Image: Getty

BHP calls last drinks An interesting scoop in the Financial Times about a dispute between the Australian Workers’ Union and BHP over the issue of off-the-clock drinking for fly-in fly-out workers. The company is prohibiting beer in staff accommodation after 9.30pm and limiting workers to four standard drinks a day, a move the AWU is opposing on the grounds it infringes on the workers’ right to privacy and treats them “like children”.

It raises interesting questions about the conflicts between individual freedom and responsibility and what constitutes a reasonable requirement from a workplace to provide a safe environment. Further — along with the gig economy, the COVID expansion of work from home and the embedded intrusion of work-enabling technology in everyone’s personal lives — it goes to the forever blurring line between what constitutes a worker’s personal time and what constitutes work time. For whatever reason, the freedom warriors of Australian politics seem reasonably happy to let this one through to the keeper.

It’s an interesting insight into what FT readers see when they picture Australian miners — our favourites from the comment section:

If the workers are indeed Australian, I can begin to understand the required control mechanism.

Yeah. It’s scandalous we can’t all get drunk at work and throw dead kangaroos into rock crushers.

Poisoned chalice? Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media has finally got around to appointing a new head of corporate communications. The spot has been vacant since Stephen Browning went to Orica in Melbourne in late 2019.

The new guy is Robert Sharpe, who will report to chief marketing officer Charlotte Valente, and will be “responsible for the media group’s external and internal communications”.

Sharpe was previously corporate affairs adviser at Optus and has worked at Network 10, Spotcap Global and ITV. A long-time predecessor at Seven in this spot was Simon Francis, who left Optus to work for the Stokes company but left in late 2017 after two decades.

The contact for Monday’s announcement was Neil Shoebridge, who is now an external flack for Seven but was the long-time head flack for Ten and, before that, the long-time marketing and media writer for BRW and The Australian Financial Review.

What a small pond Australia media can be. Also, what a time to take over a communications gig at Seven West.

Wilson is not owned We have previously noted ratio magnet and Liberal backbencher Tim Wilson’s admirable commitment to just keep on posting, no matter what. On May 14, the Nine papers (via the sharp eyes of its photographer Alex Ellinghausen) revealed Wilson had taken a less committed approach to an Indigenous health fun run than he would have liked us to believe. He joined for the first 100 metres, during which he was photographed on purpose, before ducking back towards Parliament and photographed without his knowledge.

And so, a mere 10 days later, Wilson has put out a series of tweets from his morning jog, chucking out some pointed jokes about whether Ellinghausen would chronicle his run.

Typical leftie media. Happy to report when you give the impression you’ve been more involved in a public event than you actually were, but when it comes to totally apolitical morning jogs? Completely uninterested, apparently.