Cattle baron Theo Onisforou locks horns with his council

Theo Onisforou is known as a wily property investor and resident of the Southern Highlands who has lived many lives. He’s also a cattle baron, a retired barrister – and spent about a decade working for Kerry Packer as his chief investment officer.

Now he’s at war with Wingecarribee Shire Council, which captures the suburb of Kangaloon, where he lives with his family.

The skirmish reached a new gear this week, when Onisforou was alerted to an application seeking two AVOs against him. One was from Wingecarribee Mayor Jesse Fitzpatrick, the other from the council’s general manager Lisa Miscamble. The two councillors didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Tensions between Onisforou and his council showed signs of boiling over last month, on the heels of a drawn-out series of disagreements between the cattle baron and councillors.

These have included, but are not limited to: Fitzpatrick chewing gum in council meetings, the council’s consideration of awarding an art gallery $2.5 million for a second time and, crucially, the council’s decision not to fight the appeal of a development application for a Chinese-owned plastic recycling plant in Moss Vale, despite mounting opposition from residents.

The council has pretty much vacated the field on the matter, leaving it to residents and what CBD hears is an assortment of lawyers to pool funds to fight it. Mark Burrows, the legendary investment banker and former Credit Suisse executive, said it’s the second major project Onisforou has fought in Kangaloon. Burrows said 30 years ago, the pair invested their own money to thwart plans to turn Kangaloon, also home to Mike Cannon-Brookes, into a sand quarry.

“Without Theo’s joint help, Kangaloon would be a sand quarry,” he said.

But last month, the tensions between Onisforou and the council escalated. On March 18, Onisforou was ejected from a council meeting by NSW Police. The former barrister was given permission to speak at the meeting, according to correspondence seen by CBD, an offer which he says was invalidly rescinded.

He provided Fitzpatrick with planned talking points before the meeting, which included opposition to the $2.5 million in art gallery funding, and a suggestion to market Bowral as a “cool place to live”, given the area’s low maximum temperatures relative to neighbouring suburbs.

Onisforou suspects the councillors are complaining about the many letters he has sent challenging council business, which number in excess of 25. But Onisforou describes his criticism as free speech, and further suspects the AVOs, which are set to run for two years, are being sought to muzzle him in the lead-up to council elections, in which he plans to run.

“Mayor, why didn’t you call to say you felt unhappy with me? As soon as you were mayor, you called me in to help understand the accounts,” Onisforou told CBD. “Why didn’t you call me this time to say, ‘Hey Theo, you’re going too hard, back off’ ?”

Onisforou said he welcomes the opportunity to instruct his barrister to cross-examine the mayor. The AVO applications will be heard on April 14 at Moss Vale Local Court.

A Wingecarribee Shire Council spokeswoman declined to answer questions about the AVOs, and Onisforou’s claims related to his ejection from the March 18 council meeting.

“The NSW Police made an application for Apprehended Personal Violence Order,” the council spokeswoman told CBD. “As this matter is subject to a police investigation and also before the court, council will not be making further comment.”

Simon and Schuster’s Howard clanger

The release of Where it All Went Wrong, a book on former prime minister John Howard by Amy Remeikis, a former political reporter at The Guardian (and before that, at this masthead) was always going to be a lightning rod for criticism.

Remeikis has long been a target for columnists and all manner of feverish media types on the right for her reporting and outspoken progressive views on TV and social media. She’s also targeted on the left, which is almost less surprising, given how much progressives love punching one another.

But it was the blunt-force trauma of a review in the April issue of the Australian Book Review which lit up group chats this week. In the days since, Remeikis’ publisher, Simon & Schuster, has acknowledged the book would be reprinted with corrections, including an amendment to a clanger typo that suggested Howard won a federal election in 1999 that never occurred. (There was, of course, an election a year earlier.)

The review in question was written by academic Dominic Kelly and was unequivocally scathing. It went in on Remeikis for her writing style; suggested she misunderstood important political context, and went hard on the book’s “factual errors”. (We should disclose we haven’t yet read the book and are not qualified to pass judgment.)

The review went on to note other problems, which we’ll leave you to seek out yourself. For her part, Remeikis said she wrote the book to help a younger generation see the Howard years more clearly. She thinks it’s been successful in doing that.

“I’m flattered some people have read it so closely they have found some regrettable typos and editing errors, but it doesn’t take away from the main arguments or change the conclusions,” she told CBD. Fair enough!

As mere mortals with an 800-word daily column to fill, we more than most can empathise with the nagging doubt that accompanies publication, and aren’t immune to errors ourselves. But it’s difficult to understand how something like the wrong year for an election made it onto the page at all.

In response to questions, Simon & Schuster insisted all of its titles undergo “a comprehensive editorial review process” pre-publication, for whatever that’s worth.

“Should any errors be identified post-publication, these are reviewed and, where necessary, corrected at time of reprint. Updates are subsequently made to ebook editions, and amendments may also be made to the audiobook editions,” a spokeswoman for the publisher told CBD.

“With Where it All Went Wrong by Amy Remeikis, factual errors are being amended in future reprints.”

We look forward to reading.

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