While NAB is rumored to be circling the carcass of Northern Rock its highly rewarded mortgage managers at Homeside have been given instructions to dump any troubled or difficult clients. Reports of widespread termination of facility notices have been received by financial counsellors, particularly where the mum and dad borrowers have been talked into signing away their consumer credit rights by mortgage brokers who receive higher commissions from Homeside for such low doc loans. Counsellors have arranged payment plans with Homeside only to have the bank walk away from these agreements due to Homeside’s nervous exposure to sub prime loans.

During APEC, flights to and from Sydney Airport were diverted away from the CBD. This conveniently also mostly took the planes away from Tory electorates. I live very close to the airport and have noticed that the changes seem to have continued. Planes all seem to be banking hard West whenever they take off over the city, and are landing in a way to avoid those marginals. If you look at this map of electorates, you can see that a hard bank West avoids overflying North Sydney and Bennelong.

Under the Fairness Assessment process of the Workplace Authority they are posting by snail mail the various documents including the advice to employers that the agreement is being assessed for the fairness test, the notice that an agreement does not pass the fairness test; and advice that an agreement does pass the fairness test. We received an advice today (18 September) that an AWA did not pass the fairness test. The advice was dated 7 September. Problem is employers are only given 14 days to respond to the advice. If the employer fails to respond within 14 days the agreement will cease to operate. The real issue here is why isn’t the Workplace Authority emailing these documents? If it was acceptable for the Office of Employment Advocate to email various documents, including approval notices, under the pre-Workchoices legislation why has the Government made the Workplace Authority use snail mail? What is the cost to taxpayers of printing out these letters, and the postage and handling. How many small and medium size employers appreciate expending extra time and money to manually process these documents? This just a further indication that Workchoices continues to cause the Government problems and why many small business employers are not supportive of the Government’s approach to workplace relations.

Andrew Laming the member for Bowman rented office space in his electorate for his campaign office and had it all signed up then after the allegations of printing “problems” the signs came down and the office closed? Now big rumor in Redland Shire that the Deputy Mayor of Redland Shire – Peter Dowling has been put on standby to stand should Laming be charged

Remember that rather large option on what the the US share market may do by 21 September? It seems that the US have lowered interest rates but put up the potential conflict rate. Is Australia going to tag along?

Paul Syvret flirts with the alternative media after jumping on the peak oil bandwagon at the Courier Mail on the weekend. Despite claiming to have been following the peak oil debate for some years, only the intrigue of a “leaked”, “secret”, six-month-old report which has been openly discussed in the public domain by its author for two years (including both Four Corners and Sixty Minutes last year) saw Syvret leap into action. He has, after all, been reporting on the resource industry for “his entire adult life”. A cracker of an interview!

Howards’ New TEAM focus is yet another genuflection to Menzies: take a look.

I received an unexpected call purporting to be from my bank, BankWest, yesterday. The number was unusual for BankWest, having a 03 (Melbourne) prefix. The voice of the caller had a heavy sub-continental accent. The caller wished to identify me before telling me what she was calling about. Her first identification question: “Can you please tell me what number I called you on?” I terminated the call, believing it to be a fraud. I phoned BankWest to report it. Turns out it really was BankWest — their “sales” division — and that this really is one of their identification questions. How can telling them what number they have called you on be evidence of identification? What goose dreamt that up?

On the electoral knoll 1: Election will be 24 November as previously reported. Howard has confirmed another sitting period of Parliament.

On the electoral knoll 2: Certain agencies in Canberra have been notified by the Australian Electoral Commission to be on standby for roles in the National Tally Room on 27 October or 10 November.

On the electoral knoll 3: You can bet that the Federal Election won’t be on 10 November. This is the date of Adelaide’s Credit Union Christmas Pageant. The event sees around 320,000 people line the city’s streets to welcome Father Christmas. It would be impossible to get everyone to the polls.