Email statements from the eight contenders lobbed in the inboxes of Aunty staff this week,and were mostly characterised by bizarre formatting and font choices.
John Shakespeare illo for CBD Friday Laura Tingle,Dan Bourchier and Indira NaidooJohn Shakespeare
By far,7.30 chief political correspondentLaura Tingle is the most high-profile name in the mix,and her lengthy statement (over 1300 words and several different fonts) could be summarised as a plea for the ABC to grow a pair.
Lashing the broadcaster’s “incomprehensible” five-year plan,and lamenting its twitchiness in the face of a “daily assault from News Corp”,there’s also a broadside at the “Murdoch empire which has openly identified public broadcasters as a competitive threat”,which will no doubt make the terrace-dwelling viewers of Insiders happy.
Tingle landed a glowing endorsement from News Breakfast hostMichael Rowland (on both Twitter and Instagram),and has the backing of the Community and Public Sector Union,but not the Media,Entertainment and Arts Alliance.
The main journalists union was sending around mass texts to members urging a vote for Melbourne-based business reporterDan Ziffer on Thursday,although federal media presidentKaren Percy also urged staff to consider backing Canberra presenter and Drum co-hostDan Bourchier,as well as Tingle and veteran broadcasterIndira Naidoo.
Bourchier,and Head of Indigenous,Diversity and InclusionKelly Williams, are vying to be the first Aboriginal director sinceNeville Bonner in 1991. The ABC’s lack of diversity (a failure common to the media at large) was also a theme of international correspondentTom Joyner’s pitch,which arrived late because he’d sent it from the ground in Ukraine.
According to Joyner,a generation of “culturally diverse,politically engaged and digitally literate” younger Australians increasingly felt alienated from a broadcaster who faces the challenge of their audience dying out.
“The young people of today have potential to be our audiences long into the future. But instead we are losing them in droves,” Joyner wrote,noting the “sharp and irreversible” decline of broadcast audiences.
Making up the numbers are research coordinatorAlison Wall and audio specialistGraham Himmelhoch-Mutton.
SIMON HOLDS COURT
At CBD,we’re seasoned geographers of the political afterlife. And so,it’s our duty to bring word that former North Sydney MPTrent Zimmerman has wound up back where he started – working for that other former North Sydney MPJoe Hockey,with a spot of casual consulting work for the ex-treasurer’s advisory form Bondi Partners.
Teal whisperer:Climate 200 founder Simon Holmes a Court.James Alcock
Meanwhile,another victim of the teal waveJason Falinski found himself confronted with the bankroller-savant who helped start it all off,when he joined Climate 200 moneybagsSimon Holmes a Court at a political panel this week.
The private event,hosted by political software company GovConnex and Freshwater Strategy before a crowd of chief executives and government relations types at the NSW mint,brought moments of heated discussion around the biggest question troubling Sydney’s anxious mortgage-belt swing voters:are the teals really independent?
No surprises which side of that argument the two fall on. Things got interesting when a gloating Holmes a Court accused Falinski of “misunderstanding this movement”.
“You got a trouncing by this movement,” he said.
“If you want to misunderstand the movement then you stay out of power for a very long time.”
Ouch.
For what it’s worth,Falinski and Holmes a Court posed for the cameras hugging it out afterwards,and the former Mackellar MP told CBD he’d be happy to duke it out with the teal whisperer any time.
VIRGIN ERROR
Virgin Australia founderRob Sherrard and the airline’s first CEOBrett Godfrey proved quite the flies in Bain Capital’s ointment a couple of years ago as the pair attempted to scupper the US private equity giant’s takeover.
Now Sherrard and Godfrey have a few noses out of joint in the Tasmanian greenthumb community after the cancellation of the Gardenfest event,due to be held at the 19th century landmark Entally Estate,to which Sherrard and Godfrey hold the leasehold.
The bi-annual event is quite the thing in the horticulture sector in northern Tassie,and would-be participants have been online to express “disappointment”,“devastation” and “frustration” at the short-notice cancellation,not to mention the money lost on stock purchased in anticipation of a decent sales on the weekend.
The reason? Well,a bit of a rookie error from a couple of blokes who’ve been in the corporate world since before CBD was a nipper;the ASIC registration for the company that holds the lease on the estate,Entally Lodge Pty Ltd,expired a few months ago and nobody remembered to renew the paperwork.
Without proper registration for the event organisers,insurance couldn’t be obtained,and in these litigious times the show could not go on.
The Sherrard and Godfrey camp,which did not respond to CBD’s comment requests,have been terribly apologetic in the local Tassie media for what’s been described variously as a “clerical error” and “administrative error”,with the task of re-registering the company falling “between the cracks”.
But Entally insists the event will be back,as scheduled in November,and we reckon they’ll get it right. This time.
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