Opinion
Updated ,first published
Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sanchez, are in Sydney. For which purpose, we don’t know. But if nothing else, how the world’s fourth-richest man chooses to spend his time in the Emerald City has made for some good gawking.
After being spotted on Friday out for lunch at Mimi’s, the beige upmarket eatery in Coogee, Bezos was spotted that evening slipping into the Park Hyatt bar, where he was reliably photographed by a CBD spy with what appeared to be a negroni. Bezos, clad in black with Cuban-heeled boots, was in the company of an unshaven, yet-to-be-identified man.
That is to say, setting aside transport and accommodation, the billionaire Amazon founder has been living much like the rest of us.
If Sanchez’s Instagram is anything to go by, the pair could well be staying at the Park Hyatt, whose 350-square-metre Sydney Suite bears a striking resemblance to the balcony Sanchez shared a photo of to her 1.1 million followers Sunday morning. The suite’s nightly rate isn’t listed by the Hyatt, but reportedly starts at about $21,000 a night.
Then there’s the transport. Flight-tracking data shows that one plane widely reported as belonging to Bezos, an ultra-luxury Gulfstream G700 private jet, landed in Sydney at 1.15pm AEST after flying from the Pacific. The PJ is among the best money can buy: it can be configured with as many as five living areas and has a range of 14,353 kilometres. Bezos, whose net worth is valued by Forbes at about $US260 billion ($372 billion), reportedly owns a fleet of four private jets.
Just what the pair is doing in Australia remains a mystery. Amazon does decent business in this market and is among the technology behemoths jockeying to build data centres in Australia. The company already operates more than a dozen on Australian shores, and last year beat out Elon Musk’s Starlink to secure a multimillion-dollar contract with the National Broadband Network to offer satellite internet to rural and regional Australians. Amazon Australia didn’t respond to a request for comment by deadline.
So our guess is Bezos, who no longer leads the company as chief executive but remains its executive chairman, would surely have a few meetings in the diary, holiday or not. One person he isn’t currently scheduled to meet with is Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, according to a source familiar with the PM’s diary.
This surprised us, of course, because Albanese has never seen a billionaire tech executive he didn’t want a photo with.
Where’s Barnaby?
Last week was a big one for One Nation. It was revealed the Senate’s perennial cooker Malcolm Roberts described Alex Jones, a fountain of conspiracy theories including that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a false flag, “a beacon of hope around the world”.
Then came leader Pauline Hanson’s Mediterranean sojourn with billionaire Gina Rinehart. This was topped off with a Hanson podcast appearance alongside controversial far-right freak show Tommy Robinson, who’s proven too freaky even for UK Reform leader Nigel Farage and has been dubbed a “thug” by Andrew Bolt.
So when our colleagues revealed late last week that Hanson and Barnaby Joyce were in “constant disagreement”, there was always going to be some forensic tea leaves analysis. Joyce and One Nation, of course, insisted the former Nationals leader and his new boss have a trusting relationship.
Such was the case over the weekend when attention turned to the absence of Joyce’s name from the “team” page on the One Nation website, and the absence of the party name on Joyce’s own website. It’s unclear if Joyce ever made it onto the One Nation website or if it’s been changed. Of course, as with anything One Nation, our guess was the omission would probably have more to do with a lack of professionalism and short staffing numbers than, say, a looming split. But then again, who knows.
Reached on Sunday, Joyce was “trying to get a pump on”, which we took to mean exercising, maybe lifting weights. He was exasperated by this masthead’s reporting last week, which revealed disagreements between him and Hanson. “Premised on what?” he asked. When asked about the absence of his name from the One Nation website, Joyce said there was nothing to it.
Pleasure to be of service clearing that one up.
John Buckley is a CBD columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.
