There is a verse of the nonsense ‘Sing a song of sixpence’ nursery rhyme that goes:
The king was in the counting-house
Counting out his money,
The queen was in the parlour
Eating bread and honey.
But our new monarch, King Charles III, will never see his own likeness on any $5.00AUD notes (we doubt he’d spend his time counting cash, anyhow).
The Reserve Bank announced its decision to replace the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on the note with an updated design “that honours the culture and history of the First Australians”.
“This new design will replace the portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II,” a statement from the RBA read.
“The other side of the $5 banknote will continue to feature the Australian Parliament.”
The change will come into effect in a few years’ time, leaving plenty of room for the design and printing of the new banknote.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton has slammed the RBA’s move, made after consulting the federal government. He told Sydney’s 2GB radio on Thursday that altering the design of the $5 note was an attack on Australia’s “systems, our society and institutions”.
But treasurer Jim Chalmers rebuffed the criticism, saying King Charles’ profile would still be pressed on coins and it was time to reflect more of Australia’s ancient history on the $5 note.
“It is an opportunity to strike a good balance […] the $5 note will say more about our history and our heritage and our country and I see that as a good thing,” he said.
Secretary’s taking lunch at the library
Speaking of people close to the treasurer, we spotted a snap of his secretary, Dr Steven Kennedy, having what appears to be a friendly lunch break at the National Library of Australia. The NLA cafe, Bookplate, is a sweet place to grab a bite for the bureaucrats living and working around the parliamentary triangle. Since it’s just across the road from the Treasury building in Parkes, we reckon it probably gets quite a bit of patronage from the who’s who of APS bigwigs.
We wonder what Kennedy’s coffee order is, and how many $5 notes they cost in Canberra.
Treasury calls for independent review of Productivity Commission
Complaints that the Productivity Commission’s senior executive and management have done nothing to deal with sexual harassment and sexism complaints have been shared with the Australian Financial Review this week.
Apparently, complainants say a history of problems has gone unchecked, with allegations made to the media outlet that perpetrators have not been held to account.
The discord within the organisation is said to have reached such a heightened level that a senior female manager, Leonora Nicol, used a Christmas party speech in 2021 to give voice to the problem
“Multiple women have left the organisation because it has protected sexual predators and not kept them safe,” the director of media publications and web said.
“Imagine a scenario when a known predator was in the workplace and every woman who started there was warned by others because management didn’t deal with the situation, despite several on-the-record complaints.
“What sort of message does that send to the men in the office about what is acceptable behaviour in the workplace, and what does that say to the women in the office about how they and their safety are valued?”
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, and minister for women and the public service Katy Gallagher were also sent a letter from a former commission employee, who said:
The independent review triggered by Treasury’s intervention was a result of Chalmers asking Kennedy to look into the state of affairs.
The Productivity Commission has promised to fully cooperate with the independent review.
Can you imagine a world where probes like this were not necessary for things to start to change?
NSW government’s red tape-slashing rodeo to sniff out $1 billion in savings
The war on red tape is always a favourite, easy sell for governments of most persuasions and the political spin usually goes something like: “Less red tape will make the citizen’s life easier; small businesses will better spend their time making money and these cumbersome processes can get in the bin”.
But the state of NSW has taken things up a notch with the announcement of a “red tape tsar” — that’s a direct quote from a press release issued by the premier, who is on a mission to find $1 billion in savings.
We don’t know about you, but so close to the revelation of the premier’s foolish faux pas to don a Nazi uniform for a birthday party in his youth, and given how that might suggest an eyebrow-raising obsession with power, bandying around the word “tsar” for impact in a deregulation announcement seems… well, foolish.
“Australia faces strong economic headwinds ahead with the dual challenge of inflation and interest rates hitting families and small businesses and NSW needs a government with an economic plan,” Perrottet said.
“We can’t allow NSW to stall.”
NSW government departments will also be under pressure to look under carpets and desks for cuts to suggest to their political masters, with a two-year “red tape blitz” (oh, dear, there he goes again…).
The official announcement ominously put all department secretaries on notice: “[You will] be required to present regulations for the chopping block [good lord], with the goal of making it easier to do business,” Perrottet’s edict said.
Under the new regime, ministers will also be forced to abide by a one-in-one-out rule, meaning if they propose the introduction of a new regulation, they will have to identify another form of regulation to cut out.
Small business minister Victor Dominello, who is the face of the Service NSW platform, said the goal was to make life easier for SMEs.
“We have established Service NSW for Business as a one-stop shop for business advice, assistance and compliance, helping to reduce the amount of time businesses spend dealing with Government processes,” the minister said.
“We want to eliminate the paperwork, speed up processes and unlock valuable time from mundane admin tasks by looking at over 200 reforms across 70 pieces of legislation allowing processes to be digitised and streamlined for individuals, businesses and community groups.”
