Qantas spinners fly the coop. Chief Qantas spinner Olivia Wirth will be scouring the resumes in coming weeks, after two of her direct reports suddenly quit the airline.
The Australian Financial Review reports that Jim Carden, head of government and public affairs, and Justin Kelly, head of corporate communications, have both resigned “to pursue other interests”.
The Power Index can’t blame them for looking elsewhere: having only joined the airline last year, they were quickly thrown into a flurry of PR turbulence following CEO Alan Joyce’s decision to pull the ultimate power play over its workers and ground the airline’s entire fleet.
Malcolm Turnbull’s week of everywhere. The former Liberal leader’s attention-grabbing skills remain as finely honed as ever. Turnbull’s Monday night Q&A appearance — in which he voiced support for a conscience vote on gay marriage — won applause from the Twitter luvvies.
On Tuesday he took to his blog to excoriate News Limited business journalist Terry McCrann, who had slammed him as a “collectivist” and a “twit” for supporting a sovereign wealth fund. Turnbull pointed out that the Governor of the Reserve Bank, many prominent business leaders and conservative politicians are also sovereign wealth fund backers.
Today, Turbull’s published a 3000-word riposte in The Australian Financial Review to Wayne Swan’s much-debated Monthly essay on the supposedly poisonous influence of mining plutocrats on public debate. Turnbull argues governments whose only core conviction is clinging to office — he puts Labor in this category — will buckle to one vested interest after another. He also says it was a “pity” Labor didn’t stick to its guns over the original mining tax — a curious argument given the Libs are opposed to taxing mining super profits.
Nick Greiner brings it home for NSW. We like a bureaucrat who can tell it like it is. And so it was yesterday with Infrastructure NSW chairman Nick Greiner as he urged the state’s newly-created strategy taskforce to make some good recommendations regarding its stocktake of NSW government assets: “You’ll find that government departments hang on to land like drunks hang on to a light pole.”
Peter Costello’s many billions. There’s plenty to be said about the selection process for the Future Fund chairman, but former treasurer Peter Costello‘s backlash against the government may suggest that a certain ex-treasurer still hasn’t completely relinquished the reins of power. “The Future Fund was something that I conceived, I legislated it and I put every dollar of capital into it, every dollar,” he told ABC’s 7.30 last night. Who wouldn’t want to give him the job?
Ivan who? Names like Gina Rinehart and Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest easily roll off the tongue, and we know how they made their billions. But what about Ivan Glasenberg?
Meet the Glencore billionaire, speed skater and second richest Australian, according to Forbes, on The Power Index today.
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