Enter Donald Trump: Spring Street finds a fresh foil for budget woes – The Age
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Reading through the Victorian budget papers on Tuesday, it was a familiar, if geographically distant, character who emerged as the central boogeyman driving the state’s cost-of-living crisis – Donald Trump.
According to the official government press release that announced the Labor 2026 budget: “With Donald Trump’s war driving up costs at home, Labor is doing everything we can to help right now.”
Well, thank goodness for that.
“Donald Trump’s war in the Middle East is hurting regional families and businesses,” a second government press release declared. “That’s why we’re easing cost of living pressures with real help, right now.”
It’s a striking bit of framing. The budget may be penned in Melbourne, but the blame lies in Trump’s lap in Washington.
However, the treasurer’s media team isn’t the first to come up with this budget narrative. There’s a precedent.
When Labor scrapped the Commonwealth Games, then-treasurer Tim Pallas found another global culprit: Vladimir Putin.
“The world has changed,” Pallas said as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was cited as one of the reasons for Victoria’s U-turn on the Games.
Premier Jacinta Allan, who oversaw the development of the North East Link as responsible minister, also blamed Putin’s war when the cost of that road project more than doubled.
“The consequences of those global events are [that] we’ve seen … additional costs being added across a whole range of things,” she said in late 2023.
Now to be fair, wars do shift prices, rattle markets and complicate budgets, but sheeting home responsibility entirely to world leaders who don’t have a seat at the cabinet table on Spring Street is a bit of a stretch. Particularly when the interest payments on Victoria’s own debt sit at $24.4 million a day or $1million an hour.
Showing admirable commitment to his business cause, billionaire cardboard king Anthony Pratt has shopped his own wardrobe and recycled an infamous outfit for the world’s most exclusive fashion gala.
Pratt dusted off the headline-making, startling hot-pink frock coat embroidered with “Pratt 100% Recycled” decals and embellished burgundy waistcoat that he wore to the Meta Gala in 2024 for this year’s edition of the high society event in New York on Tuesday.
However, he refreshed his look by swapping out the pastel pink pants and sensible tan Balenciaga sneakers he wore in 2024 for burgundy velvet pants and polished black shoes.
The eye-catching ensemble once again made him a walking billboard at the bougie bash for his Pratt Industries recycling business. CBD is all for Pratt’s recycle and reuse philosophy. Like him, your correspondent has been known to do a bit of “wardrobe shopping” for black-tie events.
The Visy boss’s guests at the gala included his sister Heloise and his niece, as well as Sabrina Pasterski, a friend of the Pratts. Pasterski, 32, is an American theoretical physicist who has been described as the “next Einstein” for her work on quantum gravity and black holes.
In recent years, Pratt, whose fortune is estimated to be more than $25 billion, has become a wildly unique fashion force of nature who gets unleashed annually at the Met Gala.
This alone indicates the billionaire’s exuberant beige carpet – the colour of the staircase carpet at the Met this year – style has been given the tick of approval by former Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour.
Tickets to the gala cost more than $US71,000, and Wintour personally signs off on each guest, so simply being rich doesn’t mean you will make the cut.
Pratt’s other memorable Met Gala outfits have included a restrained white jacket over black tuxedo pants in 2023 and a froggy green suit, shirt and tie heavily patterned with a “100% Recycled” logo teamed with sneakers and a green felt bowler hat last year.
While the Met Gala is a seriously star-studded affair, Pratt is no stranger to the celebrity set. In March, Australia’s global pop princess Kylie Minogue performed at his annual Visy dinner for 250 guests in the garden of Raheen, his Melbourne home. The year before, Air Supply and Mark Ronson performed, while in 2024 Katy Perry was the big name at the ultra-private bash.
Other guests at the Met Gala included Madonna, Georgina Chapman and Adrien Brody, Ben Stiller, Doja Cat, The Rock, Gigi Hadid, Melbourne resident Troye Sivan – ultra-casual in Prada denim jeans – K-pop star and former Canterbury Girls’ Secondary College student Rose Park, Naomi Watts, Stevie Nicks, Cher, Julianne Moore and Tom Ford. Also gracing the gala were Anne Hathaway, Margot Robbie, Miranda Kerr and her hubby, billionaire Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel, Heidi Klum dressed as marble statue, and various Kardashians and Jenners, including Kylie Jenner in a gown with a sculptured nude bodice complete with moulded nipples and a belly button.
Australia’s red carpet queen Nicole Kidman was a co-chair of the gala alongside Beyonce, Venus Williams and Wintour, while Lauren Sánchez Bezos, wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, was the event’s honorary chair.
On Tuesday, the Seven Network AFL commentator and Sportsbet salesman Kane Cornes reportedly stepped down from his role on the AFL All-Australian selection panel, after Sportsbet changed its policy to no longer employ officials from any sporting code.
Sportsbet made the policy change after the company was embroiled in a separate saga involving the AFL umpire Nick Foot. But we can’t help but wonder if Cornes has backed the wrong horse.
After all, it won’t be long before arrangements such as the one Cornes enjoys with Sportsbet will be subject to scrutiny by the federal government, as part of the gambling ad reforms announced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last month. Among them: a ban on “the use of celebrities and sports players in gambling ads”.
At least Cornes won’t have long to wait before he finds out whether he’s forfeited his official role with the AFL for a gambling foray under threat of extinction. Gambling operators are set to attend a briefing hosted by Albanese government officials just after lunch on Thursday, according to a Zoom meeting invitation seen by CBD.
“The briefing will provide additional information about the announced reforms and the planned implementation process,” the invitation reads. A representative of Cornes didn’t respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
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