here is the Hollywood Reporter account.

The whole thing was done and dusted in less than 30 minutes and then we were bussed straight out of there and the directors went into a Fox board meeting before the News Corp AGM at 3pm.

The courtesy bus dropped me at The Intercontinental which was fully booked so there wasn't even a chance to book a room for a half day to catch some sleep. After that it was lunch at Westfield's nearby Century City Plaza mall and then back to the parking lot to join just 5 shareholders at the News Corp AGM.

There was only 2 speakers at that AGM, the other being a Hollywood producer who was moonlighting under a stage name presenting the Nathan Cummings foundation resolution on dismantling the undemocratic dual class voting structure which sees Rupert control 40% of the votes when he only owns 14% of the stock.

After two years of very narrow board victories against this shareholder proposal, it was more comfortably defeated this year, suggesting a few of the Australian institutions have sold out.

After that it was back to The Intercontinental for more tweeting, a couple of beers and then a taxi to the airport, which delivered half an hour of sleep in the back seat.

I had a quick chat with BHP Billiton chairman and Fox director Jac Nasser at LAX as he headed into first class. After just 15 hours on the ground in LA, the second consecutive overnight economy flight wasn't too bad because exhaustion kicked in and I slept about 5 hours in the second back row.

From Rupert's AGMs to the Geelong citizen jury

There has been plenty of masochist scheduling over the years getting to 450 public company shareholder meetings, but this fly in fly out LA double-header with Rupert was the most ambitious ever.

Rather that returning to Melbourne from LA and collapsing, I caught a taxi straight to Geelong and presented to the state government's Citizen Jury run by the fabulous NewDemocracy group on the best democratic model for their sacked council.

The 100 randomly selected citizens were having "the Melbourne model" of a directly elected mayor pushed at them pretty hard, but having just seen the election of Donald Trump and fearing the return of polarising Geelong mayor Darryn Lyons, I ended up arguing against this and it might just have proved decisive as the jury rejected the directly elected model by the narrowest of margins.

AGM season wrap

The AGM season officially finishes today when there will be a deluge of more than 100 gatherings from last day laggards.

Watch the ASX announcements feed today and also keep an eye on the @austsharesassoc twitter handle as we'll be tweeting as many results as possible.

There has been plenty of interesting action over the past 10 weeks with 8 ASX100 stocks suffering a 1st strike on remuneration reports, including two top 10 companies in CBA and CSL.

Boral, AGL and Carsales were also noteworthy whilst others such as Tabcorp, Tatt's Group, Nine and South32 went close to a strike, for a variety of reasons.

Amongst the stocks ranked from 101 to 200, Spotless, Bellamy's, Mortgage Choice and Metcash all suffered strikes.

The biggest strike was delivered against AFL President Mike Fitzpatrick and his Pacific Current funds management group, as was noted in several press reports.

However, there was plenty of other interesting AGM action beyond remuneration voting.

Lend Lease deservedly had their new constitution defeated after attempting to entrench the incumbent directors, as we explained in our last email edition.

Gerry Harvey put on one of the most belligerent AGM displays ever seen, as was outlined in this ASA AGM report.

Veteran Cabcharge director Donnald McMichael was very lucky to survive a 46% against vote and the board certainly did a good job getting out the vote as the turnout was a surprisingly large at 92.35 million votes this year, up from 82.5 million in 2015 and 80.6 million in 2014. Cabcharge has 120.4m shares on issue and a key 9% stake is held by a Singaporean joint venture partner which is looking to buy out Cabcharge from their bus business. This will be a situation worth watching in the months ahead as a potential institutional board coup roles out after old guard supporter Richard Millen was installed as chairman and newcomer Steve Stanley resigned in protest.

I attended the Mayne Pharma AGM yesterday and was very surprised that chairman Roger Corbett had no webcast, no slides, no recording and no biscuits. It's all very well to utilise free space provided by law firm Minter Ellison but with more than 20 people standing, sometimes you've just got to spend some funds hiring a 5-star hotel for the most important governance meeting of the year.

Having pulled off an $888 million capital raising this year and with a market cap of $2.5 billion, I told Roger it was time Mayne Pharma started acting like the big company it now was.

