The Full Catastrophe Read online

  I jokingly replied: ‘We are set at ten large.’

  Realising his message had not been delivered to its intended recipient, Hayson responded: ‘If you had any brains you would be.’

  Meanwhile, I looked up the race field in Port Macquarie and suggested Eddie would be better to put his money on a horse called Before You Think.

  As for Urban Prince, well it wasn’t such a sure thing after all, coming in at third place. When I pointed out his tip was a dud he replied, ‘You got the jockey to pull it up, didn’t you?’

  I think back about other people and their hurtful remarks. Were they also trying to tell me something? Were they merely being cruel to be kind? Take Jamie Vincent, the son of underworld figure Teflon Tony Vincent.

  We were outside the Downing Centre Court and Jamie arrived – 100 kilograms of muscle, a bullet head, leather jacket and the obligatory dark glasses. I mentioned to our photographer that the Vincents were not particularly nice and they had murdered people in the past. And since Jamie was about to be sent to jail for the third time he might not be in the best of moods, so if he was going to take a photo of Jamie Vincent, better to err on the side of caution and not get too close. With that I blithely set off to get a coffee. I returned to find the photographer ashen-faced and shaking.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

  Jamie Vincent had come over to the photographer and, leaning within inches of his face, had said, ‘If you publish any photos of me, I will come after you. I will track you down and I will get you.’

  ‘Listen, mate, I am just doing my job. Don’t shoot the messenger,’ said the photographer, rather foolishly.

  ‘But I will shoot the messenger,’ said Vincent.

  At this point I marched over to old bullet-head, who was standing in the queue waiting to go through the court’s security check.

  ‘How dare you threaten my photographer!’ I snapped.

  ‘Listen, you stinking ugly old hag, why don’t you piss off!’ Vincent snarled.

  There it was again. I wasn’t just an ugly old hag, I was a smelly one.

  And recently a charming man, Andrew Saab, described me on Facebook as – among other things – an ‘effing red neck whore’ and a ‘bush pig’. I wondered if bush pigs smell more than normal ones.

  Andrew Saab is the brother of Majid Saab. And Majid Saab, who threatened me outside the lifts at ICAC, is the charming son-in-law of my other favourite Eddie, Edward Moses Obeid, former MP and now convicted criminal.

  Summer is approaching and most Australians like to go away for Christmas. But Eddie Obeid has been doing everything he can to stop going away over Christmas. Maybe that is because ‘going away’ for him would be a stint in jail after being found guilty of corrupt conduct earlier in the year.

  Over the last few years Eddie Obeid and his family have been the subject of no less that five corruption hearings before the Independent Commission Against Corruption. And I have been there for every one.

  It was on one such day – Thursday, 21 August 2014, to be precise – that I suffered the full catastrophe. I had just received word from our publishers that due to the wrong Chris Brown being identified in our recently published book He Who Must Be Obeid, the book would have to be pulped. It was just plain wrong and there was no one to blame but myself.

  So there was I, sitting in ICAC feeling devastated and shell-shocked about the book, when a text message flashed onto my screen.

  ‘Hi Kate, It’s John Ibrahim her [sic] could u pls send me a copy of ur book that be nice … thank u.’

  ‘Very funny! Who is this really?’ I replied.

  It really was the Kings Cross identity, who was keen to get a copy of the book before it was too late.

  As I was thinking of replying to John Ibrahim that he would now be able to buy the book on the black market like everyone else, another text came through. It was the police. They needed to talk to me about the Obeids. Finally, some good news in an otherwise shocking day, I thought.

  Wrong!

  The police had just come from the Obeids’ house.

  ‘You have no idea how much they hate you,’ an officer told me.

  ‘I think I do,’ I said.

  The police officer said, ‘No, I don’t think you do.’

  According to the police, one of the many things the Obeids were accusing me of was sending them death threats. Death threats! I could scarcely believe my ears. I had just written a tell-all book on the Obeids, even though it was about to be pulped. Why would I be sending them death threats?

