Christmas party watch: The SA Police Star Force Christmas show at Intercontinental Hotel on Friday night was a pretty lively affair. So much so that the wines were removed on no less than two occasions — and the second time it was for good. It seems that the cream of the force could not handle the fruit of the vine.
What stunts and scandals are planned or went down at your corporate Christmas party? Crikey wants to know — email your on or off-the-record tips or send to boss@crikey.com.au.
RN staff replaced before leaving. According to the ABC’s Employment Agreement, you can’t advertise positions if you’re making people redundant. Not until you have formal meetings with the unions involved and the unions agree that adequate consultation has taken place. That process was seemingly under way in the ABC on Friday afternoon, as the staff dumped in a revamp of the Radio National website team (as Crikey reported earlier this month), along with the colleagues who will have to take over their work, had a tense meeting with management.
The new online management team — ex-Triple-J staffers Fergus Pitt and Linda Bracken — were anything but reassuring, talking about necessary interruptions, freezes and even a “hiatus” after the Radio National website staff leave — which could be as soon as Christmas. There’s no time even for a handover period, with temps coming in to take over the running of the site in January, who will be expected to “reverse-engineer” how everything works. All this apparent openness and honesty was thrown into sharp relief, however, when staff returned to their desks to find their positions had already been advertised — 24 hours before.
The Nat and the outsourced printing. Word around the Snowy region is that locals are unhappy with independent Queanbeyan councilor and National Party candidate Giovanni Barilaro’s letter to locals. Barilaro’s letter, which is accompanied by some expensively printed material, contains his view that local kids have to leave town to seek out jobs because Labor simply doesn’t care about local communities.
Now where do you think this expensive material was printed? Jindabyne? Cooma? Queanbeyan? Nope, none of these, but in … you guessed it, Frank Street, Wetherilll Park in Sydney. Word among the Monaro’s many local printers is that none of them was offered the opportunity to quote for the work. Maybe because he just doesn’t care about local communities.
Travel like Obama. Who says Myki has been a disaster? On eBay:
Want to travel like a President? Why not buy and use Barack Obama’s MYKI card?
For sale are the following Myki cards as a pack:
- Barack Obama — Adult — $10 credit
- Osama bin Laden — Adult — $10 credit
- Peter Pan — Child — No credit
Tiger cancels on schoolies … My son and his friends were going on Tiger Airways to schoolies on the Gold Coast on Friday. The flight was cancelled so they had to pay $400 each one-way or wait for a flight on Monday. By then almost half of the week is gone. How can this happen? How many other flights will be cancelled over the schoolies period? What if it happens on the way back and they have to pay $400 again?
… and on Qantas, anyone need oxygen? One Plane Talking reader recounts his hilarious Qantas experience …
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