By Stephen Brook and Samantha Hutchinson
NAB indulged in more than a bit of fanfare when it trumpeted that it was going to “mothball” its corporate headquarters at 700 Bourke Street and 800 Bourke Street in Docklands. It seemed the right thing to do in the COVID climate, apparently.
But it appears there was one small snag in the plan: the boss.
Chief executive Ross McEwan was based at 700 Bourke Street, and despite plans in place to shift all workers still required in the office further up the street to another, older NAB building, he obviously wants to stay put.
Last week, McEwan appeared via video link before the federal government’s economics standing committee, along with chief risk officer Shaun Dooley from – you guessed it – 700 Bourke Street. It sounded pretty lonely at the top.
“I'm sitting in a building here that was built for 5000 people, maybe five and a half thousand people, and there are probably six in it today,” McEwan told the committee.
It wasn’t a one-off. Sources inside the bank confirmed to CBD that McEwan has been working a number of days a week out of the supposedly shuttered building and working from home on other days. A creature of habit, no doubt.
And besides, on a skeleton staff someone’s still got to function as a groundskeeper, right?
The rest of the bank’s worker drones, meanwhile, are stationed at daggy 500 Bourke Street, or at home.
AMP's all-staff blooper
It’s the sensitive email urging confidentiality about plans to monitor staff emails – that was accidentally sent to hundreds of staff.
Where else but at the glorious madness that is AMP, where executives at the under-pressure wealth giant discussed positioning the new system as an IT upgrade, and warned about keeping discussions confidential because of the fear of leaks to the media.
Communication breakdown.Credit: Illustration: John Shakespeare
"We've changed the language to position it as a straightforward change from IT – are you happy for this to come from you?" a communications manager at AMP wrote to colleagues.
"We are keen to keep it short given the potential for a leak," another email reads, before referencing a "previous email … that ended up in the media". Oh, dear.
"Would prefer not to use email but given the change we need this to land in front of as many people as possible," the AMP communications manager wrote to colleagues. Oh, dear times two.
The email was accidentally sent to a company-wide email address, and about 150 staff received it.
AMP has been hit by a series of internal leaks, which culminated in the resignation of chairman David Murray and the demotion of its second most senior executive, Boe Pahari. Another memorable leak – published in CBD, no less – included a report that dished on the company's missteps when it splashed out $800 million on a Brisbane shopping centre that so far has failed to perform.
An AMP source said the new monitoring system was automatic and did not involve human scanning, and was similar to some email programs that flag missing attachments.
A pop-up box will now require AMP staff to submit a business reason for sending an email deemed sensitive.
AusPost haste
Question of the week: what is worse for Australia Post than a social media video parodying your leader by using the famous Adolf Hitler rant from the German film Downfall? Answer: a second AusPost YouTube parody.
Our story about the anonymous uploading of a video mocking chief executive Christine Holgate’s cutting of postal services also referenced attempts by AusPost to get it taken down. Unfortunately, CBD’s item didn’t make it into the organisation’s media clips for the morning. That hurt.
But hours later a second video was posted by the mysterious uploader GavPost, who has a heck of a lot of inside knowledge.
AusPost has denied it is on anything that could remotely resemble a witch-hunt, but a source tells CBD that AusPost security boss Kevin Zuccato is on the case.
So far, YouTube has failed to accede to AusPost’s requests to take the video down, or indeed its sequel – Back in the Bunker with Christine Holgate (the fall of the spin doctors). It contains captions poking fun at AusPost’s internal communications executives and external crisis spin doctors.
“We are tapping all middle managers, anyone named Gav or Gavin and we have Michelle Skehan and Ross Thornton watching Senator Kim Carr’s office in a van,” one caption reads.
But AusPost needs to tread warily. BP fired an employee who shared a similar Downfall meme, but refinery worker Scott Tracey persuaded the full bench of the workplace tribunal on appeal that the whole thing was just a joke. Not only did Tracey get his job back, but BP was ordered to pay him $200,000 compensation.
Bubble bill
There’s been news from inside the AFL bubble on the Gold Coast.
Hostplus chief executive David Elia and his family have completed their two weeks of quarantine.
As readers might recall, Elia gave a master class in how to capitalise on the perks of the job by ditching Melbourne in early September to leg it to the Gold Coast to take up residence with the AFL brigade ahead of the October 24 grand final in Brisbane. It was all for business, apparently, given the super giant sponsors the Gold Coast Suns and acts as the AFL’s super fund manager. The line from the PR team is there are “three offices and more than 200,000 members” in Queensland, “representing $8 billion of Hostplus' current funds under management”.
Now he is out and about, Elia will be, a Hostplus spokesman tells us, “taking the opportunity to meet with local investment managers”.
Why his wife and adult children are there is less clear. But we now know who paid for the whole jaunt.
“Not us,” an AFL insider told CBD. Apparently Elia insisted he pay his own way for not only his flights to sunny Queensland, but also for his accommodation and that of his family while quarantining inside the AFL compound. Presumably reading the room.