By Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell
The Australian Institute of Company Directors had some solid names lend their support to the launch of its “cyber-security principles” – a very hot topic following the Optus and Medibank hacks – including the federal minister in charge Clare O’Neil and the Cyber Security Co-operative Research Centre CEO Rachael Falk.
So it’s less than ideal when an online conference on Monday to launch the principles was – true story – hacked, leaving the institute’s boss Mark Rigotti and LinkedIn, the platform hosting the event with a bit of a PR problem.
Thousands of would-be participants began to get antsy when they tried to log on for a 1pm start and the conference didn’t go live on schedule.
As the comments from the waiting participants began to mount, a fake Eventbrite link – which many unsuspecting users clicked upon – was posted in the LinkedIn chat function asking for credit card details, leading the institute to plead with participants not to try to use any links posted in the chat.
When an AICD link appeared to the event, some users who hadn’t learnt their lesson the first time round tried to follow it only to complain that it didn’t work and eventually, about 30 minutes into the debacle, the institute bowed to the inevitable and cancelled the event.
Rigotti said on Monday evening that it was unclear if any credit card details had been handed over and urged anybody affected to contact their card issuers.
“The AICD apologises sincerely for the unacceptable issues with the LinkedIn Live event,” he said.
“We recognise this experience has fallen well below the high standards our members rightly expect of the AICD.”
Budget on the run
On the run: Treasurer Jim Chalmers.Credit: Shakespeare
Treasurer Jim Chalmers looked a treat on the front page of Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian on Monday morning, photographed in his active wear jogging through the southern Brisbane woods as he prepares to hand down his first budget today.
It’s the type of image that ticks a lot of boxes for political media minders, showing their man looking fit for the helm of the ship of state and all that, but CBD frets that Chalmers might be tempting fate with that photo-op.
If you hark back less than six months you find an almost identical pic of Chalmers’ predecessor Josh Frydenberg in shorts, T-shirt, trainers, the lot, right down to the placement on page 1 of the Oz, just as he was about to hand down what turned out to be his final budget before his party lost government and Frydenberg himself lost his seat.
So, careful you don’t trip up there, Jim.
Nature is healing
Staying with Canberra’s budget week (it’s not a real budget, but we’ll let that go) a new Labor government, plus a record number of Greens and upper middle class climate-focused types was always bound to see a change in the kind of lobby groups peddling their wares in the corridors of power.
That new normal appears to include more naturopaths. To “alleviate the stress of budget week,” the Naturopaths and Herbalists Association of Australia have been distributing care packages to MPs offices and press gallery bureaus, containing an array of austere snacks – protein balls, chia seeds and the like.
It also comes with a side invite to the NHAA’s breakfast event, at Parliament House’s mural hall next month, where the group is hoping to get momentum behind a push to have naturopaths recognised as a registered health practice “for the wellbeing and safety of the nation”.
That might take more than a few granola bars.
Messiah in the mail
Ryuho Okawa’s devotees believe he’s the reincarnation of a supreme being from Venus.
The charismatic Japanese former Wall St trader’s followers make up a religious sect known as Happy Science, a kind of Tokyo mashup of Scientology. In 2020, Okawa told those adherents they could cure COVID by buying his “spiritual vaccines”. And his political wing, the Happiness Realization Party, denies Japan’s World War II era war crimes, and blames Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky for Russia’s invasion.
In other words, Happy Science promotes some deeply weird ideas.
So we were a little surprised to see Okawa’s books start popping up on Parliamentary registers of interests, with NSW Women’s Safety Minister Natalie Ward receiving a copy of his recent tome The Laws of the Messiah, mailed from Happy Science’s Australian headquarters – a grandiose neoclassical building in Lane Cove.
CBD hears the minister and her staff had never heard of, nor met anyone from Happy Science, and Okawa’s book was just more of that strange unsolicited mail pollies too often get.
Mine craft
The tussle to gain control of debt-laden mining minnow Australian Pacific Coal has had CBD enthralled in recent months as discharged bankrupt Nathan “Boganaire” Tinkler lined up with John Canavan – little brother of coal’s man in Canberra Senator Matt Canavan – to get their hands on the company and its major asset, a hole in the ground at Dartbrook in the Hunter Valley.
The Tinkler-Canavan designs on the mine looked to have come to nought last month after APC’s largest creditor and shareholder Trepang Services, owned by pearl king Nick Paspaley and John “Foxy” Robinson gave its blessings to a rival proposal – a joint venture between Tetra Resources and Javelin to reopen APC’s Dartbrook coal mine.
So Tinkler and his partners might have allowed themselves a sigh of relief on Monday after the NSW government, at the stroke of a pen, announced it would ban open cut mining at Dartbrook.
APC was putting on a brave face to the stock exchange on Monday, telling investors that it hadn’t given up hope of changing the state government’s mind and besides, there was no problem mining coal underground at the site.
Let’s hope that is enough to satisfy Tetra and Javelin, because the level of local opposition to any open cut operation at Dartbrook makes a change of heart by the NSW government unlikely.
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