Kerry Stokes' purple circle rocks out to Coldplay
There was Zempilas hanging out with Stokes next to Rich Lister Nigel Satterley, whose spectacular feud with the West Australian Liberals at the last election did then-Liberal leader Zak Kirkup no favours (the message here, we suppose, is that Zempilas wouldn’t have that problem).
Frequent flyers: Richard and Janine Goyder with Ben and Asta Morton.
There he was with Seven West’s Maryna Fewster and her APM executive husband Steve. Speaking of APM, founder Megan Wynne was there too. In another photo, philanthropist Rhonda Wyllie, and in another, Nicola Forrest, the latter fresh from Europe and sans Twiggy, which given his apparently ongoing tiff with Stokes may be just as well. Even Qantas, Woodside and AFL chairman Richard Goyder was there with wife Janine (looking the happiest we’ve seen him in months), flanked by ousted Liberal powerbroker Ben Morton (with wife Asta).
At the centre of almost every photo was Zempilas, with his famous friends, enjoying a private suite at a concert bought and paid for by the government he probably hopes to one day oust.
Basil Zempilas, Christine Simpson Parker and Nicola Forrest at the Coldplay concert.
Speaking of: it’s not clear how much Roger Cook’s Labor administration paid politically connected entertainment giant Live Nation to bring out Coldplay. Not that that matters right now in Perth, where the fact that the British rockers weren’t even stopping in on the East Coast after wowing the West sent the whole city into rapturous delight.
As it was, Coldplay’s manifesto-laden, stationary-bike powered rock concert – likened by one reviewer to stepping into “an eco-friendly bizarro world” – coincided with the government’s energy transition summit. The lure of bringing the two things together must have been irresistible, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin apparently sounded out about appearing at the gabfest.
Whatever stage discussions got to, it wasn’t far enough, Martin’s exertions kept solely musical. Perhaps, after singing an ode to his host state as part of his set (“my life would be a failure if I hadn’t seen Western Australia ...”), he figured he’d already pandered enough.
