Australian Vintage Group Continues To Spiral….

Readers of my blog will know that I am a shareholder in Treasury Wine Estates, and that I recently attended the Treasury AGM – mostly to enjoy the free drinks afterwards (mostly Penfolds Bin 28 shiraz).

During the AGM, someone on the Board mentioned that TWE is doing very well in comparison to other wine companies.

This did cause me to reach for my smartphone and check recent news about Australian Vintage Group on the Commsec app.

I don’t often mention it, but for a while back there, I was a shareholder in the only other wine company listed on the ASX, Australian Vintage Group (formerly known as McGuighans).

I think I probably paid about 60 cents per share for my AVG shares, but I thought that it was worth a punt as it was a rather small holding in the greater scheme of my portfolio, and they did seem to be a very viable company.

In June of last year, just before I started my pre-retirement leave, I was sitting in front of a travel agent at Flight Centre, discussing bookings for my then upcoming trip to Italy. Whilst the agent was checking flights or hotels for me, I idly checked my share portfolio on the Commsec app.

To my chagrin, there was an announcement from AVG, whose share price had been declining over the time since I bought the holding, advising the bourse that they were not planning to pay a dividend in December (AVG only ever pay one dividend each year).

Given that I tend to subscribe to the view (except when I speculate on penny dreadfuls) that if a company stops its dividend payments, then it is time to sell, I put in an immediate sell order and got out at 40 cents. So… I think I lost about $2000 – a minor OUCH! The money came in handy for my trip for Italy, and for my epic retirement party.

Since then, I have occasionally paid attention to AVG’s performance on the Commsec app.

Just about what has happened since I sold my shares 14 months ago is not good news.

The board of AVG did talk about a major review, suggesting that sale of the entire business was not off the table. Reading that was not inspiring to me about the long term viability of the business.

Earlier this year, the then-board sacked the CEO for undisclosed reasons. This more or less coincided (not that I have followed the company news that closely as I no longer have a dog in that fight) with a major drop in the share price from around 35-40 cents to 15-20 cents.

Again, this made me feel like I had dodged a major bullet – the biggest since I had sold my Harris Scarfe shares out of a mix of boredom and frustration about six weeks before they went into administration in early 2001.

Back to sitting in the front row at the TWE AGM last week – there was a new announcement that the newly appointed board had reappointed the previously sacked CEO to his former job. I had not known that there had been a purge of the AVG board, nor why this had happened – although the lacklustre performance of the company was indicative that the board probably deserved the chop (something which rarely happens to miscreant boards).

I did not fall out of my seat in astonishment, as I don’t really have a dog in the fight anymore, but I was a mix of bemused and amused. How is it that a CEO can get sacked for supposedly inappropriate behaviour, and then, Lazarus-like, return to the same job six months later?

The corporate governance issues sound like an MBA case study in the making. On the one hand, you could argue that the once and future CEO was in the wrong and has somehow been able to turn it around onto the board. On the other, the board over reacted to something or made a very seriously questionable decision, causing them to be pushed out by investors.

In either case, it is a farce.

Regardless of who was in the right or the wrong, I am not planning to invest in Australian Vintage Group again in a hurry. Everything that has happened since last June has caused me to have considerable doubts about the long time viability of that company.

Australian Ufology In Crisis?

Back in October 2015, I attended a rather amusing gathering organised by the UFOlogist group known as Victorian UFO Action (VUFOA). It was touted as the ‘Edge of Reality Conference’.

The actual members of VUFOA were rather ‘earnest’ in their demeanour, and probably a little self important in their matching polo shirts and baseball caps – sharing a certain esprit d’corps as UFO investigators.

I quietly remarked to the friend and colleague who had accompanied me to this event that perhaps I had wasted my life and career becoming a middle ranking public servant. Instead, maybe I too could have become a UFO investigator, just like those people before us.

I found the various speakers to be quite interesting. One, who had flown in from the USA, not only was an expert on UFOs, but also on ghosts (or was it crystals – my memory has faded after 9 years). Another, whose name was known to me as a regular writer for the now defunct Ufologist magazine (which I used to devour regularly), talked about his own encounter with a UFO in 1973.

The star of the show, in my opinion at least, was the VUFOA member who was an expert in lodging Freedom of Information requests on UFOs with the Federal Government (who also had the day job of being an interior decorator). He had, as the chair told us in introduction with a straight face, the Federal Government ‘running scared’.

This chap then proceeded to show us some of the replies he had received from various government functionaries (mostly the RAAF obviously) on his requests, along with his fierce criticisms of the format of reply. I think his contention was either that they did not know what they were talking about, or were hiding something, or that they had revealed more than they had intended to, or that they did not know how to write properly.

