More examples of Rudd’s high-handed media management. The Prime Minister’s office went into meltdown after gallery journalist Sandra O’Malley published an innocuous account of Rudd’s current trip to India, with one of Rudd’s young guns, Sean Kelly, telling journalists that there’d be no future background briefings for the PM’s overseas trips because O’Malley had, Kelly reckons, broken the rule on “non reportable background briefing”.

Reading O’Malley’s account, you’d be hard-pressed to know what it was that so upset the PMO but apparently it was a reference to the fact that Rudd would be attending a cricket match in Mumbai, where Australia concludes its ODI series against India tomorrow. Maybe those comparisons with John Howard are starting to upset Rudd.

“Out of control doesn’t even begin to describe it,” said one senior gallery figure about the PMO’s approach.

The Labor-controlled Charles Sturt Council in South Australia last night voted to seek state government approval to revoke the community land status of the iconic St Clair Park in Woodville. This was despite the hundreds of ratepayers packed into the council chamber who cheered Cr Robert Grant who argued against the change in status. The vote means that council will now ask the government to consider the revocation of community land in exchange for a bundle of money to sweeten the deal.

This is a foregone conclusion by the developer-friendly state Labor government as it was the government’s idea in the first place. The CEO has a performance measure   that the revocation of the community land goes ahead. This was decided before the council even asked the community what it thought. The land is a memorial to the servicemen who fought for the nation.

The state government proposed to swap the park with significant trees, heritage buildings and other infrastructure with a contaminated ex industrial wasteland. The park will be turned into a Transport Oriented Development which is dense housing placed near transport hubs first mooted in the Thirty Year Plan for Greater Adelaide Plan released earlier this year.

The plan at the time was described as a developer’s dream. There was no mention in the plan that parklands would be the place for TODs but statements that rundown areas would be revitalised. However the first one has eyed off this iconic area, which has been saved for the community twice before.

The state government and this council are keen not to establish an Independent Commission Against Corruption.

After launching an online racing formguide to much fanfare comes word that The Age has decided to dump the new service. Decision has been made by business operations director David Skelton, who recently attended The Age‘s lavish marquee during the Caulfield Carnival, in  which The Age had a sponsorship role.

Skelton is also responsible for gutting The Age‘s printed form guide from Saturday, much to the protest from The Age‘s editorial department. It is not all bad news. The champagne and canapés at The Caulfield Guineas for Age managers and the Melbourne Racing Club sponsorship will stay.

Applicants for the CEO role with the Australasian Podiatry Council received the job details along with the comment “Your confidentiality is requested with respect to the content of these documents, as is the confidentiality around your application for the position” — problem was that 20 people who’d emailed seeking the information on the role were sent the email at once – not BCC’d but in the “To” section with their names and email addresses for all to see … Oops.

Canberra radio station MIX 106.3 is running a campaign to change people’s perception of the public service with a calendar. That’s right, you too can vote for Canberra’s public service hotties. MIX unveiled the contenders online today. Take a look at the men who have volunteered to represent the public service. Well, they said they wanted to “change the way the rest of Australia looks at Canberra and the public service”. Not sure this was the change they had in mind.

Further on the Kate Dundas brochure, I find it astounding that our new head thinks we need to be impressed by a glossy brochure, with a “fun” cut out, which includes photos of several employees, professionally shot. How much money was spent on this ridiculous brochure that was given to every staff member for what end?

We are employees, not clients who  need to be convinced of buying a product. We were told by Kate Dundas the budget to do things is getting smaller as wages go up with CPI and the amount of money allocated to radio remains fairly static. How can we justify spending money on this? Is this my pay rise for next year?