Former federal minister Jamie Briggs will still want to forget 2016, the annus horribilis in which he quit Malcolm Turnbull's frontbench over an incident in a Hong Kong bar, then lost his seat of Mayo, in the Adelaide Hills, to his own former staffer (and Nick Xenophon's candidate) Rebekha Sharkie at the July 2 poll.
It was a spectacular political flame-out, to be sure, but a sad one given his youth and manifest talent. His contemporaries Kelly O'Dwyer and Josh Frydenberg now sit at the Cabinet table.
But things are looking up: Briggs has joined professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers as a director. According to a note circulated on Monday to partners, Briggs will lead an advisory push into infrastructure and cities (his former ministry) and South Australia's favourite, defence. PwC's Adelaide office now has about 200 people in it, but is just one local serial killer away from being empty.
The big four accounting firms like their ex-pollies, with KPMG heavy on Laborites – former AWU boss Paul Howes, Anna Bligh's former chief adviser and NBN executive Mike Kaiser and former trade minister Craig "Boombox" Emerson.
