Green confusion. The electorate of Greenway is covered by the Blacktown group of the Greens but the campaign is being run by the Parramatta group, which had a choice between a candidate from Blacktown who lives in Chifley and a candidate from the Parramatta group who lives in Blaxland. The Chifley candidate won. We now have a Green candidate in Greenway who lives in Chifley and a Labor candidate in Chifley who lives in Greenway.
Bolt: you crack me up, McCrann. We can only imagine what Terry McCrann told fellow Herald Sun bigwig Andrew Bolt that produced this reaction at a recent quiet lunch …
A personal message from Humphries. Just thought you may like to see what just arrived in the post here in Canberra: a letter from Liberal Senator Gary Humphries with NO mention of the Liberal Party at all. No logo, nothing! Also, his mention of trying to bring vibrancy to the shores of Lake Burley Griffin refers to the local controversy of whether a hamburger van should stay or go. High-powered stuff indeed.
The science of a government-sponsored promotion. National Science Week, held from August 14-22 under the auspices of the Federal Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, is designed to “bring science to the masses”. This represents an obvious commercial opportunity to media publishers in science and technology. However, those who do pursue it are likely to be disappointed: National Science Week is under explicit instructions not to enter into any media partnership or even magazine sampling with science publishers that are not Cosmos magazine.
It poses an interesting conundrum for science publishers other than Cosmos, who will direct their editorial staff to focus their efforts to stories that don’t subscribe to such policies of exclusion; and indirectly gives Cosmos a monopoly on editorial coverage, publicity and commercial gain from the event. This seems highly unusual for a government-funded event.
On closer inspection of the National Science Week website it appears the event is commercially sponsored by, among others, the CSIRO, Macleans, GlaxoSmithKline and Cosmos. If one is to look up the details of the co-ordinating committee of National Science Week it contains one Kylie Ahern — the managing director of Luna Media, the publisher of Cosmos. On the face of it, this is a conflict of interest in which the event co-ordinator of National Science Week is using her position to effect a commercial gain for her other business interests. This brings the credibility of the National Science Week event and the federal government into question.
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