Yarraside furore … Essoign Club clinging on in stressful times … Bar Council not booking enough functions … Uncertain future … Rent ructions … Frosty relations … Facilitated discussions … Last bastion of the rear guard … Theodora reports
The club’s board led by Trevor Monti QC circulated emails to the rank ‘n’ file on July 2 and 6 complaining that the bar council has not given a categorical assurance that the club’s lease will be renewed after it expires on June 30, 2021, and in any event the rent charged by the council is too high.
Other conniptions include the council’s refusal to use the club’s “highly regarded catering service” and an inspection of the club by an “unsolicited” hospitality consultant.
On July 7, bar president, Wendy Harris QC, fired back at the board with an email complaining that its correspondence is “combative and aggressive”.
No love lost here.
Harris says a survey last year found that the club’s offerings “enjoy mixed support across the bar as a whole … many members indicated dissatisfaction with the quality, atmosphere, service and costs of the Essoign’s offering”.
“… We would like to see the club appeal to members who currently do not patronise it. We would love it to feel more inclusive to those who feel like outsiders.”
The place is the domain of the older, white, male, red-wine-and-cheese barrister. There’s no shortage of nose and ear hair.
The walls are adorned with paintings for sale and mysterious documents that don’t mean anything to anyone under 75.
One field agent described it as having the feeling of a Qantas club that hasn’t been refurbed since 1996.
It’s half-café, half-restaurant with various lunchtime roasts on offer. Wine tasting and other events are held frequently, but younger, female or non-white members of the bar are strangers to the place.
Hence president Harris’ plea about the need for the Essoign to be more inclusive.
This relief, she said, “was commensurate with what the members of the bar, with significant reductions in turnover, are receiving from BCL Limited, and reflected what the bar is able to afford having regard to the other calls on its resources”.
Back came a “derisory” response, with the club telling the bar it would pay only 21.5 percent of its rent for April and May.
Harris points out that the Essoign’s rent is “heavily subsidised by the bar through member subscription revenue and even so it is late in its payments, with half the March rent unpaid as at July 7, “without justification”.
As for not supporting the club with enough events, Harris points to the bar spending more than $100,000 a year on catering with the Essoign kitchen. On occasions the bar engages other competitive providers that are less expensive and “usually provide better quality …”
The bar president set the record straight on the visit to the club by a bar staff member and a hospitality consultant. This was simply to “assist the Essoign to help meet members expectations …”
Things are now so chilly between the bar council and the club board that Harris suggests future discussions be “facilitated”.
It’s entirely possible that deeper issues are at play than concerns about the quality of the scurried egg sandwiches.
Harris, like her predecessor Matt Collins QC, is from the “progressive” wing of the bar council.
Older, more conservative feathers have been ruffled, particularly over a vote last year to change parts of the bar’s constitution.
The Essoign Club is the last bastion of the crusty rump and will be defended to the last drop of blood … or Merlot.