Treasurer Jim Chalmers didn’t exactly jump at the opportunity on Friday to endorse his department’s new guidelines on the use of gender-affirming language in its many offices and satellite bureaus.
The 26-page document, reported by Margin Call on Friday and rippling with woke tosh, strongly encourages Treasury staff to use pronouns in their email signatures, to avoid loaded language (like ‘‘mother’’ or ‘‘father’’) and to announce their gender upon greeting an unfamiliar colleague. Plainly, there is no better time to be having this discussion.
Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy signed off on the guidelines mere weeks ago and even wrote a few blandishments by way of an introduction (although no sign of any pronouns in his signature).
Its dissemination to all staff could not have been more awkwardly arranged in light of Kennedy’s post-budget address in Melbourne on Thursday.
There he whanged on about flailing productivity, the dangers posed, the potential drop we all face in living standards.
Meanwhile, the boffins in charge of fixing it have quite literally been getting re-educated on bathroom usage.
On Friday the department remained sphinx-like following our request to learn the number of Treasury employees who identify as gender diverse. As a percentage of its 1500-strong workforce we’re betting it’s vanishingly small.
Rest assured, almost every staff member received a browbeating over the document and the academic abstraction of gender theory.
No response from Chalmers, either, so who knows if he even endorses the guidelines. We asked the question,
Worth noting, too, is that the document was signed on May 9, the date of this year’s federal budget, a period of utter panic and flat-out exhaustion for the nation’s public servants, most of all those at Treasury.
Clearly the economic landscape can’t be so dire if Treasury’s top folx are hand-wringing over the thorny business of pronouns and not, say, the menace of long-term structural threats to the country.
Is this why the Albanese government is rewarding bureaucrats with a 10.5 per cent pay rise over the next three years?
All Betts are off
Former Wentworth MP and Liberal turncoat Peter King appears to have achieved the unexpected, having ended the lengthy reign of Sally Betts as president of the seat’s Federal Election Committee.
That showdown was held during an AGM at Woollahra Golf Club on Thursday night before 106 voting members, the tally splitting 47-59 in King’s favour.
“All dictators eventually get toppled,” said one person, clearly not a fan of Betts. She held the role for about six years running.
There is an irony here in toppling a president who’s been so energised about lifting the number of women in the Liberal Party. Just last week, in an email to colleagues, Betts urged fellow party members to vote strongly in favour of NSW Liberal president Maria Kovacic at the upcoming senate preselection challenge on May 27.
That’s after Kovacic tanked in last year’s federal election, running against Labor’s Andrew Charlton in the seat of Parramatta.
“We have complained for a long time that some ‘amazing’ women have lost out to ‘quite nice’ guys. Let’s change that and show the community we have listened,” Betts said, in the email obtained by Margin Call.
King, a 70-year-old barrister, was ousted from Wentworth by Malcolm Turnbull during a preselection contest in 2004. Infuriated, he hit back by running in that year’s election as an independent (Turnbull won) and consequently endured a 10-year ban from the party.
One person who voted for him and not for Mal? Sally Betts – but, then again, loyalty buys nothing these days.
Back to the AGM. King fronted the crowd spruiking a platform of party renewal that seemed to win over those in the audience. Betts, we hear, gave a speech that evidently cost her votes the longer it went on.
As one witness said: “(It) smacked of entitlement and offered no plan for the future.”
Mensink move
Clive Palmer’s fugitive nephew Clive Mensink is nothing if not persistent.
The former director of Queensland Nickel fled Australia in 2016 following the collapse of a company owned by his well-ripened uncle.
He’s been engaged in legal action ever since.
Margin Call hears Mensink has now applied to the Federal Court for a stay on legal proceedings, doing so from his bolthole in Sofia, Bulgaria, where he runs a consultancy business. He can do that now; he has permanent residency.
This latest follows two failed attempts to have contempt of court proceedings thrown out, along with a warrant for his arrest. The stay application was applied for on May 3, with the registrar provided with an end-of-the-month window to respond. Should it proceed, a hearing is slated for mid July.
Queensland Nickel was placed into voluntary administration owing $30m to employees and almost $200m to creditors. At the time, Mensink refused to comply with repeated orders to attend court for questioning about the collapse. Hence the warrant, the charges, etc.
For a time, at least, he was receiving a stipend from his wealthy uncle to remain on the run.
In 2018 Palmer confirmed that he was giving Mensink $4000 per week. It’s unclear whether those payments persist.
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