Roger also departed from his prepared text a few times and the debate produced a whole bunch of interesting comments spanning the impact of Trump's election, billionaire pokies mogul Bruce Mathieson's commitment to the company and the Department of Justice investigation. Perhaps the ASX needs to mandate AGM recordings or transcripts because the likes of Cabcharge and Harvey Norman have also failed these basic tests in recent years. The AGM matters and all shareholders should have access to the debate, even if they can't make it in person.

Local Government update

Donald Trump might be encouraging misogynists around the world but over the past month Victoria has broken through the 40% barrier with the appointment of 32 female mayors across the state.

This is a record and eclipses the 30 from 2012 and 2014, which sadly fell back to 24 last year.

A 2 month burst of local government coverage is easing off now but here are links to everything you need to know about the Victorian council elections:

Tracking gender diversity in Victorian mayoral selection

Links to nine email editions covering council elections

Full call of the card of state-wide council elections

List of Victoria council election winners and losers who are members of political parties

Comeback councillors - how did they go?

What will happen with City of Melbourne vacancy?

Victorian Electoral Commissioner Warwick Ateley has headed off to the courts to decide what should happen with the City of Melbourne elections.

As usual, independent publisher Shane Scanlan from CBD News has the best information on where we are at.

It now seems likely there will be a countback on December 12 and there are 4 candidates in the running to replace Brooke Wandin, namely Team Doyle's number 4 Susan Riley, Brooke's number 2 Nic Frances, Joseph Sarraf from a group called Melburnian Voice or myself.

However, the state-appointed Magistrate, on the advise of the VEC and other submitting parties, could decide that outcome is undesirable and move in a different direction.

Team Doyle's big hope is that Brooke's 1245 first preference votes are completely excluded from the count, thereby lowering the quota. The quota is 10% and former deputy lord mayor Susan Riley was left stranded on just under 9%.

This seems unlikely although submissions encouraging such a decision are presumably being presented to the VEC and then the Magistrate who is looking at the situation.

The system is designed so that a vacancy will normally go to the candidate who is next on the vacating councillor's ticket, so that would ordinarily be Nic Frances.

However, if Brooke's enrollment is deemed to be invalid, then there is a chance the whole "Indigenous Voice for Melbourne" ticket could go the same way. Alternatively, Nic Frances could be offered the position and decline it.

After that, Joseph Sarraf looks the favourite to take the position, even though he received the lowest primary vote of the lead candidates of the 14 groups which nominated. The bottom 8 tickets polled as follows:

Robyn Matthews, Strengthening Melbourne: 1870 votes (2.583%)
Bruce Poon, Animal Justice: 1753 votes (2.42%)
Richard Foster, Listening to locals: 1690 (2.23%)
Brooke Wandin, Indigenous Voice: 1614 votes (2.23%)
Marcus Fielding, Serving Melbourne with Integrity: 1504 votes (2.077%)
Jim Ward, Light on the Hill: 948 votes (1.31%)
Adam Ford, Heritage Agenda: 804 votes (1.11%)
Joseph Sarraf, Melburnian Voice: 803 votes (1.11%)

Brooke managed to get elected because she received preferences from Joseph Sarraf, followed by Animal Justice, Strengthening Melbourne and then me.

Now that Brooke has resigned, if her votes were fully distributed the same preference flow would probably elect Joseph Sarraf because he received preferences from Brooke, Animal Justice and Strengthening Melbourne ahead of me.

These preference arrangements were largely engineered by the Greens who sensibly invested heavily in negotiating with all the minor players and genuinely wanted to see Brooke's chances maximised and that included bringing Joseph Sarraf into the preference loop ahead of me.

Finally on City of Melbourne, the new council last night approved all their portfolio and committee appointments. New deputy Lord Mayor Arron Wood has replaced me as chair of Finance and Governance and Nicholas Reece is the all-important planning chair. These are both good moves. See all the portfolio details here.

Boring into Boral, which really should do an SPP

The Boral situation is very interesting.

The ASA put out this press release last Friday morning pointing out that the ASX could invoke listing rule 11.1 and insist that Boral shareholder approval be sought for the $3.69 billion Headwaters deal.

