Given what transpired during the first half of the year, the university perhaps should’ve gone even bigger on media advice.
We’ve had revelations that, while taking home a circa $1 million taxpayer-funded salary and begging staff to forgo a 2.5 per cent pay rise (an offer that was rejected), Bell was freelancing for Silicon Valley chip manufacturer Intel.
Not to mention reports in The Australian Financial Review, that the vice chancellor went full Liam Neeson on ANU staff, allegedly telling them she would “find you out and hunt you down” if they leaked confidential information.
Whatever “compelling narrative” the experts might’ve come up with, Bell and Bishop have clearly lost control of it. The pair faced a staff vote of no-confidence in their leadership, with Education Minister Jason Clare anxiously watching the situation.
Bell did, however, go on ABC radio to dismiss criticism of her performance as due to “sexism” and tall-poppy syndrome, as any failing Australian executive is wont to do.
Bishop, meanwhile, has dug her heels in after facing calls to resign after Allen’s evidence before the Senate last week, rejecting any suggestion she “engaged with council members, staff, students and observers in any way other than with respect, courtesy and civility”.
Gina’s Trump Bet
World leaders, top economists and Wall Street, have all watched the opening months of Donald Trump’s second coming with a feeling of dread, as the president engages in a capricious trade war against the world.
Apparently unbothered by it all is Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart, a diehard Trump loyalist who spent last November’s election night at Mar-a-Lago.
Gina Rinehart at Mar-a-Lago last year.
Rinehart, whose Hancock Prospecting has a US share portfolio worth about $3.1 billion, just increased its holdings in Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns the president’s favoured platform Truth Social, by 67 per cent, according to filings with the Securities and Investments Commission.
Rinehart’s stake in the company is now worth about $4.5 million, and comes despite the company reporting a $US20 million ($30.7 million) net loss in the last quarter.
But of course, this is Trump World, where the standard rules of economics do not apply.
The Usual Suspects
Brace yourselves, Australia’s right-wing Woodstock is back for another year when the Conservative Political Action Conference lands in Brisbane next month.
It’s been a rough year for the nation’s Sky News types, forced to watch in horror as Anthony Albanese won 94 seats at the election and consigned the Liberals and Nationals deeper into the wilderness.
And at next month’s gathering, the commonsense mob won’t even get a big international celebrity to rev them up. Past CPACs have been graced by the likes of Nigel Farage and Liz “Lettuce” Truss, but this time, the foreign contingent is limited to a few little-known pundits and blokes who’ve been fired from media gigs. Perhaps the global conservative intelligentsia has decided Australia is simply too woke.
Highlights from the largely local line-up, include usual suspects like shadow defence minister Angus Taylor, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, Coalition senators Alex Antic and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, fellow Voice to Parliament wrecker Nyunggai Warren Mundine, and senator turned Queensland Liberal MP Amanda Stoker.
We’re sure they’ll come up with a few bold ideas on how to lose even more seats to Labor.