  I had received an email from a person calling himself Peter Ryan. It read: ‘Tip: Fast Eddie has a McGurk contract heading his way. Keep your eyes and ears open.’

  This was a reference to the 2009 contract killing of businessman Michael McGurk. The week before he was killed, McGurk had told me that there was a contract out on his life but – to my endless regret – I had thought he was merely attention seeking.

  I wasn’t about to make the same mistake again. So I queried the mysterious Mr Ryan, who replied that the contract on Obeid ‘has been offered around for a while and his card is marked’.

  I went to the police with the emails, and their visit to the ICAC hearing was to fill me in on their investigation about the death threats. They said the emails had been sent from an internet cafe in Bondi. But there the trail had gone dead. Whoever had sent the emails had opened an account in a fake name, using a mobile phone that had also been set up using a false name.

  It did not matter what the police said, the Obeids were convinced that I was responsible for the death threats. Somehow I was racing out of the ICAC hearings, heading to a Bondi internet cafe, sending an email to myself, and then racing back to Bondi to reply. And, of course, passing these on to the police.

  The very suggestion of this sent my children into a fit of derisive laughter. On one occasion I had arrived at ICAC in a complete state because my phone was missing. I looked everywhere, I retraced my steps, I employed ‘find my phone’, to no avail. Later that day I received a call from home. My family had some good news and some bad news. The good news was they had found my phone. The bad news was it was in the oven and it was cooked. It was now a baked Apple. Don’t even ask!

  The very idea that I could use my technological genius to send death threats about the Obeids to myself was beyond ludicrous. But as my family said, there is always good news and bad news. For every catastrophe there is a coup. Not only is the book He Who Must Be Obeid back on the shelf but the first-edition copies are on eBay for triple the initial price.

  And as for the real He Who Must Be Obeid, hopefully by year’s end he’ll be trying out his skills of persuasion courtesy of Her Majesty’s pleasure.

  Editor’s note:

  Eddie is indeed on the inside, where the sun still shines and perhaps the perfumed roses grow.

  Woman, Interrupted

  Emma Alberici

  Editor’s note:

  Emma told this story in the middle of the ABC scandal involving ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie and chair of the ABC Board Justin Milne. After writing a piece about how some of Australia’s largest corporations avoid paying tax, her journalism was under attack from the prime minister, the Coalition government and the chair of the ABC, who allegedly told his MD to ‘get rid of her’. In the midst of the fiasco, one commentator criticised Emma for being a ‘woman of considerable self-belief’. We were considering getting t-shirts printed emblazoned with this message. So here’s Emma, battered and bruised but never bowed, embracing a different catastrophe.

  LET ME TELL you everything I know about corporate tax.

  Don’t be silly, everyone knows I don’t know anything about corporate tax.

  So, rather than pretend I can distinguish between profit and revenue, I’m going to stick to the topic of being a mum and a wife, specifically the time when being a wife and a mum made me a national hero.

  I’m exaggerating, but that happens when you have too much self-belief.


  In 2008 I became the first Australian mother posted overseas as a foreign correspondent. It was a dream job and I had dreamt about it since I was at university, where I did a lowly Arts degree majoring in Italian. I had to go through a rigorous interview process with an earnest panel asking me about the origins of the global financial crisis and calling on comparisons with the 1930s Depression. As FDR said back then, the only thing I had to fear was fear itself. I was breastfeeding a four-month-old baby at the time but I had multi-tasking down pat. The prospect of being the ABC’s Europe correspondent was the reason I joined the ABC back in 2002, after meeting the then new director Max Uechtritz on a flight back from Canberra, where I’d been the tally-room reporter for the federal election. He hired me to host a show called Business Breakfast. I went on to become the finance editor for 7.30. By the time I was sitting in that boardroom talking about the Depression I had three children under three.

  Big ups to the ABC News management; not only did they give me the job despite the fact I was on maternity leave, but I beat six other candidates who were all men, who may or may not have been fathers. That detail was as unremarkable then as it is now. Being a father isn’t, hasn’t and will most likely never be career limiting.

