It’s not every day the Australian tech industry’s hoodie-clad, skinny-jean-wearing masses get to hear from the billionaire Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar.
So his quiet withdrawal from a tech industry talkfest this week, which promised guests the opportunity to worship at the altar of one of the nation’s wealthiest tech bros, would no doubt have been a source of disappointment for Australia’s Silicon Valley aspirants.
Farquhar, who spends his time these days as chairman of the Tech Council of Australia, was billed as a star attraction on day one – “Builders Day” – of Amazon’s cloud computing event, AWS Summit Sydney, on Wednesday. He was set to appear on a panel alongside the billionaire Canva co-founder Cliff Obrecht and Xero boss Sukhinder Singh Cassidy.
But word is Farquhar’s camp only informed Amazon that he was a late scratching the day before. When we asked the billionaire’s adviser about it on Thursday, she said Farquhar’s withdrawal was “due to a clash”, and insisted he didn’t pull out with only a day’s notice.
There was another director of the council on the panel, Farquhar’s adviser said, so he was able to withdraw. Must’ve been quite the clash, given how far in advance these things are generally booked.
It is possible, of course, that the Point Piper castle dweller also just wasn’t feeling it.
The last time we recall Farquhar speaking publicly was when he addressed the National Press Club nearly a year ago to peddle the wares of his big tech members, who are now clamouring to build more data centres on Australian shores.
At the time, Farquhar’s address set off a bit of internal friction between the lobby group’s Australian and US members, mostly over concerns the Tech Council wasn’t doing enough to represent the views of local companies. So maybe he just didn’t want to put his foot in his mouth. Or maybe he’s just sick of talking about software.
Either way, we hear there was no shortage of hot air at the Sydney Convention Centre without him.
Among the greatest hits, at least as far as we’re concerned, was Singh Cassidy’s enthusiasm for taking the Xero board “on the journey” to adopting generative AI. There were lots of riveting examples, according to a transcript of the panel, including the creation of a fashion app.
But sadly there was no mention of how Singh Cassidy and the Xero leadership team might be using Claude and ChatGPT to help them build a better workplace culture, after the company’s founder Sir Rod Drury was accused by three former female employees of unwanted sexual contact. He denied the allegations.
No mention either of the company’s falling share price, or of how Xero might be using generative AI to prevent a repeat of the days-long outage it suffered earlier this month. That amusingly involved one incident attributed to a hardware fault inside none other than Amazon Web Services.
Apology accepted
The week’s budget festivities have made for some dreary eyes and tired minds over the last couple of days. And it would seem National Press Club chief executive Maurice Reilly has been feeling it too.
Regular readers of this column will no doubt recall when CBD brought word yesterday of Reilly twice introducing Attorney-General Michelle Rowland with the wrong title to Jim Chalmers’ post-budget address at the National Press Club.
Well, we were pleased to hear Rowland has since graciously accepted Reilly’s apology for the mix-up. “Budget weeks are long!” Reilly told CBD on Thursday. Rowland’s office confirmed the make-good.
Sticking with Wednesday’s post-budget address, we have also been dutifully informed by the powerful Pharmacy Guild that they had members there not just in ties, as we had previously noted, but also in scarves. “So not just a bunch of blokes!” the lobby group’s media manager told us in a note the next morning. Pleasure to be of service clearing that one up.
Catalano steps down from investment vehicles
After the former Domain CEO Antony Catalano was charged with allegedly assaulting his wife, the real estate executive turned regional media entrepreneur was placed on leave from his positions at Australian Community Media and View Media Group. He is yet to enter a plea on the charges and is due to return to court in June.
So, in a sense, it was only going to be a matter of time before we received word on how involved he’d remain in his other business interests.
The next domino fell this week, when Catalano resigned his directorships of 19 Cashews and 20 Cashews, the investment vehicles he had previously controlled alongside Melbourne billionaire Alex Waislitz. The resignations were declared in documents filed with the corporate regulator this week, which also showed that Catalano’s son, Jordan, would be appointed a director of both entities in his place.
20 Cashews is the entity which owns Australian Community Media, publisher of a string of regional titles including The Canberra Times and the Newcastle Herald, and has a significant stake in View Media Group, the real estate portal Catalano once hoped would rival Domain, but will soon have its website shut. A spokesman for Waislitz confirmed the changes but declined to comment, while Catalano didn’t get back to us.
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John Buckley is a CBD columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.