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“As I say to people, I have lived five lives,” he said.
The Gippsland resident’s previous jobs include working for the AFL, state and federal governments and in the education and training sector. He says he knows Simon Patterson and the Patterson family and went ahead with their permission.
“They were comfortable about it. ”
But a spokeswoman for the family said it hadn’t granted any such permission.
As for the book’s accuracy, Le Grande said: “If I have made some mistakes, so be it. There’s no financial reward in it. I will be lucky to make $20.”
One shopper was so incensed that they threatened to report the book to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. In response Amazon changed the book’s listing from the “true crime” category to the “crime thrillers” category.
“I’m not into defending myself,” Le Grande continued. “If the postie stopped at every dog that was barking at him as he tried to deliver the mail, he would never deliver the mail.”
However, he did say the errors would be fixed when the book is republished next week.
Rafa wins a vote
Regular readers will recall that Residents 3000, the community lobby group for civic-minded folks who live in the city, imploded recently when secretary Merle Willis went to war with an extraordinary dispatch criticising president Rafael Camillo, who is also a City of Melbourne councillor.
Camillo was elected on the ticket organised by loquacious pro-business candidate Gary Morgan (the Roy Morgan research executive who lost out in the mayoral race to Nick Reece).
Councillor Rafael Camillo has been re-elected president of community group Residents 3000.
Willis urged Camillo to resign as the group, in her words, was “too dominated, controlled and directed” by Camillo for his own purposes as councillor.
The councillor rose from his sickbed to tell us he was not going anywhere, thank you very much.
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Then there was claim and counterclaim over whether Willis had resigned or not as secretary.
Anyway, Residents 3000 held its annual general meeting last week at the Kelvin Club, and Camillo was victorious in the voting and re-elected president. Willis is no longer on the committee, continuing a pattern critics say has resulted in members opposed to Camillo leaving the group.
Afterwards, Camillo was photographed clutching a bouquet of pink chrysanthemums, which symbolise joy, optimism and cheerfulness and (handily for a politician) longevity.
He told CBD: “Now that I’ve been re-elected as president of Residents 3000, it’s time to shake off the past and move forward with a bold new committee – energised, united, and ready to make our community better than ever.”
Camillo ally Sussan Saunders was elected vice-president, Lyn Gazal secretary and Richard Grace treasurer. In all, there are 12 new committee members.
Despite the critics insisting the group was turning into a vehicle for Camillo to further his own ends, Residents 3000 said in a statement that it “continues to serve as a representative group for Melbourne’s central city dwellers, advocating, connecting, and informing its community through vibrant citywide engagement and a commitment to supporting residents’ needs at every level”.
Willis declined to comment.
McWilliam v Curran
It’s been over a year since Bruce McWilliam, long-term consigliere to Seven’s ageing emperor, Kerry Stokes, as well as being an infamous writer of inflammatory emails and collector of trophy homes, departed the network.
McWilliam, a confidant to the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer, and a close friend of Malcolm Turnbull, departed during a tumultuous time for Seven, following former chief executive James Warburton out the door, right after the network was reeling from the whole “allegedly paying for Bruce Lehrmann’s cocaine and sex workers” scandal.
Nicky McWilliam pictured last year.Credit: James Brickwood
With McWilliam now retired from the game but still moving prestige property, his wife, Nicky McWilliam, has been at the centre of a legal squabble involving the estate of her late father, a long-simmering family feud, and a $1.3 million fraud.
Nicky McWilliam’s father, property developer Tom Breuer, died in 2022, leaving behind a sizeable estate. Months before Breuer’s death, his former executive assistant Cheree Curran was charged with dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage by deception after the developer’s children discovered $1.28 million had been paid out of his accounts to her.
Nicky McWilliam entered the witness box in a trial that revealed years of tension and estrangement between Breuer’s children. Curran’s defence argued that Breuer was a “virile man” who had given her the money to pay off women from his past.
Last month, a jury found Curran guilty of five counts of obtaining a financial advantage by deception. She is currently on bail while awaiting a sentencing hearing next month. Meanwhile, the legal wrangling is ongoing, with Nicky McWilliam and brother Antony Breuer, as executors of their father’s estate, commencing civil proceedings against Curran in the NSW Supreme Court. A directions hearing was held last week.
As they say in the news business, more to come.
Getting in on the act
Hours after pulling off a thrilling grand final heist, a few dusty members of the Brisbane Broncos’ squad were surprised by the King of the North.
By that we mean veteran MP Bob Katter, who gatecrashed the Broncos’ arrival at Brisbane airport on Monday morning, because of course he did. Katter’s Far North Queensland electorate of Kennedy may fall in deep Cowboys territory, but the Father of the House appeared thrilled by the Broncos’ triumph, being snapped on the socials making small talk with victorious captain Adam Reynolds, still wearing his grand final jersey and nonchalantly holding the Provan-Summons Trophy.
He’s a Queenslander first, after all.
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