This led to an interview on Sky News Business at 12.30pm on Friday pushing the prime ASA position about shareholder rights in takeover deals.

A whole host of other factors at play in the Boral deal were also teased out in this Crikey piece on Friday.

It was pleasing to see Boral using the PAITREO capital raising structure for its $1.6 billion entitlement offer, emulating the likes of JB Hi Fi, Santos, AGL, Origin, NAB, CBA and Westpac in recent major capital raisings.

However, it was very disappointing that Boral also included a $450 million institutional placement at the discounted price of $4.80. There a strong argument that Boral now owes its 50,000 retail investors a Share Purchase Plan on the same terms to ensure there is no overall dilution of retail investors.

SPPs are effectively a placement but they are offered in $15,000 bites to every retail investor, irrespective of the size of their holding.

Retail investors owned 30% of Boral two weeks ago so they should be offered 30% of any discounted selective placement in order to retain their relative ownership position in the company. Based on a $450 million institutional placement that would equate to an SPP capped at $193 million.

It was also disappointing that Boral used a fixed price of $4.80 for the institutional placement rather than letting the market set the price through a book-build, as occurred with the 20 million share shortfall on the institutional entitlement offer which cleared at $5.25 last Wednesday night.

Based on the shortfall clearing price of $5.25, Boral and its investment banker advisers have effectively given away $48 million of value to the lucky recipients of the $450 million worth of discounted placement shares. In a system which really does lack transparency, we also don't know who they were and how were they chosen?

It has been a sometimes lonely battle but here are links to 9 years worth of articles about how retail investors get ripped off by Australia's capital raising system. Boral is just the latest example.

Conflict of interest - from Donald Trump to Jackie Watts

Over the past 27 years, I've probably written and publicly spoken more about conflict of interest more than any other Australian, so how Donald Trump manages his conflicts going forward is going to be a fascinating issue for us to watch.

The Economist had an excellent piece about this last week and The Donald himself doesn't appear to have a clue about what to do. He is in very grave danger of coming a cropper courtesy of his numerous conflicts, but is also getting plenty of advise from the likes of Andrew Ross Sorkin in The New York Times. Others, such as Paul Krugman, are just lamenting a coming era of corruption, but with good journalism, it doesn't have to be that way.

Here are a few examples from over the years where I've weighed in on the question of conflicts:

18,500 word treatisabout Jeff Kennett

Graeme Samuel's conflicts as ACCC chair

Ranking 10 favourite conflicts

Raising conflicts between ABC Learning and Austock

Frank Lowy's blatant conflicts of interest at Westfield

Macquarie Bank and Brisconnections conflicts

Eddie McGuire, Nine, Collingwood and McDonald

One thing is for sure, many people don't recognise their own conflicts and then absolutely hate having it pointed out to them.

Cr Jackie Watts declares donor/running mate conflict

An interesting example of this arose with a conflict of interest situation at last Tuesday's City of Melbourne committee meeting.

Labor councillor Jackie Watts, has long been focused on maximising embarrassment for Team Doyle by highlight the loss of quorum when they are unable to vote on development applicants where a 2012 campaign donor was involved.

Truth be known this is actually good governance to declare the conflict and it should be encouraged because the opposite is much worse.

Anyway, Cr Watts called in this planning application for a residential development at 109-111 Little Lonsdale Street where she presumably knew Team Doyle would be conflicted.

However, there are 10 councillors at present but only 3 of them were on the Team Doyle ticket in 2012, so the item should have been able to proceed with 7 councillors in the room because quorum is only lost when you get below 6.

However, Cr Watts then suggested new councillor Philip Le Lui should declare a conflict because he supposedly lived near the development, although when you are talking more than 100 metres in the CBD, it is a bit of a stretch.

Cr Le Lui took the conservative view of declaring a conflict when he probably needn't have.

Meanwhile, Cr Watts participated in the councillor forum discussion on the development and it was only later in the day that someone pointed our her running mate and chief council adviser, millionaire lawyer and Liberal Party member Michael Kennedy, lives opposite the proposed site and he had donated to her campaign as well.

