Five-star retreat for ABC bosses? Crikey reported of penny-pinching in the news department that has cracked down on foreign correspondents’ travel. Next week the ABC board is flying to Broome for the opening of the new radio building and are all staying at the exclusive Cable Beach Club Hotel…

Michael O’Brien: ‘typical barrister’. Victoria’s fair trading agency staff don’t appear to like their new minister, Michael O’Brien. “Typical barrister, combative, know-all, do-nothing” are common phrases when discussing their new master…

Mirvac’s $18m community consultation. Mirvac has retained Ken Davis of the Clifton Group to try to convince angry residents that keeping the Waverley Park powerlines overhead is good for them. Just happens to save about $18 million in costs. Strange they have not reported the $18 million as contingent liabilities — do they assume the minister will let them get away with this?

Cracking the Superpartners code. Just a quick update on your May 2010 story on waste at Superpartners. They have since bought the source code from Synch Software for a further $5 million and have raised another $75 million in capital from their shareholder/customer funds to pay Tata to complete the job by 2013 — three years behind schedule. The only way they can pull it off in this timeframe is to dramatically reduce the project scope such that important things like insurance coverage for 6 million members is still on an antiquated platform.

They are putting their administration fees up 20-30% to return a cash surplus which means members fees will rise by the same amount. This is at a time when retail and bank-owned funds are pushing administration fees down below those of industry funds. What is frustrating many customers is the lack of transparency on operational costs that allow them to have a say on how these might be reduced. They also can’t understand how senior executives involved in the decision retain their roles in the first place — many senior managers are leaving in response to a toxic culture.

Smile, you’re on RTA cameras. Be prepared for the RTA to start rolling out speed cameras in road works zones in the next two weeks. Top of the list for the cameras will be the M2 road widening.