  So, I got this ace gig and I was feeling pretty happy about my life, notwithstanding the fact that we had just demolished a house, started a renovation, and were about to lay new foundations. My then husband Jason was working as a sound recordist for, wait for it, Australia’s Next Top Model. There was no way he was going to give that job up to organise logistics for London.

  The ABC had me doing countless shifts of training in technology for use out in the field, and a hostile-environment course about what to do if you are bombed or kidnapped. And then there were those three small people to consider. Who had the time to choose schools and make living arrangements? I’m still astonished that an organisation as big as the ABC has no department for helping people move overseas.

  After I’d come off my high from getting the job I shifted to thinking, ‘Cripes, where do we live in London? Where do they go to school? What about childcare?’

  I called the Head of International and his secretary said he’d call me back. I didn’t hear from him for a day. So I emailed him.

  Dear Mr International

  Thanks again for this fantastic opportunity but you’ve only given me six weeks to get to the ABC bureau and start working. Where will we live? What arrangements shall I make for the kids? Is there someone in HR? Do I hire an agent when we get there?

  Two days went by and no response. My initial euphoria began turning to anxiety, and I had a five-month-old by this stage so I was chronically sleep deprived, which was a toxic combination. Perhaps they didn’t want me to take this job? Finally, one morning I marched up to Mr International’s office and sat outside the glass doors, making his assistant a little uncomfortable. He arrived, made some excuse or other and then rather exasperatingly said, ‘Emma, stop asking me all these questions. I don’t have the answers. Normally the wives work it out.’

  I was the first correspondent with children who didn’t have a wife. For a moment I paused and imagined a world where you can have all that stuff handled, such as the childcare, being there for the plumber to arrive between seven and five, someone to collect the children from soccer, dancing, rugby, swimming or their mate’s place. Imagine what it would be like to outsource all of that and not have to pay for it.

  We packed up our lives and put all our belongings under four headings: Sydney storage, London luggage, London air, London sea.

  Just getting to the airport that night in January 2008 was prize worthy. We had fourteen pieces of luggage and three small children, and it was already past their bedtime. We boarded the flight and put half our lives in the overhead lockers, and I could see the blood drain from the faces of the people around us.

  After a stopover in Bangkok, we dressed the kids in Qantas pajamas and were told over the loudspeaker that we’d be served dinner after take-off and all was going to plan. But take-off didn’t happen because the catering truck had smashed into the plane.

  For an hour we sat on the tarmac. Then we were told that dinner would be served while they fixed the ding on the plane. We ate and were relieved when we heard from the captain that it would be just one more hour before we took off for London. We’d now been on the tarmac for three hours and the children were restless. I reached for the Phenergan. Baby Pia was too young to be drugged, but I gave Allegra and Miles a little more than a full dose each. And within fifteen minutes we had three sleeping children, much to the delight of our fellow passengers. By that time we should have been about to take off. Right? Wrong. Those aviation panel beaters had decided this quickie repair wasn’t a good idea after all. We were informed that Qantas was shouting us all a day in Bangkok because it was 5 am. We’d be taking off for London at 10 pm. Oh my god.

  We had to get off the plane with three sleeping children, our carry-on bags and collect fourteen pieces of luggage from the baggage carousel. We collared a woman who’d smiled at us on the plane, which was a rare pleasantry. We literally handed her the baby as we didn’t have enough arms for everyone. At the Customs queue, after all the maelstrom of exiting the plane, she handed Pia back.

  Oh, yeah, thanks. We piled into a mini-van with our fourteen boxes, pram, capsule seat, portacot, suitcases and children, who we just couldn’t wake up, slobbering on our shoulders. Another stranger was wheeling Pia in the pram. Perhaps our impromptu Bangkok holiday would not be as bad as we’d first envisaged. The hotel was nice and it had a pool.

