He’s used to being a winner, but former Richmond footy great Dustin Martin has suffered a rare miss with the sale of his Port Melbourne apartment, offloading the property for less than what he forked out for it five years ago.

Martin, who invested heavily in property during his playing days with the Tigers when he reached superstar status within the AFL, quietly sold the appealing two-bedroom, two-bathroom beachside unit with uninterrupted views of Port Phillip Bay for $1.6 million in May. The settlement went through late last week.

Publicly available documents seen by CBD show he paid $1.7 million for the home in 2021 in an off-market deal.

The property has taken its sweet time to find a new owner, first coming to market in September 2025 with a price estimate on the real estate listing of $1.8 million to $1.9 million.

CBD reached out to Martin via his manager to no avail. The sale was handled by Buxton Real Estate in Port Melbourne, and, speaking generally, managing director Arthur Apostoleros said apartments in the Port Melbourne area were taking longer to sell than they had in the past.

“It is a challenging environment,” he said. “Apartments in the Port Melbourne and Beacon Cove precinct are predominantly being bought by down-sizers, and at the moment, they are being super cautious.”

Martin has kept a relatively low profile since he retired from the AFL in August 2024 after a decorated 15-year career with Richmond. He played a key part of three premiership victories with the club, won the Norm Smith Medal three times, and collected the 2017 Brownlow Medal.

He is, however, returning to footy next month. Martin will pull on the Big V jumper in the annual Legends Game at Marvel Stadium which raises funds for The Australian Prostate Centre.

**Awkward survey lands for Allan government **

There is good timing and then there is this …

On Monday, as the government descended into crisis and turned on itself with Ben Carroll confirming he would challenge Premier Jacinta Allan for leadership of the Victorian Labor Party, a survey was emailed out from a government agency looking for community feedback on … corruption.

CBD could not help but be intrigued and amused by the email titled IBAC’s Perception of Corruption Survey that landed unexpectedly in our inbox as chaos reigned in Spring Street.

“The Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) in Victoria is undertaking a survey to better understand perceptions of public sector corruption and police misconduct, and barriers and drivers to reporting,” the email read in part.

It was quite the day to be taking the public’s temperature given alleged corruption in Victoria had played a large part in the destabilisation of Allan.

“The Department of Government Services is supporting IBAC by inviting all registered suppliers on the Buying for Victoria portal to participate in a 12-minute online survey. Your views are important as suppliers can suffer loss from procurement-related corruption … This is an important survey to provide a picture of the corruption and misconduct landscape across the Victorian public sector and explore how this is changing over time.”

IBAC has engaged EY Sweeney to conduct the research and crunch the results.

The email noted that the survey was not related to any IBAC investigation and was not designed to identify individual instances of suspected corrupt conduct or misconduct.

Timing, as they say, is everything.

Wheels up on Alan Joyce’s redemption tour

Former Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has resurfaced after nearly three years in the wilderness to cobble together some sort of redemption tour.

But early interviews have so far rendered a man unchanged: He’s sorry but we’re not really sure what for. He did everything he did for the benefit of the company. He did not do anything to subvert the natural order of the airline’s exclusive Chairman’s Lounge membership, particularly when it came to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his son. And so on.

“I’m actually very, very proud of the fact that I’m not sitting here and apologising for Qantas going bankrupt, [something] that many airlines around the world did,” Joyce told our colleagues ahead of book day. “I think we would have caused more problems, more angst, if I was sitting here, and apologising for Qantas going bankrupt.”

When we checked in with Joyce’s publisher in March, his publicist said there were no plans for a book launch, a decision seemingly justified by what he has told journalists in recent days.

Lucky for us, Joyce has committed to at least three public events to coincide with the release of his new book.

Best we can tell, the redemption tour will kick off on Wednesday, when the bespectacled former Qantas boss who oversaw the illegal sacking of some 1800 workers is scheduled to show face at Sydney’s Gleebooks in conversation with the ABC’s Fran Kelly.

A day later, Joyce will descend on the Australian National University for a conversation with The Australian Financial Review’s political correspondent, Ron Mizen.

The following week, Joyce will hoof it down to Melbourne, where he will sit with the ABC’s Raf Epstein for a “rare and candid conversation” at the Wheeler Centre. We look forward to the debrief.