By Noel Towell and Kishor Napier-Raman
Australia Post has swung a sharp axe at its own workforce recently, with a cull of more than 400 positions amid poor financial results and the prospect of the Commonwealth-owned behemoth posting its first loss since 2015.
There is talk among the workforce that there may be more redundancies on the way – maybe because the federal government declined the opportunity a few weeks back to assure remaining postal workers their jobs were safe. Amid the upheaval, chief executive Paul Graham’s comms style is starting to grate on some.
Australia Post CEO Paul Graham.Credit: Arsineh Houspian
The former Woolies chief supply officer signs off every internal message and video presentation with the catchphrase: “Be safe, be kind”.
“The ‘be kind’ message has worn very thin from a guy wielding a very sharp axe, chopping ‘fat’ where [former chief executives] Christine Holgate and Ahmed Fahour couldn’t find it,” a nonplussed insider told CBD, on condition of anonymity.
An Australia Post spokesperson told us on Thursday that there was a serious intent behind the boss’s breezy sign-offs, with Graham an evangelist for the cause of safety in the transport and logistics industry – one of the most hazardous going around, for psychological harm, it turns out – and chairing the Healthy Heads in Trucks and Sheds initiative formed to try to improve matters.
Credit: John Shakespeare
The spokesperson also poured cold water on the idea of more job losses in the offing, saying the most recent round of departures “mostly complete” the process of moving to the corporation’s “future operating model”.
APPEAL NOT APPEALING
CBD reported on Thursday that top defamation silk Sue Chrysanthou was set to be reprimanded by the NSW Bar Council for unsatisfactory professional conduct over accepting a brief to represent former attorney-general Christian Porter.
Sources close to Chrysanthou suggest an appeal either internally or to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal is unlikely, given the decision is already out in the open two years after the complaint was first hatched, and such a slap on the wrist won’t harm the barrister’s booming practice in the slightest.
Chrysanthou certainly has a hefty caseload coming up. A defamation case against the ABC brought by former special forces commando-cum-OnlyFans model Heston Russell heads to trial before the Federal Court next month.
Top defamation lawyer Sue Chrysanthou.Credit: Kate Geraghty
She’s also been retained alongside the cream of the bar, Bret Walker, SC, to act for One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, who is defending a racial discrimination complaint brought by Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi. That case is expected to go to trial early next year. All that high-profile work leaves little time for trifling with the Bar Council, whose decision has already rubbed a few in the Sydney Bar the wrong way.
NET GAINS
As England’s men’s cricketers look to salvage their struggling Ashes campaign in Leeds over the next few days, it warms CBD’s heart to deliver news of another sporting shellacking handed to the mother country.
A team of British politicians from the House of Commons and House of Lords were well beaten by a side representing the Australian parliament in a friendly tennis challenge at Roehampton on Wednesday.
Labor’s Peter Khalil and Don Farrell put political differences with their National Party antagonists Sam Birrell, Darren Chester and David Gillespie aside to down their British opponents 3-1.
We can’t help wonder if things might have been different had the man originally slated to captain the Australian team, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, not been replaced with former world No.1 doubles player Paul McNamee.
But did the bad blood swirling around in the aftermath of the professional Test at Lord’s at the weekend spill over into the politicians’ “friendly” match?
Sorry, no, says Andy Turnbull of the Australian Parliament Sports Club, who puts these things on.
Paul McNamee competes at Wimbledon in 1986.Credit: Getty Images
“Tennis was the winner and the challenge was played in great spirit, enhancing the relationships between our countries in a way only sport can,” Turnbull told us from London on Thursday.
We are reliably informed, though, that the Australians copped a few good-natured sledges when their British opponents realised they had to face the former international pro McNamee.
The two parliaments were due to take to the cricket field on Friday morning (Pom time), though, so hope is not entirely lost.
BUCKLEY’S BYLAW
When you’re an AFL hall-of-famer such as former Collingwood skipper and coach Nathan Buckley, you don’t let trifling matters like City of Melbourne parking bylaws get in the way of your busy day.
So when CBD’s informants spotted the Pies great swatting aside the council’s parking rules outside Southern Cross Station last week with the same ease with which he dispatched opponents in his playing days, we thought: why the heck wouldn’t he?
Nathan Buckley (inset) avoided a parking fine despite parking where he shouldn’t have near Southern Cross Station.Credit: Main: Supplied. Inset: Joe Armao.
Buckley was dropping his son off to catch a V/Line service from the busy station on Friday and, y’know, parking can be tricky round there, so, as our eyewitness put it, Bucks “parked in the no-standing zone like an absolute alpha”.
Buckley told us later that he was “in and out in a jiffy. [I] must have misread the parking signs,” while confirming he hadn’t heard a peep from the council’s normally ubiquitous parking inspectors.
But then, we wouldn’t be in a hurry to write out a ticket for someone who played 280 games of AFL footy, won a Brownlow Medal, a Norm Smith Medal, six club best and fairest awards and – pause for breath – faced more than 3500 centre clearances. Would you?
The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.