  Fast forward to our arrival in London. As the plane touched down, Jason revealed that he actually didn’t get his visa sorted. He didn’t want to tell me before as I’d been stressed and busy and he didn’t want to burden me with anything else. So he thought that moment should be the one to reveal that he’d forgotten to include critical documents such as our marriage certificate and my passport to prove he was legitimately the spouse of a European national. Luckily, it was midnight in London and there were virtually no immigration personnel and they were tired. So they stamped our passports for entry for two months, giving Jason time to get his act together.

  It was 1 am when we piled into two taxis and I found the scrunched-up bit of paper with instructions about our serviced apartment, and discovered it said to collect the keys between 9 am and 4 pm. There wasn’t a phone number so we proceeded to the address, convinced there’d be a note or a key.

  Nope. I called Sydney and talked to my friend, Mr International. An hour and 180 quid later, we got out of our cab. It was 3 am when we finally got into our serviced apartment. It was on the fourth floor of a beautiful old building. And when I say ‘old’, I mean no lift. The stairs were a near vertical climb. At one point I was carrying Pia in one arm and a heavy suitcase in another, and for a brief, sleep-deprived postnatally depressed moment I really didn’t think I could make it to the top of those stairs.

  That night Pia slept in one of the drawers of a tallboy. It was safe; she couldn’t roll out. I didn’t close the drawers. The portacot we’d carried halfway around the world and up those steep stairs was broken. We’d found a nice house to rent before we left but it was unfurnished save for the white goods, and I was a little reluctant to put Pia in the fridge. So rather than spend one more day squeezing our family of five into this tiny, one-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor with no lift that Mr International had so graciously organised for us, I did what no one should ever have to do. I spent ten of my first forty-eight hours in London in IKEA.

  At that point I was craving the phone call from Sydney telling me to drop everything and go to a war zone. But alas, no. I had to battle IKEA instead. At the checkout the bill came to £6284 but I’d managed to fully furnish a five-bedroom home. We moved in. The fridge was leaking and didn’t work. I put a load of washing on and flooded the laundry floor, and there was no hot water for our first two days. My two-year-old came to me weeping and said, ‘Please
take me back to Australia.’

  Now, it turned out that Graham Chapman, of Life of Brian fame, used to live in this house. The landlord said not to worry about minor inconveniences, like the fridge and the washing machine and the fact that the wardrobe doors had no handles and wouldn’t close. She said we should be happy to be hanging clothes in the same wardrobe used by Graham. Karl Marx is buried at the Highgate cemetery and I kept thinking how happy I’d be if the landlord joined him there.

  In Britain you have to send children to school the year they turn four. I had no idea what to do, so I just enrolled Allegra in the local school where my predecessor’s kids went. The fees were £24,000 a year for a four-year-old. It was a month into the year when the ABC revealed that after putting the children of the correspondent before me through that school and every other correspondent before him, my children’s fees would not be paid. The ABC policy had changed and from this point on, no correspondent would have their child’s school fees paid.

  Now, if you’ve lived in London you will know that public schools are a postcode lottery where waiting lists for those with reasonable academic and social records are hugely oversubscribed. But perhaps it was best. That school was posh and we had to drive. We bought a clapped-out Toyota Tarago. The parents at the school used to spend their weekends wearing tweed coats and going pigeon shooting. We were riff raff. Geraldine, the principal, required children at the age of two or three to wear a blazer, hat and tie and to shake her hand every morning with fixed eye contact and a greeting. One day, when Jason arrived to drop Allegra off, Ms Geraldine collared him and issued a firm edict for him not to park near the school anymore as our car was too noisy.

  Operation Allegra quickly kicked in. Its mission: to get our daughter into the good local free school with a waiting list of 356 kids. Jason went about making regular batches of his specialty, rocky road, and he would march it up to the ladies in the office, taking the adorably cute six-month-old Pia with him for added effect. Once there he would offer around the sweets, find out our progress on the waiting list and do what he does best, which is to flirt with abandon. It worked and within a year Allegra was whisked out of the pretty private prep college where the school dresses were embossed with little flowers.