Today, why the Liberals are shunning a major business event, champions of free speech go to water, and much more.

Open wound

One of the hottest tickets in town next week is the Business SA 175th anniversary Gala Celebration Dinner at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre.

Tickets and invites are hard to get for the business and industry ‘night of nights’.

But there will still be around 1500 people there from the who’s who of Adelaide – except for a few Federal Liberal MPs.

It seems some people are still hurting from that little spat on State Budget Day this year when Business SA failed to act like a branch of the Liberal Party.

It started when Business SA’s chief Nigel McBride tweeted: “State Budget – no new direct business taxes. Business SA pleased Treasurer recognises importance of business confidence”. Which prompted Senator Simon Birmingham to respond with “you guys are an embarrassment to your constituency. Business pays ESL hikes, car park tax & cop loss of payroll tax concession”.

And on and on it went.

There have been high level discussions among the Libs about who should go to the gala dinner and while a boycott was mentioned at one stage, we’re happy to report that at least one federal MP is going as a token representative.

The Outsider remembers fondly the days when the annual dinner of the state’s peak Chamber of Commerce and Industry would have had “a Lib at every table”.

And we still remember that wondrous evening in October 2001 when then-Premier John Olsen danced on stage with Rhonda Burchmore while his colleagues whispered about his need to resign – which he did the next day.

Champions of free speech

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation loves to lecture the country about free speech, berating the courts, politicians, human rights activists and even other news organisations about the need for an unfettered and fearless press.

Yet, when it comes to its own corporate interests, Murdoch’s local honchos appear to give not one fig about such lofty ideals.

The company’s journalists – at least, those who haven’t drunk the Kool-Aid – must be cringing after yesterday’s efforts.

News pulled out the legal big guns after news and opinion website Crikey did its job and published an extraordinary leak – News Corporation’s internal financial figures from fiscal year 2013.

The figures showed the extent of the collapsing revenue within the company’s newspaper arm, as well as the previously undisclosed size of job losses which, in SA, amounted to nearly 200 staff at The Advertiser and Sunday Mail.

News’ legal threats led Crikey to take the pragmatic approach and remove the actual documents from its website. However, you can still see all of its reports of the financials here (and our report here).

As many have pointed out, job losses anywhere near this size in any other local company would have made prominent news the dear old Tiser’s pages.

Still, it’s much more embarrassing for a newspaper company to spit the dummy over a rival engaging in what can be most accurately described as  “journalism”. And bloody good journalism at that.

‘Hypocrisy’ doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Good times

It hasn’t been a great couple of weeks for well-known Adelaide businessman Andrew Fletcher.

Fletcher used to be head of Defence SA and he spent seven years on the board of the Environment Protection Authority.

He was also one of the board members of Penrice Holdings Pty Ltd, which is now in liquidation.

Administrators of Penrice recently wrote to creditors suggesting it might be worthwhile chasing the directors for “trading while insolvent” (a claim vigorously denied by the directors).

In the meantime, Fletcher and his wife Jan have been trying for quite a while to sell the family home.

The eight bedroom, seven bathroom mansion has room for 10 cars and boasts a herd of deer, eight hectares, Shiraz vines and a three-bedroom cottage for your guests.

‘Kingsbrae’ first went on the market in 2011 priced at $6.5 million.

Earlier this year the price was knocked down to $5 million and this week the tag has been marked again at $4.9 million.