Insider independent tips. I provided Crikey with the inside scoop about the thinking of the independents after they met post press club. This will soon come to pass one down three to go with  Bob Katter, Rob Oakeshott soon to provide their supporting to the current government. There will not be a change in Government this time around.  Tony Windsor is the only one fearful of what he calls a “backlash” but I tip he will be the speaker of the house…

Buying it off the plan? It’s worth noting that the Victorian Government are currently considering, via the Consumer Affairs Legislation Amendment (Reform) Bill 2010, increasing the maximum deposit allowed for off the plan sales to 20 per cent from 10 per cent. Developers and their financiers will be able to choose to increase the deposit required to 20 per cent if they wish.

Emergency landing in Siberia. Whilst everyone is justifiably concerned about the near disaster with Qantas in Los Angeles it seems as though there has been absolutely no coverage of a near disaster with Korean Air in a plane full of Australians. Last Friday 27 August on a Sydney-Seoul-London trip a relative of mine was on the plane. In their words “My flight from Seoul to Heathrow needed to make an emergency landing in Siberia. We ended up landing on a small runway in a Russian town but we didn’t know this was the case (we hadn’t been told it was a runway) until we hit the runway (which was as close to rubble as a runway can get), so as we went through the thick fog, in the brace position everyone was saying goodbyes to the people they were with .. The pilots only words throughout the whole thing were that we were making an emergency landing and to prepare for an emergency evacuation, then he said ‘landing in 10 minutes’ and then ‘landing in 5 minutes’ and it wasn’t until we were about to touch the runway when someone yelled that we were on a runway, I was too scared to look out the window. It turned out a fire alarm had gone off somewhere in the air conditioning and that it was fault.”

I work for Jetstar, and thought you might like to know some behind the scenes things: The Jetstar Flight #4 that was scheduled to leave Honolulu a day or so ago was delayed, due to one of the Cabin Crew being intoxicated still, and had to call in sick, thus delaying the flight back to Australia by over 12 hours. This information was passed onto general staff from our crewing department in Melbourne headquarters. As you know, Jetstar run minimum cabin crew numbers, so in the event that someone does legitimately goes sick away from base, the flight gets delayed or cancelled. If they carried an extra crew member this would be not an issue, and the flight would still proceed. Also, Jetstar are employing more and more foreign crew, and casuals to become cabin crew. There have been several delays over the last few weeks, where the Captains have been asking crew basic “alert PA’s” and what they would do in the event of a rejected take off, and quite a few have been unable to answer this. They have then been stood down, and the flight delayed to call in new crew. Jetstar are trying to save a buck, by employing the bottom of the barrell Gen Y’s, and not providing adequate safety training. Also, the Jetstar On Time Performance in Australia domestic for the month of August was 36%. This will be made public soon. This is due to the well publicised “go slow” by pilots due to the rock bottom morale. Several flights this week have been cancelled due to no pilots (calling in sick), and it is getting worse. This is over management wanting to offshore pilot jobs in New Zealand and Singapore, so they can circumvent our Australian EBA, and employ pilots doing the same job, on less money…(and no superannuation in NZ and Singas). Do what you will with this info, but Jetstar is about to become a very hot topic of news with crew & CASA over the next little while…

The Sunshine Coast Daily pursuit of Peter Slipper raises a bigger issue about parliamentarians and the lack of transparency concerning their entitlements. See here. Interestingly The Greens and the independents haven’t shown signs of interest in going there so far.