Well we weren't kidding – Rupert Murdoch's private jet touched down in Sydney at 6.12am on Saturday, just hours before the media baron joined Australia's business elite at Kirribilli House for summer drinks with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
News Corp took delivery of the Gulfstream 650 (recommended retail price: $88.1 million) in May 2015. By the time Bedi Singh's fully depreciated it, Rupe will be a critically ripe 105 years-old and at nap times regularly mistaking Tucker Carlson for Jerry Hall.
Lord Copper and his eldest son Lachlan might have been the Turnbulls' richest and most powerful guest, but also-rans (relatively speaking) abounded: Seven Group chief Ryan Stokes, Harvey Norman's Gerry Harvey and Katie Page, High-Rise Harry Triguboff and the only bloke older than KRM: (indeed the oldest man ever to carry a NSW driver's licence) the immortal Len Ainsworth.
Then there was Commonwealth Bank chair Catherine Livingstone, Wesfarmers chief Richard Goyder, Fairfax Media chairman Nick "The Headmaster" Falloon and CEO Greg Hywood, Nine Entertainment Co chief Hugh Marks, Seven's commercial director Bruce McWilliam, ABC chairman Jim Spigelman and managing director Michelle Guthrie, SBS boss Michael Ebeid, Business Council chief Jennifer Westacott, Macquarie Group's Nicholas Moore, Qantas boss Alan Joyce, Virgin Australia chair Elizabeth Bryan, Sydney Airports CEO Kerrie Mather, Optus chair Paul O'Sullivan, SCG chair Tony Shepherd and even recently-retired Temple & Webster chair Carol Schwartz (who, after presiding over the furniture retailer's $100 million – or 85 per cent – destruction in shareholder value and being rewarded with a plum seat on the board of the Reserve Bank, spent the summer tweeting about how unfairly the media treats female business leaders).
.@WomenForMedia report backed up. Women CEOs are treated differently in the media @NassimKhadem @mat_dunckley https://t.co/LLjPSKr506
— carol schwartz (@cazzmelbourne) December 25, 2016
The Liberals were represented by federal director Tony Nutt, Cabinet ministers Kelly O'Dwyer, Mitch Fifield and Arthur Sinodinos, and assistant minister Angus Taylor.
The PM singled out Murdoch, Ainsworth, Triguboff, his predecessor John Howard and his father-in-law Tom Hughes QC for praise – their contemporaries Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon couldn't make it – as well as NBN Co chief executive Bill Morrow, who, in his youth, is easily disqualified from the grumpy old man demographic.