Therefore, if you listen to the audio at 8 minutes, you'll hear Cr Watts declaring her first donation related conflict, which was enough to see quorum lost and lots of angry submitters denied the right to be heard at the meeting.

This lead to the first ever full quota 15 minute public questions session at the end of the meeting when many of the so-called questions were really quasi submissions on this proposal.

So, the governance issue here is whether a councillor who is conflicted on a planning matter should be able to call the matter in to be heard at a public committee meeting.

Of course they shouldn't and City of Melbourne should amend both its meeting procedures and code of conduct to ensure this situation with Cr Watts doesn't ever happen again.

Update on ASA developments

We're trucking along nicely at the Australian Shareholders' Association.

After a very strong AGM season, a new Sydney-based CEO should be in place early next year ahead of our big annual conference in Melbourne and annual meeting Brisbane, both of which happen in May.

The start of the year is the busiest time for recruiters and we are getting down to the business end of a lengthy selection process for the ASA CEO. It has been different to what occurred recruiting a CEO at City of Melbourne in 2014, but we are much smaller largely volunteer run organisation. The package available is below 200k but north of 150k and we're primarily looking for someone with commercial experience who also has some governance, advocacy and sharemarket exposure.

I'll be in Sydney on Friday as guest speaker at the ASA Christmas lunch and have also recently stepped in to assist more directly with ASA tweeting.

We moved to an annual conference last year and the momentum this creates has helped us put together an excellent program for May 15-16 at the Grand Hyatt in Melbourne next year.

Speakers include Peter Costello, Saul Eslake, Paula Dwyer, plus a range of specialist sessions catering for the needs of all investors.

Any retail investor worth their salt should be a member of the Australian Shareholders' Association. The ASA website has an interesting list of research lists, some of which are member-only behind the paywall. Here are a few favourites:

Longest serving ASX 200 directors

New CEOs who embrace write-offs

Measuring independent chairs for "skin in the game"

Capped SPPs which were then expanded

How retail investors do worse with separate bookbuilds

The 100 most important remuneration protest votes

30-plus examples of where retail investors gathered 100 signatures

And if you want to see all the research plus the full archive of AGM reports and voting recommendations since 2009, you really should become a member. Click here.



Fighting the pokies

* Please note this next item is not endorsed or associated in any way with the ASA

The Alliance for Gambling Reform sure does have the poker machine industry on the defensive. Here's why.

The media launch of the court case by Shonica Guy against Crown Casino and Aristocrat was covered on every TV station, in the newspapers and on radio. Alliance supporters shared the news with tens of thousands more. Share the segment that aired on Today Tonight that covers the lawsuit

The Alliance is also holding politicians to account for letting machines accused of being designed to deceive into our pubs, clubs and casinos, with 600 personal emails sent to pollies. You can send your MP a letter through this form.

They also warned Woolworths to take responsibility for their 12,183 machines before the courts find them illegal. At the Woolies AGM last week, shareholders were given flyers and the Alliance handed their Company Secretary thousands of signatures from supporters. Inside, Alliance supporters Mark and Susan asked Chairman Gordon Cairns tough questions and later met with several Directors to make a case for change. Watch and share 7 News interview Alliance spokesperson Allison Keogh.

We know the pokies industry is worried. The lobbyist for machine designers recently penned a desperate but weak opinion piece. The Alliance has been leaked an internal memo from the lobby group for Victorian Gambling Clubs warning their members about their campaigning. The glossy magazine produced by pokies behemoth Clubs NSW has repeatedly attacked the Alliance.

They're worried now – but this is just the beginning. The court case will unfold over at least a year, and the Alliance will be there every step of the way to maintain the pressure. Not just on Woolworths, but on Coles, AFL clubs, RSL clubs and Catholic clubs – who all profit from poker machines designed to addict.

The Alliance for Gambling Reform is only just over a year old, and have kicked some great goals so far.

It was terrific that City of Melbourne officers and councillors agreed to contribute $25,000 and become tier one members this year and let's hope that support will continue into the future.

Finally, listen to this campaign speech from the 2008 Woolworths AGM for a solid example of straight-talking pokies activism which has seemingly had little impact on our biggest pokies operators.