My colleague and I sniggered to ourselves. After all, as public servants, we knew all about templates and how to write official government correspondence and decision records.

After indulging in the catered sausage rolls at the lunch (sausage rolls are one of those things I can’t resist), we headed off to a BBQ at another colleague’s home rather than stay for the rest of afternoon.

Much as I don’t regret leaving early, I have occasionally felt a vague hankering to attend more of these Ufology type gatherings, just like sometimes grown ups want to visit the zoo or see a stand up comedian in action.

The dynamically named Victorian UFO Action website, to my chagrin, no longer seems to be operating. This is a shame, as it was at least the most high profile extant UFO group in Victoria, and quite possibly the only such group. [Ufology is not exactly the sort of field of knowledge which is studied in universities or which leads to a successful and profitable career after all – except for that British chap who quit his job in the Ministry of Defence to write books on the subject.]

This led me to doing some google searching on Wednesday. Some of the results I have found result in Facebook pages with such names as VUFOA – The Real Site and VUFOA – Victorian UFO Action – Fraudsters.

The results are bemusing. The latter of the above sites features a copy of the purported cover of a special edition of the Fortean Times in 2016, which features as the main story ‘The VUFOA Scam – A Deep Investigation into the UFO Scam Site VUFOA’. This site also describes them as ‘VUFOnies’.

I am not sure why anyone would devote any time to making up a lot of ad hominem memes attacking the unique individuals who make up the leadership of VUFOA. It suggests someone with a lot of spare time on their hands, and a deeply personal sense of grievance. [I find it hard to understand – in situations where I have had a falling out with people who have deeply wronged me, I tend to just write them off and move on, rather than waste my time plotting revenge.]

In any event, the insinuation is that the people behind VUFOA are lacking in probity.

My own personal impression from that conference in 2015 was that they were pretty full of their own self importance, and rather smug at the niche they seemed to have monopolised in the local flying saucer fanboy community. The sort of self-delusion that leads someone to become a self-important UFO investigator is going to perhaps result in fun, but rarely profit.

Sadly, it appears unlikely that there will be any VUFOA conferences anytime soon. Nor, given that my favourite UFO magazines, the local Ufologist, and the US based Open Minds, have closed down, are there any opportunities to read any updates on these sorts of amusing perspectives.

So I will have to find other topics with which to amuse myself. Happily ‘alternative’ publications Nexus and New Dawn are both still up and running, and I must make an effort to go to the next Nexus conference in June.

At The Treasury Wine Estate AGM

Back in the day, when Fosters Group was still a listed company covering both beer (mostly CUB) and wine (the conglomerate which came to be known as Berringer Blass), they used to hold all the best corporate AGMs.

They would hire out the big ball room at Crown Casino and you could listen to some of the oldies asking for shareholder discount plans for their booze purchases in the question time and the occasional even sillier idea (one old lady regaled us with the idea of one shareholder one vote, rather than one share one vote). I did find self appointed shareholder activist Stephan Mayne particularly annoying with his questions, all of which caused the meeting to drag on far longer than it needed to.

For, after the meeting was done, there was about an hour of open bar with canapés, where you could try a range of the beer and wine products Fosters produced.

Treasury Wine Estate has, as the successor company to Fosters’ wine division, kept up the tradition of having an open bar after their AGM. Since retiring last year, I have started attending those again, just as I used to get great joy in going to the Fosters AGMs 20 years ago.

There were some interesting wines to sample. For instance, Penfolds is now making an actual Champagne in France, and that was on offer. I did have a glass of it. I also had a glass of some Pinot Noir. But mostly, I kept my eye on the prize: Penfolds Bin 28.

Back in 1999 when I first started to drink wines which cost more than $15 per bottle and reading wine appreciation guides, Penfolds Bin 28 could be found for about $19.99 in your local supermarket bottle shop. Not so now – it goes for about $50 per bottle.

As a consumer, this makes drinking Penfolds rather expensive. But as a shareholder in TWE (I own 1,000 shares), I applaud the price hike. May many rich Chinese buy and drink as much Penfolds as they desire, and I wish them great joy of it.

During the two or so hours I was accumulating this indirect dividend of free booze and canapés after the AGM was over, I happened to befriend two other shareholders (we are a convivial bunch, given that we are not short of a quid), whom I then took to my Club for a few more drinks afterwards.

One of them had some interesting things to say about corporate soirees. He has a large share portfolio, so he attends many AGMs. He has noticed a number of non-shareholders who attend AGMs on a regular basis, solely so that they can enjoy the catering afterwards. He identified quite a few of those regulars at the TWE meeting yesterday. That is just plain rude.

