Gerry ducks for cover

IF GERRY HARVEY offers you a bowl of broccoli soup soon, watch out for the gritty bits.

As sales growth slows at his Harvey Norman empire, the retail tsar preferred to discuss backyard matters when we rang for a chat yesterday. It appears his broccoli is under attack.

"I've got some ducks that are coming in at the moment because I had some broccoli and bloody cauliflower, and these ducks - I'm sure it's the ducks - they come in and eat the tops out of them," Gerry said.

"It's not much good. There's a lot of ducks around. They look nice, but Jesus, they leave a lot of shit around the place, too."

At least he doesn't have cows traipsing over the cauliflower. But back to the ducks.

"I don't know how to get rid of them. I like the look of them and having them around the place. Even when you drive down the damn road now - this morning I had to stop otherwise I'd run over 10 ducks."

We suggested Gerry needed a fox to control the situation.

"We've got a couple of them around. But there's an unending supply of food for foxes. Foxes look nice at the moment. They've got beautiful big bushy tails. I had one the other day when I was up at the farm. He just stood by the side of the road and looked at me. If I had a gun I'd shoot him, but I didn't."

Duck season, wabbit season, fox season. All the same to our Gerry, who obviously likes pottering about his Dural garden.

"I've got cabbages coming on at the moment, I've got peas coming on at the moment, I've got my orange trees with oranges on them," he said. We pointed out we got some nice ones at the market.

"No good. If you had one of mine you'd never eat any of those. They probably come from bloody somewhere where they were picked five weeks ago. And you think they're good but you don't know any better."

Tax haven holiday

Spare a thought for our very own Tax Commissioner, Michael D'Ascenzo. Documents tabled with the US Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations, now looking into tax havens, include a letter from D'Ascenzo.

Turns out the poor chap is so busy looking after tax matters back home that he missed out on a trip to Washington DC to meet his tax-busting colleagues and front the committee himself.

In a letter dated July 15 to Senators Carl Levin and Norm Coleman, D'Ascenzo thanked them for the invitation "to attend and give testimony".

"Unfortunately, a prior commitment in Australia prevents me from attending at this time," he wrote, noting that "the Australian Taxation Office is very supportive of the good work of your subcommittee".

We can only wonder what kept our man away from a trip to the States and forced him to send a 14-page report instead.

Park Avenue condos

Also among documents tabled with the committee on the day Peter Lowy appeared were 18 pages detailing a log of stays in Beverly Hills and New York.

The log is headed Beverly Park Corporation, one of the Lowy-controlled organisations under scrutiny, and shows stays by Lowy family members and guests at a "Beverly Hills house" and a "New York condo".

The committee's recent report stated the company "appears to serve as a holding company for two properties purchased from other Westfield- and Lowy-affiliated entities.

"These properties . include a two-unit Park Avenue Manhattan condominium for $US4.9 million [$5.1 million] purchased from Westland Park Avenue Corporation (another Delaware corporation using the Westfield Group US office address) and a 7000-square-foot Beverly Hills home for $US5.75 million purchased from Clareville Ltd, a Bermuda corporation.

"These properties were apparently used to house Westfield officers and directors as well as Lowy family members for business and leisure. Beverly Park charged Westfield substantial fees for some of these guest stays."

Enjoying stays in the Beverly Hills house in July 1999 for three days at a tidy $US3000 a day were David and Daniel Lowy. A month later family patriarch Frank was there for two days. In September Mark Stefanek, Westfield's US chief financial officer, and Stephen Johns, a Westfield director, spent two days separately at the New York condo, where the going rate was $US1800 a day.

Frank was there in October, too, with his wife, Shirley, along with a chap named Andrew Briggs.

Steven Lowy's name also appears on the guest log.

Nine lives lost

If it looks like cost cutting and walks like cost cutting .

Last week the Nine Network boss David Gyngell rallied advertisers, saying the network is back in the game and how committed he was to making Nine part of the best media company in Australia.

We can only wonder if his financial masters at CVC Asia Pacific, such as Adrian Mackenzie, share his dream.

Within days, we get word that four senior executives on tidy salaries are gone, including casting director Henri Stride and Logies executive producer Pam Barnes. Then Sunday and Nightline are axed and newsman Mike Munro resigns.

Sources at Nine say CVC asked for cuts to be made (publicly denied by Nine) at the same time Gyngell was boasting new programs.

Meanwhile Eddie Used-to-Be-Everywhere, the man who gave up running the Nine show to return to fronting a Nine TV show that was axed, remains on his $5 million-ish salary.

Perhaps the trimming will end soon and the cost cutting begin.

Wriggle room

It's only fair that Alan Joyce scores a pay rise on elevation to the top job at the flying four-leaf clover. A pity then that Qantas has a salary freeze for all its executives. No doubt the chairman, Leigh Clifford, will find some "wriggle room".

Meanwhile, we can only wonder what Geoff Dixon will earn as a consultant after he departs in November. Allan Moss at Macquarie gets $500 an hour.

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