From the Crikey grapevine, the latest tips and rumours …

Wood you pay? A timber mole reckons ForestWorks, the union-heavy body that advises the feds on forest industry skills and training needs, is struggling to get people to its two-day $1200 conference next month, in Canberra’s Hyatt Hotel (the price tag includes a fancy dinner):

“Last year’s conference was notable for being wall-to-wall CFMEU to make up numbers. This year $1200 price tag seems to have completely turned off the forestry industry. Their first response was to turn the price tag into a two-for-one ticket. They are now running around the industry offering to waive the door price and add a $500 cash inducement to industry members willing to attend and wear an ‘ambassador’ label.”

Moving on. Kim Hill, chief executive of the Northern Land Council — an indigenous powerhouse — has resigned. Staff were told on Friday. Some insiders claim Hill did not appear to give reasons for his departure to staff or the council’s executive.

High on the HR hog? We’d never dare to accuse the ATO of fiddling the books, but we do have a clarification on the cost to the taxpayer of 30 tax office staff attending this week’s HRIZON HR conference in Melbourne. We asked them what it would cost (registration, accommodation, flights) and were told $58,286. But that seemed a little low, so we chased them again, and the spokesperson “clarified” that figure was only for conference registration. The total cost is $83,886 (including flights, accommodation, etc). Your tax dollars at work!

In the interests of fairness, we’d like to note that staff are also doing other things while in Melbourne, like attending team meetings with their staff. And HR people do great work. But $83,000? This Tips scribe has not quite done their tax return yet but we’ll hurry, because the ATO clearly needs our dough. HR experts — does this spend seem reasonable? Let us know your thoughts here.

Do you need a thigh-buster? Tune in. Australia’s newest TV channel started yesterday at 8.30am. Channel 14 is the joint venture between struggling Ten Network and TVSN, the pay TV shopping channel. It joins Nine’s Extra and Seven’s Channel 74 (TV4ME). All three are data casting channels, which are limited to segments of no more than 10 minutes. The content is restricted to information, and Seven and Nine have used them as a combination of home shopping channel and infomercials. They are lucrative.

Seven, which was first into the segment, is understood to be grossing $800,000 a month, which it shares with its partner, Brand New Media. In these times of weak revenue growth and scarce profits, every little bit counts. Total revenue for this niche is projected to be $20 million a year once TVSN/Ten is up and running. Nine is bound by its new NRL contract to put content (a couple of hours a day) on to Extra next year. It will have to be careful, it can’t breach the 10-minute rule and can’t be a sports broadcast; more infomercial.

Where’s Cory? Tips is concerned about the whereabouts of Cory “the Beast” Bernardi (he may be somewhere between Europe and Australia) and put a shout-out in Crikey yesterday. However, we fear some subscribers are not taking this seriously. We’ve had sightings of Cory at a “pomeranian dog show in Dalmatia”, and “pulling petrol at a servo on the Birdsville Track”. Another tipster reckons Bernardi bought the new iPhone and “has lost his way using the troublesome map app”. There’s only one way to settle this. Email us here, Cory.

*Do you know more? Send your tips to boss@crikey.com.au or use our guaranteed anonymous form.