And try watching this 30 second anti-pokies ad made by Paul Bendat a few years ago featuring our daughter Alice, who was 6 at the time:



Hannan family set to control PMP

There's an interesting merger on the go at the moment involving printing company PMP and its rival IPMG, which is controlled by the Hannan family. It goes to a vote of PMP shareholders in Sydney on December 16.

Few people have noticed in the fine print the fact that the Hannan Family members (not as a single entity) will own 37% of the combined entity. This is a sweet deal which values IPMG at $121 million and with 6 individual family shareholders, it will be interesting to see how the creep provisions of the Corporations Act come into play.

Normally, you pay a premium to take control of a company that will have revenues exceeding $1.2 billion and forecast earnings of over $80m per annum. Allied to this, the Hannans have 2 seats on the board, and will be the landlord of most of the production facilities – so they really are in the box seat.

It would be very easy to characterise this as a reverse takeover and as a PMP shareholder, I'm not convinced that we are on the right side of this deal.

A trip down memory lane on our Youtube channel

When The Mayne Report first launched in 2007 we were posting daily videos on our Youtube channel. Alas, the cost and time of in-house video production, plus the lack of any revenue, made this model unviable.

However, when you look back at all the video we've got spanning our own productions, one-off interviews, profiles or lengthy interviews, or webcasts of AGMs, it turns out we've got a rather large library of material, some of which is now available on our Youtube channel.




Some of the playlists on our video site including the following:

Macquarie model a dead parrot

Video packages of battles with Rupert Murdoch

Cracking a few bad jokes after OZ Minerals and Zinifex merger

Donate to help keep us going

The Mayne Report is free. If you fancy giving us a hand to help fund our activism and keep us going on the political and AGM circuit, just click on the image below:



Alternatively, if you don't like Paypal, donations can be transferred to our account at Westpac

Mayne Report Pty Ltd
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Account number: 130897

Or, you can send a cheque to PO Box 925, Templestowe 3106.

The Mayne Report loves lists and here are a few favourites

We love a good list at The Mayne Report and here are a few favourites we've worked up over the years:

18 years of remuneration excesses by the Murdoch family
150 local govt councillors who made it into Parliament
The great honorary doctorates list
Prominent Australians who have sued for defamation
Claimed assets of companies at time of collapse
The great Australian cheque-book journalism list
The Mayne Report Rich List (needs updating)




Crikey yarns since last edition

Since Crikey was sold in March 2005, the freelance contributions to Australia's best known and longest running independent ezine have continued as follows:

2016: 57 stories so far
2015: 108 stories
2014: 51 stories
2013: 19 stories
2012: 56 stories
2011: 71 stories
2010: 64 stories
2009: 50 stories
2008: 264 stories
2007: 354 stories
2006: 295 stories
2005: 257 stories

Here are links to the Crikey stories since our last Mayne Report edition on November 5.

CBA becomes first Big Four bank to face remuneration strike (pro bono)
Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Challenging Rupert Murdoch on his failure to allow free speech
Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Who's afraid of Gerry Harvey?
Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Record pay protest vote at Fox AGM
Friday, November 18, 2016

Boral goes over the top and dilutes retail shareholders
Friday, November 25, 2016

Sign up for campaign and governance Tweets



Click on the image above to join almost 28,000 followers on Twitter. We are regularly dropping out observations about journalism, politics, breaking stories, local government and shareholder activism.

From the member edition archive

If you're a relatively new Mayne Report reader, here are links to some of the more interesting email editions sent out over the past nine years.

