By Noel Towell and Kishor Napier-Raman
An election pitch from a war zone has a way of piquing voters’ interest, so ABC journo Tom Joyner will be hoping his appeal to colleagues for support in the curiously high-profile ballot at the national broadcaster for the $70,000-a-year role of staff-elected board director will have a certain cut-through.
Fever pitch: Laura Tingle, Dan Bourchier and Indira Naidoo.Credit: John Shakespeare
In the wake of a near unanimous vote of Aunty’s workforce to go briefly on strike next week, email statements from the eight contenders for the board role lobbed into corporation inboxes this week, with Joyner’s understandably arriving a little later, what with him being on the ground in Ukraine covering Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion.
According to Joyner, a generation of “culturally diverse, politically engaged and digitally literate” younger Australians increasingly felt alienated from a broadcaster that faces the challenge of its audience dying out.
“The young people of today have potential to be our audiences long into the future. But instead we are losing them in droves,” Joyner wrote, noting the “sharp and irreversible ... decline” of broadcast audiences.
The main media union was sending mass texts to members urging a vote for Melbourne-based business reporter Dan Ziffer on Thursday, although Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance federal media president Karen Percy also urged staff to consider backing Canberra presenter and Drum co-host Dan Bourchier, as well 7.30 chief political correspondent Laura Tingle and veteran broadcaster Indira Naidoo.
Bourchier and head of Indigenous, diversity and inclusion Kelly Williams are vying to be the first Aboriginal director since Neville Bonner in 1991.
Tingle backed her campaign – perhaps the most hyped run for elected office since Donald Trump first hit town – with a lengthy statement (more than 1300 words and several different fonts) that could be summarised as a plea for the ABC to grow a pair.
Tingle landed a glowing endorsement from News Breakfast host Michael Rowland (on both Twitter and Instagram), and has the backing of the CPSU, but not the MEAA.
Making up the numbers are research co-ordinator Alison Wall and audio specialist Graham Himmelhoch-Mutton who wins for best name.
FOSSIL RULE
It was in with the new and out with the old at the launch of the Gandel Gondwana Garden on Thursday morning at the Melbourne Museum backed by rich-listers and Chadstone owners John Gandel and wife Pauline Gandel.
John Gandel is keeping his fossil thank-you gift despite Pauline Gandel’s efforts to hand it back.Credit: Jason South
The space was previously a Myer family auditorium, but naming rights have switched from one prominent Melbourne clan to another and there is now no mention of the Myers in the space.
Longevity was on the mind of John Gandel – and not just because he’s worked up about Jim Chalmers’ proposed superannuation changes – who said he had previously been called a fossil by newspapers and didn’t appreciate it “but here it’s OK”.
What do you give the people who can buy anything they want? The museum opted for a fossil, of course, as a thank-you gift to the Gandels for putting up $1 million towards the $7 million garden.
Pauline Gandel tried to donate the fossil back, but John reckons it’s a keeper.
“I’m not giving it back, I’m keeping it,” he said.
GARDENING LEAVE
Virgin Australia founder Rob Sherrard proved quite the fly in Bain Capital’s ointment a couple of years ago as an adviser to creditors of the stricken carrier who forced the US private equity giant’s takeover all the way to the end of the runway, well, the Federal Court.
Now Sherrard and his mate Brett Godfrey – Virgin’s first CEO – have a few noses out of joint in the Tasmanian green thumb community after the cancellation of the Gardenfest event. It was due to be held at the 19th century landmark Entally Estate, to which Sherrard and Godfrey hold the leasehold and have poured millions of dollars into the property in recent years to create quite a flash spread.
Brett Godfrey is feeling the wrath of Tasmania’s green thumb community. Credit: Paul Harris
The biannual event is quite the thing in the horticulture sector in northern Tassie, attracting thousands of visitors to each iteration, and would-be stallholders have been vocal in expressing “disappointment”, “devastation” and “frustration” at the short-notice cancellation, not to mention the money lost on stock bought in anticipation of decent sales at the weekend.
The reason the event was nipped in the bud? Well, a rookie error from an outfit run by couple of blokes who have been in the corporate game since before CBD was a nipper. The ASIC registration for the company that holds the lease on the estate, Entally Lodge Pty Ltd, expired a few months ago and nobody remembered to renew the paperwork.
Without proper registration for the event organisers, insurance could not be obtained, and in these litigious times the show could not go on.
The Sherrard and Godfrey camp, which did not respond on Thursday to CBD’s request for comment, has been terribly apologetic in the local Tassie media, for what has been described variously as “clerical error”, and “administrative error”, with the task of re-registering the company falling “between the cracks”
But Entally insists the event will be back as scheduled in November, and we’re backing them to get it right this time.
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