Two days after deploying for the 21st mission of Operation Catalyst in the Arabian Gulf, sailors on board HMAS Stuart were told they would no longer be paid benefits for active service or be entitled to the tax-free status of income that has applied to date for earning while deployed in the gulf.

A lockdown on information was put in place ensuring that the ship deployed with a full complement of personal, while members had been assured that conditions would not be significantly changed for the six month period that the ship is expected to be deployed. Members on board HMAS Parramatta, the next ship training for deployment, are also currently being led to believe, and have been given many assurances, that service conditions would not be significantly changing, as they undertake training to relieve HMAS Stuart in the new year.

The Navy has not previously had trouble ensuring a ship was fully manned for gulf deployments, given the benefits of tax-free income in return for long periods at sea, long hours and risks that many Australians are unaware of. The expectation of manning issues was the reason for the Navy withholding this information and misleading its serving sailors who deserve to be treated with the same standards of honesty integrity, and courage that the Navy would expect of them.

The implementation of this change of policy has failed in every one of these counts.

Movement afoot in Kim Carr’s office. Three staff are departing. The biggest loss is the impressive and very well respected chief of staff  Rachel Stephen-Smith. Another big loss is Catriona Jackson, who has been Carr’s media adviser for about 10 years. The third departee is Tim Murphy, a former biotech advocate who hasn’t perhaps had the impact he might have wished.

This means long-term trusted science and research adviser and factional warrior Andrew Reeves is the last man standing of the inner sanctum. Are they getting out before the rigors of another election campaign or is the judgement that Carr has already had his moment in the sun with this year’s Budget goodies for the auto industry, public sector research and science?

Bernie Brookes will be sweating at today’s Melbourne Cup, even though the temperature is expected to hover around a comfy 20 degrees (and the rain might keep him a little cooler).

Not only does he have to smile at all and sundry, knowing full well that his half-cooked goose of a department store is not likely to hit its list price for some time, but the business did not factor interest rate rises into its Christmas trade planning when the team got together some months back.

One rate rise is bad enough but two could kill Christmas and ensure a difficult few months for the Myer team. Expect first-quarter sales to be flat when they are announced in the next week or so, which means that Myer needs to achieve about 5% comp for this quarter to make the forecast of 3% for the first half, which Bernie was touting yesterday.

The University of Sydney has spent megabucks creating its newly paved and landscaped campus, drawing inspiration, so they say, from Barcelona’s Las Ramblas. Right. I can see the similarities. Anyway, the bean counters had surrounded the main Fisher Library with paving stones so rough, so abrasive, and so dangerous that any fall from a height greater than a metre would surely result in instant death. So, in fairness to stiletto-wearing students, teachers and visitors, chunky is currently being replaced with smooth.

Last week the salaried staff of the Warringah NSW Rural Fire Service asked for volunteer fire fighters to give up their time to be part of a photo opportunity associated with a press conference announcing the future delivery of new trucks to the district.

The event happened yesterday, and was not a press conference at all, just the issuing of a media release by Emergency Services Minister Steve Whan, and some Labor “Duty MLCs” for the local areas. It seems the Liberal local members were not invited.

I didn’t know that in addition to my elected lower house representative, I had a Labor Duty MLC! It would be nice for volunteers to be warned in advance that they are going to be used as props to support a political event.

Sweet, spicy irony? While all the hoo-hah about Indian call centres remains a consistent chat-show gripe in light of Australia Do Not Call Register for unwanted telemarketing calls, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has for a while now had its own National Do Not Call Registry.

According to its website, the register’s aim is to “curb Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC). UCC has been defined as ‘any message, through telecommunications service, which is transmitted for the purpose of informing about, or soliciting or promoting any commercial transaction in relation to goods, investments or services which a subscriber opts not to receive’.” Sound familiar?

Australia, however, has requirements about local companies making sure third-party offshore companies abide by DNC legislation.

And yet, at first glance, Indian telemarketers can’t have third-party deals at all: “The telemarketer shall not, without the prior written consent of DoT, either directly or indirectly, assign or transfer this registration in any manner whatsoever to a third party or enter into any agreement for sub-Leasing and/or partnership relating to any subject matter of the registration to any third party either in whole or in part i.e. no sub-leasing/partnership/third party interest shall be created. ”

Guess they’re afraid of some pesky Australian company making cold calls during Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

Is it true that the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney is in the process of purchasing a hotel in Rome for use by Catholic pilgrims visiting the Vatican? Surely there are better things to be spending tens of millions of dollars on, rather than getting into the hotel business.

I have had access to HD TV for 10 months now and loving it. However, I am still amazed that the ABC HD channel shows the NSW News at 7pm in Victoria. WTF? Is the ABC really that disorganised or are we still so backward in Melbourne that we don’t have hi-def TV cameras. If it’s the latter, how come NSW has got hi-def and we don’t? All the commercial channels have their act together. Hello, ABC, anybody home?

Watch for the puffs of white and black smoke from the chimney atop of Holt Street, Surry Hills in Sydney this week as cardinals, bishops and princes of News Ltd are confirmed and unfrocked by his highness, The Sun King, Rup’s in town, and hosted the News Ltd self-congratulatory awards at the weekend.

Today he lunches with the market chappies in Sydney at a lunch organised by the kind souls at Goldman Sachs JBWere (another billion, your highness?). He hosts the first-quarter earnings update via teleconference from Surry Hills on Thursday about 8am our time (thank god for daylight saving, otherwise it would be a miserable 6am Sydney).

And we should read page two of the Saturday editions of various papers in the empire for the first signs of births and deaths among the News princelings. It would be a rare occasion when Rupert’s visit at this time of year (lots of talks about papers, grilling of editors and senior management) didn’t result in changes in editor’s chairs and beyond.

Will Paul Keating’s current argument with News Ltd and The Sunday Telegraph have an impact?

The Spearman Experiment has been axed…