Mark Paterson survived under the Rudd amnesty for political appointees among departmental secretaries in Canberra. He’s been busy since, shoring up the industry portfolio and outfoxing foreign affairs and trade by retaining investment promotion, protecting his industry welfare empire and avoiding efficiency cuts by jettisoning the Global Opportunities program he’d nicked from DFAT under the Libs. Enough to make Kim Carr smile. Unlikely bedfellows.

The shameless John Olsen self promotion known as “G’day USA” took another interesting twist today with an appearance from the US by Glenn Milne in the Sunday News Ltd papers, as a “guest of G’Day USA”. Does this mean public funds were used to send Milne to the US to report to Australian audiences on an event intended to reach Americans? Why not draw upon the Australian correspondents already based in the US? Despite all the hype it gets in the Australian press, the event has a minimal impact in the US beyond the celebrity snappers who stalk every red carpet and every limo door opening. Now that his protector, Alexander Downer, is gone, DFAT is running a much tighter rule over Olsen’s expenditure on the event, which coincidentally comes at a time when DFAT has copped a $60 million budget cut. Diplomats are being withdrawn from overseas, cuts being imposed in Canberra on staff – and John Olsen is flying Glenn Milne to LA to write puff pieces? What gives?

Goyder’s Wesfarmers is off to a horrible 2008. The floods around Emerald will see the Curragh coal mine lose two to three months production and Goyder’s negotiations to secure a CEO for Coles are proving difficult.

A key element of Peter Costello’s superannuation reforms is to be wound back by PM Rudd and Treasurer Swan. As a result of Costello’s reforms, from 1 July 2007, all pension payments and lump sums taken from taxed superannuation funds by people aged 60 or over have been tax-free. Prior to 1 July 2007, payments were taxed at 15% and payments in excess of what was referred to as the Reasonable Benefits Limit (RBL) were taxed at 38%. Under Treasurer Swan’s proposed changes, a variant of the RBL will be re-introduced. The new RBL level will be set at such a level that it will only tax pensions and lump sums paid to the “wealthy” — but it will be interesting to see where Rudd and Swan decide to set the “wealthy” bar.

It’s Friday and I’m stuck in the Qantas lounge in Sydney awaiting a delayed flight to South Africa. While still on the tarmac it was announced that the plane had two water taps that were leaking and could not be turned off. After engineers had come on board to fix the plumbing we were told that two ovens in the galley would need to be removed to get to the plumbing. After 90 mins of ever longer estimated repair time, we were “de planed”. Business class back to the lounge, cattle class given a voucher for a cup of tea and a bisket. The thought of water leaks in a galley reminds me of the near miss a few weeks ago. I don’t know of any landing strips between Perth and Joberg, so a 1 hour backup battery could be streched if it was called upon on this trip. Wish us luck.

Re. Anti-depressants. I can attest to Aropax being one nasty drug to be on. At least for me. In this case the cure was very much worst than the illness. It made my anxiety far worse and my anti-social behaviour almost unbearable for people around me. It took me two years to successfully get off Aropax, the side effects were horrible. In desperation I once tried cold-turkey, damn near killed me.