Council Elections Are Here….

Given that I live in a very safe Labor seat – both federally and state wise – normal elections are the subject of considerable apathy.

Supporters of either major party make only a token effort, as illustrated when I had the poster for the local Liberal candidate on my front fence for the state election 2 years ago, no one bothering to steal it or deface it in any way.

After all, it is an area where complacency with the status quo is the norm. I do not even hear the local Labor hacks complaining that an outsider from another state has been parachuted into the very safe federal seat of Maribyrnong as Bill Shorten’s replacement, without any of the local hacks having a say in the matter.

Local elections in recent years have been rather different. The shops on the main drag are festooned with posters for the local council candidates, and some even have giant real estate style fence signs up in front of some houses.

Looking around Maribyrnong and Footscray, the visibility of those council candidates is even higher. I only have three candidates to choose from (spoiler alert, the Labor candidate did not get my vote), but my mother and brother on the other side of the river are over blessed with choice- they get seven candidates (one Labor, one Green, one Socialist, and four supposed independents to bemuse them).

Why o why have council elections become such a battleground for grassroots democracy in recent years?

Let us count the ways.

Labor have always had a campaign machine focus on local government – particularly in some of the outer suburbs where they can sate the political ambitions of some of their more appalling members.

The Greens similarly have an appetite for activism, particularly with their desire to consume ratepayer money on bike paths, needle exchanges and services for asylum seekers (spoiler alert – there is a big difference between a refugee and an asylum seeker).

Similarly the Socialists (read Communist and other Marxists) love getting out there and waving their red flag at any opportunity.

The Liberals, god bless them, have recently decided to start running candidates as officially endorsed teams, although how it sits with them that their City of Melbourne team does not include Roshena Campbell, serial aspirationalist for Liberal parliamentary representation (she is on the current Labor aligned Lord Mayor’s ticket as his deputy).

As for the rest. Melbourne is much larger than it was 20 plus years ago when I moved to Avondale Heights. The population now is well over five million, whereas at the turn of the millennium it was about 3 million. And it keeps growing.

This means that approval for development, particularly in the rezoning of large former industrial and commercial sites, is big money. Developers want like minded people to become civic leaders, particularly on local councils.

O the philantrophy and civic mindedness!

More Thoughts On The West Maribyrnong Explosives Factory Site….

Back in 1996 when I was ready to buy my first home, I decided on an upper level two bedroom flat on the corner of Randall and Dunlop Street in Maribyrnong.

There were various reasons why I chose that flat. It was above the flood plain, and being upper level meant it was less likely to get burgled (not that there was any real motive for anyone to steal my library, CD collection or very old portable TV).

But the main reason was that it was opposite the Maribyrnong Explosives Factory site. Most of the buildings were set further back from the streets, and land over the road from my new flat had a gentle grassy hill (known locally as Remount Hill) with a flock of sheep grazing on it.

It really did feel almost like being in the country. I could see the sheep on Remount Hill from my kitchen and study windows.

I stayed for six and a half years, and mostly liked it, except that there were the usual annoying issues with living in a flat (not having control over the water supply, neighbours who made too much noise or who occasionally filled my bin or used my vacant parking spot). But I did also long for a yard, where I could do a bit of gardening, and have more control over the maintenance issues in a single occupancy house than you have in a flat.

And so, about six months after I got a promotion at work, I painted the lounge room, tiled up the toilet (there was some sort of damp in one wall which meant it was impossible to successfully paint it), and put the place on the market.

I ended up selling for far more than I had paid for it, and moving 3km down the road to Avondale Heights, to the brick veneer pile I currently occupy, almost 22 years later.

As much of my life (despite now being happily retired) is situated outside Avondale Heights, I do pass the Explosives Factory site on Cordite Avenue on the bus (or on foot if I am feeling energetic) almost every day. After all, I try to visit my elderly mother almost every day, I like browsing at Highpoint West, and the fastest way elsewhere is to bus to Footscray Station and then train to the city or elsewhere.

Hence the Explosives Factory has been present in the background of my life for a long time, ever since my initial move to Maribyrnong in mid 1996.

The other defence facilities around Maribyrnong and Footscray North have been in my life even longer. Our childhood home was close to the Footscray Ammunition Factory, now the Edgewater estate, and the Maribyrnong Ordnance Factory was redeveloped for housing as the Waterford Green estate in the mid 1990s.

So I have always been interested in seeing if and when the Explosives Factory was going to be redeveloped as a housing estate (mind you, I would rather it got converted into a new University campus or left as a large urban nature reserve).

