Mark Latham’s lawyer Zali Burrows breaks bread with his ‘enemy’ ATC chairman Tim Hale

Nothing entertains us quite like the efforts of an aggrieved victim of public humiliation taking steps to exact revenge.

How else to interpret Mark Latham’s arch nemesis Tim “#TwoFacedTim” Hale hosting Latham’s lawyer, Zali Burrows, at the Chairman’s Club at Royal Randwick Racecourse this month?

We hear Burrows and Hale, a senior counsel and chairman of the Australian Turf Club, were seen fraternising at Randwick Racecourse on February 7, within spitting distance of the spot where Latham himself was infamously escorted off the premises by police on Epsom Day last year.

Regular readers of this column will no doubt recall that Latham turned on Hale late last year, after earlier fighting alongside the ATF chairman against the race club’s $5 billion sale of Rosehill Gardens racecourse, only to form an unlikely alliance with Racing NSW.

“If I got a police escort and 6 months for being rude to someone who was being rude, then surely a race club chairman lying to the racing regulator should get life,” Latham posted to X on November 8. “#TwoFacedTim,” was the sign-off.

Latham alleged in parliament last year that Hale had shared confidential board information with him during the Rosehill saga, and went on to provide Racing NSW with a statutory declaration relating to Hale.

By December, Racing NSW, led by Peter V’landys as chief executive, had announced the governing body would put the ATC into administration. The matter is before the court.

Of course, we were eager to hear what Latham made of his lawyer hanging out with Hale, but he didn’t pick up the phone or return our message. Burrows and Hale went to ground too.

Luke Sayers surfaces with a mouthful of crab

Luke Sayers, the Melbourne man-about-town and erstwhile Carlton Football Club chairman who shot to national prominence in the thick of a phallic photo scandal last year, has understandably kept a low profile recently.

After all, it was only a month ago that his estranged wife, Cate Sayers, launched defamation action against him in the Supreme Court, alleging he implied she was responsible for posting a picture of a naked man, including his penis, on Sayers’ X account.

But everyone’s got to eat. And the Melbourne powerbroker, it would appear, can only go so long without dinner.

So we were thrilled to hear Sayers is back on the fine dining circuit, after he was spotted tucking into a crab pasta, steak and salad at the top end of town with his new colleague, former KPMG partner and Labor powerbroker Paul Howes.

Howes recently settled into his new role as chief executive of Tenet Advisory, formerly known as Sayers Group, after the latter was forced to undertake a rebrand following the Sayers penis debacle.

“We were having dinner with a client and the principal purpose of the meal was nutrition,” said Howes of the February 10 dinner at Di Stasio Citta on Melbourne’s Spring Street.

The former Labor heavyweight, who lives in Sydney, said it had been some time since he had visited Melbourne.

“You forget how good the food is,” he gushed. “Di Stasio’s is the best Italian in the country. We don’t have enough places like Di Stasio in Sydney.” He said Neil Perry’s Gran Torino in lush Double Bay was the closest equivalent in the Harbour City.

Howes did not want to comment on the lewd picture scandal engulfing Sayers, which led to him standing down as president of Carlton Football Club.

Sayers was on holiday in Italy when the image, which did not show the man’s face, appeared on his account in January last year and also tagged a female executive of Bupa, one of the club’s corporate partners. It was removed 13 minutes later.

He issued a prompt apology, saying he had been hacked, and urged people to “ignore all posts” before deactivating his account.

We’re glad to see, if nothing else, that there will always be dinner.

Craig Tiley succession chatter

Last month, as the nation’s bold-faced names and hangers-on descended on Melbourne for the Australian Open, it felt like every conversation took place in the shadow of speculation over the future of Tennis Australia chief executive Craig Tiley.

As some of our regular readers may recall, CBD brought word on January 20 that Tiley was actually in possession of a contract for a new job running the US Open, but had yet to sign it. So when Australia’s governing body announced news of Tiley’s departure on Wednesday morning, we couldn’t help feeling a little vindicated.

Now, of course, attention has turned to who is in the frame to take Tiley’s job.

Some of the names to surface in the hours since Tennis Australia announced Tiley’s departure have included his lieutenant Stephen Farrow, who worked closely with the outgoing TA boss as his chief events officer.

Peter Johnston, who has also previously worked with Tiley, has also been mentioned, as has Cameron Pearson, Tom Larner and Craig Morris, as our colleagues have already dutifully noted in these pages.

But one name to appear elsewhere has been Gillon McLachlan, the former AFL chief executive who now runs Tabcorp. We hear, however, the corporate stalwart is not currently considering the gig, and you don’t have to look far to figure out why.

In September, this column reported McLachlan earned $3.3 million in his first 11 months in the Tabcorp gig, and that didn’t include share options expected to be worth millions. TA would be mad not to sound out Gill, but we don’t expect to see him running the Australian Open next summer.

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