Staerk is back in action. Surprise today as formerly dropped columnist Graham Staerk reappeared in the Gold Coast Bulletin’s Thursday edition. Crikey readers may remember the exclusive Crikey investigation revealing the hopeless conflicts of interest between Staerk, his lobbying clients and newspaper columns that led to some heated words to GCB editor Dean Gould from News Limited bosses. Gould defended his mate for a few weeks before succumbing to pressure from his Sydney overlords and suspended Staerk from his weekly column.

Seems the suspension has been lifted by Gould, however some new rules have been put in place for his mate. Staerk is to avoid any mention of his clients or their projects. And as Crikey has previously mentioned, his column now sports a prominent footer disclosing to readers that Staerk is a “corporate consultant and registered lobbyist”. While there is still no mention of which clients he “lobbies for”, here’s a little reminder for readers, obtained from the Queensland state government’s lobbyist register:

Interestingly, he has lost some corporate gigs since losing his weekly column a little over a  month ago, most notably the Gold Coast Turf Club, major Gold Coast developer Nifsan and NRL footy team the Gold Coast Titans. Clearly Staerk needed his column back to stop the bleeding from his lobbying company Consultum. Some of his clients were apparently unaware that he was knocking on Queensland government doors on behalf of their companies until their names appeared in the lobby register.

His first column (below) carried on like nothing ever happened with no mention of the two months his regular column has been “missing in action”. It focused on the mayoral race for March 2012 and specifically a call for the retirement of Mayor Ron Clarke due to his well publicised heart problems.  However, the column was totally based on faulty knowledge of the current Local Government Act. Staerk worries that if Clarke retires after March, councillors will select a new mayor themselves, rather than a by-election allowing citizens of the Gold Coast to pick Clarke’s replacement. But the new amendments of the 2009 Local Government Act came into force on July 1 and clearly states in section 164 that any vacancy in the mayoral position must be filled by the holding of a by-election.

GCB-Staerk-Column-July-29-2b — anonymous Crikey reader

Still the one for terrible photoshopping: And in more news from the Sunshine state, Channel Nine is broadcasting nightly from Ekka — the Brisbane Show, for the non-Queenslanders among us — from its “broadcasting centre”.

Except, Nine has been advertising pictures of the Seven News stand at the Sydney Show as if it was its Ekka broadcasting centre, just with some dodgy photoshopping on top, since the stand hasn’t been set up yet.

This is the original Seven News Sydney Show stand (from the Seven News Sydney Facebook page):

7sydneyshow-original

This the badly photoshopped stand Nine News is trying to claim is its Ekka stand on the official Ekka website, saying “Don’t miss your chance to walk through a real LIVE news studio”:

ch9ekka-7sydneyphotoshop

Note the feet still visible under the banner on the left. The picture has now been removed from Nine’s Ekka  page, but luckily we’ve got a screen grab from an anonymous Crikey reader.

ch9ekka-page_sml — Amber Jamieson

Moving forward into fair dinkum

According to Chris Pash, of Dow Jones, “Cliche of the Week” columnist for The Australian, Gillard has used “moving forward” 1500 times in the past month. It spiked in the first two days of the campaign and has been dropping off since, but is currently running at an average 25 mentions a day.

For his part, Tony Abbott is a prolific user of “fair dinkum” — 238 in the past month, with the phrase spiking in usage this week. — The Australian

Obama on The View: a full blow-by-blow

Depending on you who listen to, Obama’s debut presidential appearance on daytime telly is either another step in the inevitable destruction of the American empire – akin to Rome installing lead pipes for drinking water – or a media masterstroke. — The Guardian

Shocking PSAs — think WorkCover or Quit ads — work in Oz but not US?

Many of these shock ads, including “Separation” and the texting while driving ad are made in Britain or Australia. According to Bob Molineaux, a partner in Venables Bell & Partners, an advertising agency responsible for similar ads, “They’re a lot more open-minded in Australia and Britain than we are, so they’re at home with that type of what you would call shock advertising.” — ABC News USA

BP are white-washing the media

“WASHINGTON (AFP) — With BP’s broken well in the Gulf of Mexico finally capped, the focus shifts to the surface clean-up and the question on everyone’s lips is: where is all the oil?”

NEW ORLEANS (Mother Jones) – I don’t know who the f-ck these everyones are, but I’m happy to help out them, and ABC, and this AFP reporter writing that due to BP’s stunningly successful skimming and burning efforts, “the real difficulty now is finding any oil to clean up.” — Mother Jones

WikiLeaks told everyone how bad the war in Afghanistan is… for three seconds

It took only a few days for the media to go from telling us that the pessimistic take on Afghanistan was the obvious, boring ho-hum “conventional wisdom” to restoring that point of view to the fringes, sandwiched between optimistic takes and war-cheerleading. — Huffington Post

CBS comes out of the closet

CBS is adding a trio of gay characters to the network’s shows next season following a recent GLAAD report that gave the network a failing diversity grade for a second year in a row. — The Hollywood Reporter

Hacker proves how crap Facebook’s privacy is

Security specialist Ron Bowes has once again proven how easy it is to glean valuable user information from Facebook, by spidering Facebook’s online directory and compiling it all into one neat little torrent that could be downloaded off his site, SkullSecurity.com.

Bowes created a torrent containing over 171 million entries with links to profiles that provide access to the names, addresses and phone numbers of 100 million users, one fifth of Facebook.  — TechCrunch

A win for Chinese journos

For China’s investigative journalists, who grapple with heavy-handed censors and accusations of bribe-taking, the case of a Shanghai-based reporter appears to offer a positive turn. — NY Times

The true truth on True/Slant

The May acquisition of True/Slant by Forbes Media turned out to be the death knell for the digital news site, as writer and reporter Neal Ungerleider said in a post on the site that operations would wind down at the end of the month. — Media Bistro