Kevin Rudd sent half a dozen RAAF air traffic controllers to help out at Haiti. They are still in Miami in the US … um … training.  Will they come home and not even get to Haiti? Commercial flights into Haiti are now resuming anyway. How embarrassing for us as a nation when such a small contingent, through no fault of their own, can’t get there to make Kevin Rudd look good.

From the embarrassed partner of a Today Tonight staffer. TT staff were caught filming inside the Bankstown Sports Club without permission this morning. When security asked them to leave, they responded by sending one of the crew back in and recording the gaming area on a Blackberry. Apparently it’s a rip off of the Fairfax story of last week concerning tax concessions for sporting clubs.

Only problem is that that the yarn got its facts wrong and the Productivity Commission made no recommendation that club tax concessions be changed. TT knows but will skip that important fact. TT host and former sports reporter Matt White doesn’t like the story because it is the sports clubs that provide virtually all sporting infrastructure in NSW. He’s making noise but, as usual, no one is listening.

For many years the only Australian building or office open to the Indonesian public has been the Australian Government’s Australian Education Centre, on the sixth floor of an office tower, close to the now fortress-like embassy building. The AEC served as a busy shopfront for the thousands of local students who wished to study in Australian tertiary institutions.

Recently responsibility for and control of AEC passed from the embassy to Austrade. And what have the geniuses at Austrade done … they’ve closed the Jakarta AEC office! So now Australia is the only country with a significant relationship with Indonesia that doesn’t have an educational or cultural presence in Jakarta, the capital of our most important neighbour.

The cultural and media presence of the Americans, the British, the Dutch and the French are all far stronger than that of Australia.

Who made the Austrade decision? What role did the PM’s Department have in the decision? How will the many Indonesian students fare now they’re forced to rely on a mixed bag of educational agents, some whom are said also to dabble in other forms of “immigration”? Does Austrade have plans to open a new public facility? And for any Australian’s wanting to present cultural activities in Jakarta, the Dutch Embassy’s Erasmus Hall is our embassy’s venue of choice.

The My School website is having an impact. I have been told of two schools that are telling  parents of children with learning difficulties or special education needs that there is no need for them to sit the NAPLAN test as it is not designed for children with particular needs. It seems that the schools are paranoid about their rankings and reputations.

Nine and Foxtel must be worried about the Winter Olympics ratings. We are long-standing Foxtel subscribers. On Monday we got a nice thank you letter and news that we could have the four Olympic channels for free (normally $65). Nothing to do, just go to channel whatever and there it was. Still have not watched much of it but I guess it is one way to get the viewer numbers up.