Herd on the Terrace: Firebrand Ross Smith back on the tools after fun, MinRes’ Kali crusade in ASIC’s sights

Be afraid, Ross Smith is back driving earthmoving machinery. Having sold his Colonial Brewing Company, the firebrand company promoter infamously drove a tractor through the Margaret River brew-pub’s front doors in 2007 over a financial dispute with its new owners. Now social media posts show him back getting his hands dirty at the wheel of mining plant in a new gold exploration venture in the Murchison. Smith has put together three gold prospects, including Jasper Star, 6km south-west of New Murchison Gold’s Crown Prince deposit, where he reckons there’s a low-cost opportunity to extract $17 million of gold. Believed to have made a motza out of Australia’s startup medicinal cannabis industry, Smith now splits his time between Perth and luxury digs on the Thai resort island of Koh Samui. The expatriate Kiwi has never been short of confidence and is not one to look back on what the Bull has previously described as a notoriously confrontational style. “People can dig up the past, I am digging up gold and making millions,” he told us. Kali tang lures ASIC’s MinRes pests We now turn our attention to Australia’s corporate cop and its shiny-new plaything — Mineral Resources. Word is that pests from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission are now buzzing around the float of Kali Metals as part of their investigation into one-time market darling Mineral Resources. In case you forgot, MinRes supremo Chris Ellison and his associates — most notably his mother-in-law Jennifer Robinson — owned a big chunk of Kali as it hit the boards. Robinson was one of a select few to cash out for a big profit while MinRes bought a major chunk of the lithium junior. How’s that for luck? It is understood Kali is not a focus of the probe but ASIC may soon want the West Perth-based group to open up the books. A Kali spin doctor said they hadn’t yet heard from the pests. Calling on the spirit of Bob It was back to the future this week as Anthony Albanese set plans for bosses, lobbyists unions and assorted other hangers-on to head to Canberra for a major economic junket in August. Growth is flat-lining, productivity falling and workers have been copping years of real pay cuts. So what does Albo declare the solution? A national chinwag. The Bull can only hope the top end of the Terrace goes into these talks with a little more awareness than the last round of yapping at Albo’s Jobs & Skills gabfest in 2022. Readers may recall Australia’s top executives and lobbyists were ambushed by far-reaching industrial relations changes but were forced to smile along and take the medicine in front of the rolling cameras. They’ve not stopped complaining about those workplace reforms since. Albo is not the only political master loving a good chat. Roger Cook invited WA’s highest flyers for a round (square) table powwow earlier this month about dealing with Donald Trump’s new world disorder. What emerged as consensus? A State Government press release listing all the stuff Cook’s crew had planned to do anyway. Bob Hawke would be turning in his grave. Hence, under a full moon this week, the Bull journeyed to Hawke’s teenage home in West Leederville and prayed for the reformist leader’s spirit to visit Albo’s productivity chinwag. Here’s hoping. Merger mania grips Pitchers, Purple Having made a typo or too in our mediocre carers, we felt great sympathy this week for bean counters at Pitcher Partners and their spin doctors at Purple. They sent us a 24-page Pitcher report and detailed media guff on the future of the not-for-profit sector — headlined by the remarkable statistic that 71 per cent of organisations were considering mergers or acquisitions. Yes, dear reader, 71 per cent of not-for-profits were joining the mating game so long loved by corporate Australia and their fee-hungry advisers. Then we had Pitcher pronouncing the virtues of mergers, with the usual Economics 101 stuff about consolidating resources, reducing costs and “fulfil their missions with greater efficacy”. But just as our operative was about to file a yarn based on this remarkable trend, a very sheepish-sounding Purple spinner called. Um, sorry, that figure was 17 per cent of NFPs considering mergers and acquisition — with the number having been transposed to 71 per cent in the production process. Never let the facts get in the way of a good sales pitch. Judge makes Evans sing for his secrecy Justice Jenni Hill was left scratching her head on Friday as one of the battles between MinRes and Chris Ellison’s estranged co-founder Steve Wyatt was back in the Supreme Court. Wyatt’s barrister Paul D. Evans was pushing for secrecy orders over photographs and drawings of minerals processing equipment modules created by the breakaway venture Destec. But Justice Hill said this included aerial snaps of a playing field and various photographs of trucks. “I know everyone enjoys pictures of trucks, but I can’t understand how they’re confidential,” she said. Being a savvy old trucker, Evans began quickly sorting through the bundle and even held up a photo from inside a shed showing a big square bit of metal on the back of a truck. “I am instructed that it shows how the modules are assembled,” he said. Her Honour was not letting the former State Solicitor gets his secrecy order easily, telling Evans his submission “sounds like evidence to me”. The Bull greatly appreciates judges being careful to limit the scope of secrecy orders.