2016 - 14 editions so far

Running in Melbourne, council elections, Eddie McGuire, JB Hi Fi, NAB political donations, Jeff Kennett and plenty more
Sunday, September 18, 2016

Melbourne transparency reforms, council elections, pokies, capital raisings, long serving directors and MenziesSunday, September 4, 2016

Go Malcolm, denting Kevin, AEC goes nuclear and plenty more
Thursday, July 7

Final Menzies email blast
Friday, July 1

Campaign update, more pokies donations, Menzies ignored, ASA leave and council governance reform
Monday, June 27

Kevin's getting worried, campaign update, pokies, News Corp dispute, City of Melbourne and family news
Friday, June 17

Kevin locked in, so Make Menzies Matters campaign hits top gear
Friday, June 10

Menzies update, "Fake Liberal" corflutes, AFL pokies push, gift register and much more
Saturday, June 4, 2016

Menzies update, Westfield rate dodging, The Australian's gossips and candidate betting
Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Menzies update, ASA board, pokies and Four Corners
Monday, May 23, 2016

Mayne announces Menzies tilt as Kevin Andrews embroiled in stacking scandal
Saturday, May 7, 2016

Turnbull, Warburton, pokies, AICD, IOOF, Quills, internal audit and much more
Monday, March 22, 2016

Bank royal commission, ASA tilt, Copyright, Piccinini, pokies, Kevin Andrews and Cabcharge
Monday, April 11, 2016

2015 - 8 editions

AGM season, PAITREOs, pokies, MAV, Copyright, Piccinini sisters, ANZ carbon and transcripts
November 5, 2015

Global Integrity Summit, Macquarie, pokies, council update, AGM season and family news
October 12, 2015

Battling Slaters, a Stokes shocker, council, CBA litigation, ASA conference and RACV reforms
April 30, 2015

Tenth anniversary of Crikey sale, Aristocrat AGM, council transparency and then some
March 9, 2015

Why Ministers should support the Liberal leadership spill
Monday, February 9, 2015

2014 - 8 editions focused on back half of the year post ASA gig

Special edition on the Victorian election result
Sunday, November 30, 2014

Vic election, Herald Sun, Rupert votes, Tex, Xenophon and much morey
Sunday, November 23, 2014

Rupert AGMs, Cabcharge, Costello, Bolt, Ten and Victorian election
Sunday, November 16, 2014

CBA tilt, LA visit, Rupert AGMs, Cabcharge and state election
Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Cabcharge, donations for Rupert visit and governance reforms at City of Melbourne
Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Tilts, Fairfax, CBA, Brickworks, Albert Park, ASX, Woolies, pokies and Crown
Friday, September 20, 2014

We're back: inside a post-ASA election season blitz
Monday, September 15, 2014

2013 - 10 editions with 5 favourites below

Capital raisings, Ansell, IAG, Packer, pokies, Rich List, City of Melbourne and ASA update
Monday, December 23, 2013

Franking robbery, East West trust breach, BHP bonuses, John Gay and plenty more
Sunday, August 25, 2013

ASA policy paper, Kevin Andrews on the pokies, Senate preferences and much more
August 19, 2013

ASA, Billabong, Westfield, Newcrest, Shorten, Turnbull, pokies and then some
Monday, July 22, 2013

Rudd v Gillard, referendum, Labor sleaze, Clive Palmer, ASA, City of Melbourne and plenty more
Monday, June 24, 2013

2012 - only 9 editions given council and ASA commitments

Backing Rudd, Lachlan, Bob Brown media debate, Manningham governance, Gunns and St Kilda AGM
Monday, February 20, 2012

The OZ goes mad, Murdoch piracy, AFR, pokies double rate, Gina, council super, BoQ rip-off and power speech
Wednesday, April 4, 2012

2011 - 21 editions but slowed down after elected to ASA board in May

Murdoch special, media inquiry, pokies, Manningham, Zara, secretive Shortenite crs and Vodafone take-down
Thursday, September 15, 2011

Elected to ASA board, pokies, Rio, Santos, RHG, Hartigan, Manningham, capital raisings and Rich List
Thursday, May 19, 2011

2010 - 39 editions and last year with paid staff

Paperlinx, Packer, Murdoch, Manningham, pokies, Rich ex wives, foreign takeovers and much more
Saturday, October 23, 2010

DJs, women on boards, ex Lib goes no pokies, preferences, Pratt-Shorten, Labor's debt and Manningham council audio
August 3, 2010

Director rankings, Rio, Westfield, MAP, Manningham, Paatsch, state election, rich list, pokies and much more
June 9, 2010

Political donations, Stokes, Westfield tower, Richard Colless, Manningham nursing home, state debt, Rich List and Grand Prix
February 23, 2010