A small business and local government taskforce will be the first industry groups to advise the government on ways to speed up application and approval times by cutting red tape.
But spending less is not necessarily the aim of the commissioner, who is dubbed the “red tape tsar”.
The NSW government also wants to increase its procurement contracts by more than $2 billion by the end of the next term, to a total of $10 billion.
Bring out the ticker-tape parade. It must be an election year.
An Aussie poet laureate is coming to breathe a bit of life into our national identity — watch this space
This week’s major arts policy unveiling by minister Tony Burke came with the news that Australia will soon get its own poet laureate.
As Burke mentioned in his National Press Club address this week, convict Michael Massey Robinson (who was sent to Australia as a convict for writing rhyming couplets) was actually given two cows by governor Macquarie to be the colony’s first official poet laureate.
“[Robinson] was sent for the crime of poetry. He’d been bagging out a politician that he then tried to use as blackmail. This is the risk that every Minister knows you have with artists!” Burke said.
We can’t help but wonder who might be chosen to capture the voice of our nation and its sense of self as it has evolved (and continues to evolve) today. A quick whip around the team has come up with this working list:
Mike Pezzullo — The Home Affairs secretary has quite the command of language, and sometimes his poetic turns of phrase have raised an eyebrow. Who can forget the invocation of drums of war in his Anzac Day speech a few years ago?
“Today, as free nations again hear the beating drums and watch worryingly the militarisation of issues that we had, until recent years, thought unlikely to be catalysts for war, let us continue to search unceasingly for the chance for peace while bracing again, yet again, for the curse of war,” Pezzullo said.
“By our resolve and our strength, by our preparedness of arms, and by our statecraft, let us get about reducing the likelihood of war — but not at the cost of our precious liberty. War might well be folly, but the greater folly is to wish away the curse by refusing to give it thought and attention, as if in so doing, war might leave us be, forgetting us perhaps.”
An orator of this eloquence would also make a great preacher, we think.
Clive Palmer — Perhaps a polarising and silly suggestion. But why reinvent the wheel? The former MP, serial litigant against the government and billionaire businessman has spent years creating his own dank memes for Twitter.
In 1981, Palmer published an anthology entitled ‘Dreams, Hopes and Reflections’, which The Guardian invited two experts to assess. The recommendation was that the self-styled poet should “strive for original imagery” and be inspired by more than the form of song lyrics. In 2019, nine.com.au posed the question ‘Is Clive Palmer the greatest poet of our generation?’ Our verdict: probably not.
Pertinent to song lyrics… I do happen to have with me@a@copy of F Clive Palmer’s 1981 Book Of poetry, Dreams Hopes And Reflections. Flipping to page 55 the poem “She’s Leaving Home” starts out pretty ropey…. pic.twitter.com/FUgnh7gWsL
— Annabel Crabb (@annabelcrabb) May 16, 2019
AEC social media team — There’s a lot of sharp wit among the public servants who are behind the Australian Electoral Commission’s Twitter account. The communication style that many other agencies would like to bottle and put to use. Since the group is dedicated to protecting and preserving the democratic process, we think they’re a key candidate for the poet laureate appointment. Democracy is definitely at the heart of Australia’s national identity after all.
It's a bigger gig than that (we help Parliamentary committees consider changes to electoral law, for example) but important to remember that elections don't belong to us. They belong to voters.
— AEC ✏️ (@AusElectoralCom) February 2, 2023
Hank’s a million
Centrelink spinner-in-chief Hank Jongen’s appearance at the robodebt royal commission might have revealed the perils of letting embattled secretaries near the public relations glitter jar, but few were expecting the dollar value of the 50-year APS veteran’s omnipresence to emerge.
In a rare glimpse behind the curtain at the junk-debt factory now in corporate rehab, monthly media monitoring and analysis reports for Human Services presented in evidence showed Jongen “successfully neutralising” 133 media items of “high impact” across national television, radio and print channels.
Jongen personally featured more than 500 media items; that was costed at an equivalent advertising spend of $1.8 million, the commission heard, while overall coverage generated was worth around $7 million, with 61% of pieces rated “negative” and 39% “positive” and exactly zero shades of grey.
Utopia: parody or documentary?
There are many curious “laws” by which the world seems to abide: Murphy’s Law (what can go wrong will go wrong) or Occam’s Razor (the simplest explanation is often the truest).
Poe’s Law is that if a parody goes far enough, it crosses a threshold and becomes indistinguishable from sincere expression.
With a new season on the way this year, Utopia blurs that line between fiction and reality again and again.
One reader told The Mandarin that Utopia’s episode on the infamous second Sydney airport was so accurate they felt the need to reassure the project directors they were, in fact, not leaking details.
For readers wanting a refresher, feel free to watch the season two episode again. We’ll leave it to you to decide.
Any feedback or news tips? Here’s where to contact the relevant team.