From the Crikey grapevine, the latest tips and rumours …

Transfield strikes again. Did the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre sever ties with NAB over the bank’s ownership of shares in Transfield Holdings? The ASRC, a not-for-profit delivering services to asylum seekers, listed NAB as a “partner”  in its last two annual reports. Until recently, NAB was also a substantial shareholder of Transfield Services, the company running immigration detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru. NAB has donated furniture to the ASRC’s new employment centre in Dandenong in Melbourne’s outer-eastern suburbs, and the ASRC publicly thanked NAB for the donation in a Facebook post. An eagle-eyed commenter brought up NAB’s links to Transfield on that post and got no response. Now, ASX documents show NAB ceased to be a substantial shareholder in Transfield Services on May 13 (following a smaller divestment of shares on March 7). The ASRC’s Serina McDuff says individual NAB employees recently helped the organisation with its move to new headquarters in Footscray as part of  NAB’s staff volunteer program, but couldn’t confirm the status of the corporate relationship at the time of NAB’s donation of furnishings to the Dandenong employment centre.

But did NAB’s divestment in Transfield come too late? McDuff confirms the ASRC no longer has a relationship with NAB, having “re-assessed relationships following the change to offshore providers”. Transfield Services signed a 20-month contract to run the Manus Island and Nauru immigration detention centres in March 2014. A recent tweet from the ASRC asks people to donate to a Commonwealth Bank account.

It’s a bad look for NAB no matter how you spin it; making money from Transfield’s treatment of asylum seekers while trying to minimise tax payments by donating to an organisation that aims to support the people Transfield is damaging. That’s a funny way of exercising “corporate responsibility”.

Goings-on in Immigration. As Crikey tipped before the budget, the merger of the Department of Immigration and Customs is now proceeding, and who heads the Australian Border Force — the sort name that sounds like it’s missing at least one exclamation mark — continues to be a matter of speculation in Canberra. Current immigration secretary Martin Bowles is regarded as a very unlikely starter, with attention focused on either Crikey favourite “Iron” Mike Pezzullo — “the original Cold Warrior on China,” as Bob Carr claims he describes himself — or a third party. Pezzullo endeared himself to Customs staff post-budget by telling them they should go read a Scott Morrison op-ed if they wanted to find out what was going on with the merger.

Meanwhile, the hunt goes on in Immigration for the leaker of the blacklist of immigration agents and lawyers that embarrassed the government several weeks ago. Was it a deliberate leak, or was it a result of departmental mishandling? This is, after all, the department that published the details of 10,000 asylum seekers online by accident.

Bolt’s commenters battle on. A reader reckons they saw this comment on a blog post by Andrew Bolt …

Our reader sent off this complaint to News Corp: “I find this comment to be deeply offensive as it’s insinuating that left-wing people be treated as the Jews were in Nazi Germany and put in concentration camps”. The comment is not on the post now (the post seems to be arguing that the Senate stands in the way of genuine reform to slash spending. We think).

So who has the job of moderating the comments on Bolt’s blog? In 15 minutes we found these:

  • a reference to “the Socialist Nazi rags @ Fauxfax”
  • “Just like the thousands of drowned illegal, country shoppers that Labor/Green policy enticed to their deaths …”
  • ” … with Islam you kill anybody who wises up and wants to leave”
  • “The problem with islamic nations and the islamic state is the rampant inbreeding done in the name of Moe, marrying cousins and breeding a generation of illiterate morons with no temperament who are of such low intelligence that they can only resort to violence. Simply put, the death cult of satan worshippers needs to be banned from this nation …”

And that’s not the half of it (if you want to see more, follow the entertaining @boltcomments on Twitter, in which someone gleans the best/worst comments). The readers seem to think comments on Bolt’s blog are moderated … sounds like quite a job.

The bedroom law graduate. We received a tip that a high-profile Australian university in the Group of Eight is researching how they would be able to teach their law degrees entirely online. Some think law is a subject that stresses the importance of attending the classes in person, rather than completing your degree online. Maybe not any more?

Almost every university we spoke to told us that little of their law courses is available for students to complete on the web. Unsurprisingly, not one of the Group of Eight universities said they were doing this market research. If you know more, fill us in.

*Heard anything that might interest Crikey? Send your tips toboss@crikey.com.au or use our guaranteed anonymous form