2009 - 40 editions but was slowed down by Manningham council

Seven AGM, crazy Perth visit, Fairfax, Telstra, Transfield, capital raisings and much more
November 9, 2009

News Corp AGM, Packer, Fairfax, James Strong, Woolies, Eastern Golf, Kohler-Gatto and much more
October 20, 2009

Bad Bendigo, Mark Day, Manningham, pokies, NAB, Asciano, Rich List, Paladin and hostile EGMs
September 15, 2009

Macquarie AGM, Melbourne's decline, Asciano EGM, capital raisings, Goyder's pokies and AGM diary
July 28, 2009

2008 - 172 editions in our first and best full year of operation as the GFC hit and before we got overloaded at Manningham

71% backing at Centro, $11bn backing at BHP and huge Qantas protest
November 28, 2008

Combank's $700m ABC Learning debacle
November 13, 2008

Toll board skewered over $55m executive rort
October 30, 2008

Rupert's accountability dodge, Macquarie's Italian hit, Babcock funds revamp, pokieact.org and rich lists.
October 20, 2008

BHP and Woolies tilts, AFIC push on Stan Wallis, ASX-Kohler yarn and new Rich Listers
September 26, 2008

Macquarie videos, Stokes raid, new board tilt, Oz Minerals, share trading and much more
July 25, 2008

Owen Hegarty payout rolled, history is made
July 18, 2008

Great debate at the Babcock AGM
May 30, 2008

Our liveliest edition yet
Thursday, May 8, 2008

Burrows quits Fairfax, Rupert, donations, long-serving directors and much more
January 31, 2008

Markets tumble, Rupert book deal, Centro, Rich List, Xenophon, AFR tips and our buying spree
January 17, 2008

2007 - 15 editions as we launched shortly before running in Federal election

Fortescue Metals AGM: time for Twiggy and FMG to grow up
Sunday, November 8, 2007, 10.30pm

How $5bn worth of votes backed us against Rupert's dodgy gerrymander
Saturday, 20 October, 2007, 7.20am

Mayne family news

After notching up another 7 on Friday night's draft, the Oakleigh Chargers have now produced 119 AFL contracted players, the most of any non-AFL club in Australia.

So it is quite exciting that the Chargers have just launched their first U18 female development squad and our 15 year old daughter Laura is giving it a go, along with 6 other teenagers from our club.

Laura loves spending time in the ruck and is now 6 foot tall, so we'll see how this summer program roles out before the first ever TAC girls cup in early 2017. The level of coaching and dedication has certainly impressed so far.

Our middle child Alice is really enjoying her cricket, despite dad's naff coaching. She's made the U14 regional squad and will play a tournament in early January against teams from across the state.

Dad is playing over 40s veterans cricket this summer which is pretty funny. It's a one day format at 36 overs a side but you only play every second Sunday, leaving plenty of time to recover. We're winless in the lowest section (E grade) but it has still been a lot of fun.

All 3 kids are playing club basketball this summer and we're also signed up for a heavy surf life saving program over summer.

Philip is into his last 3 weeks of primary school and as school captain had to speak to 70 incoming prep parents last week. As usual, he opened proceedings with a joke. Philip was also chuffed to see his hard work assisting with the Menzies campaign captured in this Monash university student journalism piece. Proud of his dad, says the boy!

Paula is busy with induction programs as a councillor in the City of Manningham and we're getting out and about in the community, attending trivia nights, food-van festivals and taking our labradoodle Daisy to different off-lead parks just to get to know the ward a little better.

We did a big hard rubbish clean out recently, offloading some old bikes just before a request came in from an old mate in China looking to borrow some kids bikes when they visit over summer.

If anyone in Melbourne can help out for kids in the 6-10 bracket, drop us a line by reply email.


That's all for now.

Do ya best, Stephen Mayne

* The Mayne Report is an email newsletter and website which promotes transparency and good governance in the corporate, political and media worlds. It is published by Stephen Mayne, the founder of Crikey.com, shareholder advocate, ASA director and former City of Melbourne councillor. To unsubscribe from this email list, click here.