I have written about this in my blog for a long time. Every few years since I first moved to Avondale Heights, there has been attention from the state and federal governments, as well as from local MPs, about redeveloping the site. There was even mention of the site in the Federal Budget one year during the juvenile circus which was the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison government, although that did not come to fruition.

Each time it gets mentioned, they double the number of intended residences, and the number of intended denizens of the proposed suburb.

It is a large site after all – 124 hectares starting from about 8km from the Melbourne GPO, and with a lot of river frontage. Prime real estate indeed.

Well… there is one issue – the site is hugely contaminated. Everyone knows this, and this is why, unlike some other earlier urban renewal of abandoned industrial sites around greater Melbourne, development has been delayed indefinitely.

Apparently it will cost about $300 million to remediate the contamination of the Explosives Factory site.

What this means is that ultimately, the Federal Government is likely to leave this site fallow or land banked until the value of the land is way greater than the cost of remediation.

Interestingly enough, at the moment, land in Maribyrnong is probably worth (given this month’s auction results) not far short of $20 million per hectare, which would place the value of a site of uncontaminated land in the area of 124 hectares almost at $2.5 billion. Even after $300 million is spent on decontamination the site is worth over $2 billion.

All the same, aside from some bulldozers parked around the front entrance at the West Maribyrnong tram terminus, there have been no signs of any efforts to start remediation.

Which does leave me wondering about how serious the government is about redeveloping this site, and why it has been left to sit there for so long?

Ultimately, I suspect, given that Maribyrnong now has three sites opposite the Explosives Factory with complete high rise towers of 10 stories or more (the “Arches” tower just makes the bare limit on that) and a much larger one on the way in the next 7 years, that high rise is the destiny of the Explosives site. Rather than putting in McMansions and townhouses on small parcels of land, as was the case in Waterford Green and Edgewater, I think that the cost of major site decontamination is going to be side stepped almost entirely by building many 20 or 30 storey apartment towers.

That will be a huge shame, as I would much rather that the site was reforested with gum trees and turned into a nature reserve.

Brisbane Versus Sydney: Australian Rules Football Wins!

Over thirty years ago, I spent many months working in Dandenong. I was not really much of a beer drinker yet, but many people around me were, and the attitude was that products brewed by Carlton and United Breweries in Melbourne were the only acceptable beers we should consume.

Times move on, and whilst the Southern Aurora Hotel is gone, it’s bottleshop remains near Dandenong Station as an archaeological reminder of our beer drinking preferences of that time, particularly in the form of a mast which displays several of the key CUB beer brands of the era.

[Can someone tell me when Carlton Light Ice disappeared from the fridges? You can still see a reminder of its former existence on top of that bottle shop.]

I do not consider that we Melburnians are that parochial anymore, although I am not exactly sure of the provenance of most of the craft beers that we now consume, suffice that I am fairly confident that most of them are owned by either Asahi or Kirin, the two giant Japanese beer companies.

I wish our recently developed open mindedness about our beer consumption applied to our attitude towards Australian Rules Football. Every time we see an interstate team in the AFL Grand Final, let alone two teams (perish the thought!), Melbourne newspapers and the general mainstream media are full of the Fake News that this is a disaster and huge tragedy for Victorian Football.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In two days’ time, Sydney and Brisbane face off in the AFL Grand Final. I expect the indignant whining from some Melbourne football commentators to get really tiresome between now and the hangovers on Sunday morning.

As a matter of history, this will be the fourth time that two non-Victorian teams have faced off in the AFL Grand Final, the other times being Brisbane V Port Adelaide in 2004, Sydney V West Coast in 2005 and 2006.

It is extremely good for Australian Rules Football, and particularly for The Australian Football League for such grand finals to occur. These are a measure of the success of the AFL.

Since the VFL rebadged itself as the AFL in 1990, it has gone from strength to strength in its quest to become a truly national competition. West Coast has won 4 flags, Brisbane has won 3, Adelaide and Sydney have each won 2, and Port Adelaide has the one flag so far. Fremantle and GWS have also each made the grand final once.

Thanks to COVID, the 2020 Grand Final was played in Brisbane and the 2021 Grand Final was played in Perth.

As well, each of the surviving legacy VFL teams, with the exception of St Kilda, has won at least one premiership in the AFL era – including my own beloved Footscray / Western Bulldogs.

Club memberships, crowd numbers, and TV ratings are at all time historic highs. Everyone (except St Kilda) is enjoying the national competition.

Arguably, Australian Rules Football is the oldest codified form of Football in the world, and several of the AFL clubs are far older than any other football code clubs in the world. It is a sport which developed in the late 1850s out of the post Gold Rush wealth which blessed Melbourne.

