By Kishor Napier-Raman and Stephen Brook
One of the lessons of this column is that there is always life after the Independent Commission Against Corruption.
Former premier Gladys Berejiklian, found to have engaged in serious corrupt conduct, is still a well-paid Optus executive. Her erstwhile secret lover Daryl Maguire runs a cafe in the NSW outback town of Ivanhoe (population 162), while fighting criminal charges that he misled the ICAC.
Sarah Cruickshank, former chief of staff to Gladys Berejiklian, has taken up a new role with the Queensland Department of Justice.Credit: Janie Barrett
And Sarah Cruickshank, Gladys’ fiercely loyal ride or die former chief of staff whose bombshell evidence played a key role in the premier’s downfall, is now a top public servant in Queensland.
Cruickshank was tapped by the Sunshine State’s new Premier David Crisafulli to run its Department of Justice last month, and kicked off her position as director general on Monday. She previously held a senior role with the NSW Department of Customer Service before taking a six-month career break last year.
Cruickshank and Berejiklian’s relationship went back to their days in student politics. It was shattered over the course of hearings before the ICAC. In 2021, Cruickshank revealed Berejiklian had lied to her about the nature and length of her relationship with Maguire when she first disclosed it in a phone call three years earlier.
Cruickshank’s admission to the inquiry that she’d had “a few wines” on the night of the phone call was later used by Berejiklian in an attempt to persuade the Commission the former staffer had misunderstood her.
This evidence was ultimately rejected by the ICAC, finding that Berejiklian had lied to her chief of staff about the “nature, length and intimacy” of her relationship with Maguire.
We wish her a quieter time in Queensland.
Fishy business
Tasmanian salmon is so hot right now. Crisis hot, you might say.
So it strikes us as very odd timing for the industry body to be changing chief executives.
To recap – bacterial disease piscirickettsiosis killed one million salmon in February and is spreading, and the world is worried about the industry killing off the endangered Maugean skate, the “thylacine of the sea”, in Macquarie Harbour.
The Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young and the “stinking extinction salmon”.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Leonardo DiCaprio has raised the alarm to his 60 million social media followers, and Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young waved a dead salmon (as she put it, a “stinking extinction salmon”) in a plastic bag in the Senate chamber. Even iconic Hobart waterfront restaurant Mures has taken local salmon off the menu out of concern.
Meanwhile, the prime minister vowed to protect jobs in the industry, and the government’s laws to shield salmon farms from legal challenges have the entire environmental movement up in arms.
It’s at this point that Luke Martin, chief executive of Salmon Tasmania, is exiting after just two years in the job, with some lavish praise from the organisation’s chair. He beat the reign of his predecessor, who lasted about 18 months.
As the Tasmanian Times reported: “Luke Martin flees rotting salmon crisis.”
Martin has landed on his feet at a taxpayer-funded gig working for Tasmanian Labor leader Dean Winter.
Martin told CBD: “I’ll leave it to others to judge how successful I have been in this role, but from my perspective the Macquarie Harbour situation has been the most challenging process I have ever been a part of, and having now secured a resolution for the industry and the workers, it is an opportunity to go out on a high.”
The new guy in charge is Dr John Whittington, a former secretary of the state primary industries water and environment department, who used to regulate the industry.
Clive stream
To be fair, getting punters to pay $45 to watch a live stream of Tucker Carlson was always going to be a tough sell, particularly when the American hard-right media personality already broadcasts for free on the platform once known as Twitter.
So it came as little surprise when billionaire mining magnate and Carlson’s local impresario Clive Palmer pulled the plug on a series of local shows last week, citing concerns about having a foreigner comment on the Australian election. Also, Tucker’s dad, Dick Carlson, a former journalist of the more legitimate sort, recently died. And about 90 per cent of tickets were unsold.
Whatever the reason, Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots roadshow wouldn’t be going ahead. Except nobody told the folks at Queensland Tourism. The state government’s official website still features a show for Tuesday night at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre among a list of things to do.
Why was a government-backed website listing Palmer’s latest bit of goofiness? Had they failed to pick up on the cancellation? Our questions went unanswered.
Meanwhile, even without beaming into Australia Tucker is still making his presence felt, appearing alongside Palmer on the ubiquitous yellow billboards popping up around the country to mark the start of election season. In an act of typical Palmerian political trolling, there’s even one right outside Greens leader Adam Bandt’s electorate office in Fitzroy.
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