When a CEO can’t trust their board and refuses to provide them with sensitive company information, well, that’s a signal of downright dysfunction in the relationship.
And that’s basically the NSW Liberal Party at the moment.
Its “board” is the state executive, and its 30-odd “directors” are currently being denied access to the raw membership numbers by state director Richard Shields. He’s worried someone, somehow, is leaking that data to the media.
And to some extent he’s right.
In April, this column was provided with a trove of documents prepared for the party’s state executive meeting in March.
It contained a wealth of tantalising numbers and internal secrets, revealing the party had 9761 paid-up members, cash holdings of $5.7m, and incoming fees that were forecast to hit $887,000 but were running nearly $20,000 short.
As a consequence, previously barred Liberal applicants were being waved through for easy membership – if for no other reason than to close that budgetary gap.
Everyone on the state executive wants to know the membership numbers.
They’re entitled to know, especially at this time of year, a fresh financial year, when so many memberships are up for renewal. It’s why a question was put to Shields at the monthly meeting two Fridays ago asking why the figures were being withheld for the second month in a row.
Shields pushed back, warning everyone present that when the leaking stops he’ll “think about” putting membership numbers back into the monthly papers.
“This is information our opponents would like to get their hands on,” he reportedly said. Hilarious. You’d think this was a gathering of Five Eyes leaders the way they’re carrying on.
Such is the distrust that, for the time being, everyone present is being issued with watermarked copies of their board papers, with their surnames written diagonally across every page in 48-point font.
No membership numbers are being presented for now, per the injunction, and as for the party’s finances, they’re being revealed live using disappearing messages as the meeting takes place.
Uni chief’s ‘downfall’
Australian Catholic University staff have knocked together a parody video of vice-chancellor Zlatko Skrbis in response to employee departures and some financial decision-making at the university. Skrbis is being subjected to the ritual teasing that CEOs in crisis are bound to receive: he’s being satirised using the Downfall meme format.
Those familiar with the film will know what we’re talking about: it’s that scene where a spittle-flecked Adolf Hitler goes ballistic at commanders in an underground bunker during the final days of the war.
Whoever added their own subtitles wanted to highlight a number of problems afflicting ACU in recent years, namely its falling enrolments numbers, a budget deficit and redundancies.
They also used the video to claim that Skrbis “just wanted the Monash job”, a reference to the recently vacated role of vice-chancellor at Monash University, occupied by Professor Margaret Gardner until she was appointed Governor of Victoria last year. Professor Sharon Pickering was named her successor.
“I applied to Monash but I wasn’t even short-listed,” the subtitles say. “They appointed some internal nobody instead. Now I’m stuck at this crappy university, captaining a sinking ship where no one recognises my genius!”
Humorous as this all sounds, we wondered if it was even remotely true. Apparently not. We asked Skrbis about Monash, and sent a link to the video, but an ACU spokeswoman said: “Professor Skrbis did not apply for the role at Monash University.”
We’ll leave it at that.
But we will note that a BP worker was once sacked for dummying up a similar Downfall video that sent up the company’s enterprise bargaining negotiations. He only won his job back in 2020 after an appeal to the full bench of the Fair Work Commission.
Changing lane
He weathered an onslaught of scandal and inquiry over the past 18 months at PwC Australia, and now the firm’s reliable spinner-in-chief, Patrick Lane, is leaving to take up a job with industry-super owned IFM Investors as its head of corporate communications. (Wife Georgia Brumby sits on the Super Members Council, so a bit of symmetry there!) Lane starts in September, replacing Adam Sims, who left IFM to start with FMRS Advisory, a firm he started with Lissie Ratcliff, Jessie McCrone and Ben Foster, all former staffers to former Victorian premier and commissar Dan Andrews.
Lane’s departure means his offsider, Lucy Hinton, will be stepping up as PwC’s head of media relations, starting in August. PwC is also in the process of adding Jesse Krncevic as its head of government affairs, Krncevic still fresh in a similar role at ASIC. Insiders tell us he’s the first big hire under newly appointed corporate affairs chief Sharon Rockell, who started three months ago.
No hope in hell
And finally, we’ve had an ongoing interest in the matter of rapist prison guard Wayne Astill, whose predation on female inmates in NSW saw him imprisoned for a maximum of 23 years.
The aftershocks of that saw the NSW government launch a special commission of inquiry into Astill’s offending, and in March those findings seemed to end the career of Corrective Services NSW Commissioner Kevin Corcoran, whose departure was announced internally without so much as a perfunctory “thank you” for his service in the body of the text.
We raise this now only to note that Astill attempted to appeal against the length of his prison term last month. He was convicted for offending against 13 victims, for crimes that included aggravated sexual assault, indecent assault, acts of indecency and misconduct in public office.
In a decision delivered on Monday, the judges not only refused leave for Astill to appeal but informed him that, in any event, they would have dismissed the grounds had leave been granted in the first place. So, basically, an indication that he never had a hope in hell. “The aggregate sentence, although very stern, cannot be said to be erroneous,” the chief justice said.
A fitting conclusion, and one that was heard by a number of female victims who were in court for the verdict.
Game, set and much posturing at opening salvo
Let’s call it the first — and ultimate — status update of the corporate season. School assembly for the CEOs. The gathering of big-shots and silverbacks. The Australian Open tennis finals.
More wrongs than rights at the AHRC?
A case of curious priorities over at the Australian Human Rights Commission where hand-picked appointee Giridharan Sivaraman seems to prefer playing politics over action on anti-Semitism.