So, as a Victorian creation, we Victorians should rejoice that it has been embraced by the rest of the nation to the extent that two non-Victorian teams are facing off in the AFL Grand Final again (although if you happen to wonder around both South Melbourne and Fitzroy tomorrow or Saturday, I am confident that you will see plenty of evidence that Sydney and Brisbane’s antecedent teams are still beloved down here).

Obviously I wish that the Bulldogs had not bombed out in the elimination final. But as they did not make it to the big dance, I am very happy that it is an exclusively non-Victorian final.

Whatever happens on Saturday, Australian Rules Football (a sport born in Melbourne) wins.

I am very happy with that.

Do We All Become Grumpy Old Men? Reflections On the Feud Between Daryl Hall And John Oates….

My mother always, in the AM days, used to keep her radio tuned to 3KZ, a station known for its golden oldies. It is no surprise that now that FM has been in the ascendency for over three decades, that 3KZ’s successor station, GOLD FM is playing constantly in her kitchen.

I’m Countdown Generation, so music from the 1980s has a special place in my heart. Hence I do not mind hearing songs from the 1980s and 1990s playing when I visit my mother most mornings.

The musical duo who insist on calling themselves Daryl Hall and John Oates rather than ‘Hall and Oates’ (which has always sounded a bit like a breakfast cereal anyway) make up a prominent part of the GOLD FM playlist. This morning I heard their 1981 hit ‘Private Eyes’ whilst sipping coffee with my mother. Frequently on weekends, their 1984 hit (probably their last really big song) ‘Out of touch, out of time’ replays every few hours.

These songs, aside from being in GOLD FM’s current playlist, are part of my teenage years, as are a lot of other songs by this dynamic musical duo who were so present in the 1980s.

Which is what makes their current legal feud over ruptures in their musical partnership so sad. Those two musicians were once like brothers, with a 55 year long friendship.

Look at the music video for their early hit ‘You make my dreams come true’. As they mime along to the lyrics, you would be blind not to see the sheer joy that radiates from their faces at having this chance to strike it big in the music world.

Or look a few years before that, when in 1973 they made an intentionally bizarre music video (featuring the devil and penguin flippers, amongst other things) for early single ‘She’s Gone’. They got a TV station so mad that they were threatened with being blacklisted from Philadelphia radio. Such reckless mischief making could only be the product of a strong and vibrant friendship.

But now they are suing each other. Their friendship is over. The only solace I have in that is that the last song they made which I or the general public noticed was ‘So Close’ from circa 1990. They have long since stopped making beautiful music together, and now they no longer make beautiful money together either.

Which leaves me wondering. Do we all become grumpy old men where the residuals of money making take precedence over a lifelong friendship? As I head north out of my mid 50s, I sure hope not.

Latest on the West Maribyrnong Explosives Factory Site

First when I lived opposite it in Maribyrnong, and now in Avondale Heights, this giant vacant site has been preying on my mind for the past 28 years.

However, it doesn’t look like anyone is going to do anything about it in a real hurry, at least not til the land value is way higher than the cost of decontamination of the site.

search.app/vQyrRycbRcAucHPR9

‘No One Expects The Spanish Inquisition’: Something Else Which No Pope Has Apologised For Yet….

Over 50 years ago, Monty Python did an episode called ‘Spanish Inquisition’, which has since then led to many memes along the theme of ‘No One Expects The Spanish Inquisition’.

Through ridicule, one of the more shameful chapters in the history of the Catholic Church is diminished.

However, I am not sure that the Catholic Church has apologised about this.

Not that it is a singular matter for which the Church should offer apologies.

There is also the fraud which was the Gift of Constantine, the lie on which the Church based its rule over Rome for 1300 years. Has any Pope apologised for that?

More seriously, given that I am an Anglomorph living in an Anglophonic country where English common and constitutional law prevails, is the reaction of the Catholic Church to the Magna Carta. This was, as readers of this blog are likely to already know, granted by King John to his unhappy barons in 1215.

This is, in its various forms from that time onward, the foundation of English constitutional law and the first significant codification of the doctrine of Due Process, which is taken so seriously within the Anglophonic countries.

Yet at the time, Pope Innocent, preoccupied with growing his own political power, declared the Magna Carta to be ‘not only shameful and demeaning but also illegal and unjust’. He stated that it was ‘null and void of all validity for ever’. He ordered King John to not observe it (an order which King John was delighted to receive).

Hence the Pope not only allowed King John to perjure himself, but he repudiated the rights set out in the Magna Carta in perpetuity.

Has any Pope ever apologised for this egregious wrong?