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Friday 9th August 1996
Friday 9th August 1996
This in the lead up to a Presidential election - whackee do.. like Caesar of old he will be able to say "I came, I saw, I conquered", or should it be "I went, I saw, I ran a mile". Guess the latter would be true if the little green men did suddenly appear.
Now where is Dr Spok when you really need him?
The highly publicised row has led to the Leader of the state Labor opposition producing a large, ugly and above all well used baby's dummy in Parliament and saying something to the Premier to the effect that "Hey mate I think you lost this."
The Courier Mail is keeping the little fire going nicely with some comments in today's paper that would appear to be aimed at increasing circulation rather than provide balanced reporting.
The row is too complicated to cover here but involves the future of Public Servants and their role in government. Obviously some of the more senior bureaucrats who could be effected have mates in the media.
He really got up the Coalition Government's nose in 1993 with rumours circulating that he did a deal with Keating for more shares in the media group in exchange for favourable coverage of the Labor party in the lead up to the election that year.
News is that Packer's got sick and tired of his 14.99% and a new overseas player, Bankers Trust Australia Limited has received Federal Government approval to buy up the parcel. This little purchase will bring their holding to about 23%.
Move aside Conrad, here comes Alexander the Great.
But Graham's wife has had to "trash" special gifts she had bought for wives of the members of the team.
New captain Peter Thomson has asked players to keep quiet about the fracas which apparently occured when Australian golfer Greg Norman started shooting from the hip.
There is apparently no doubt that the players regret their decision to replace Graham so close to the event and perhaps this view has been strengthened with Graham now threatening a defamation suit for "damage to his character".
Graham described the coup as a conspiracy saying, "People I thought I knew, players I respected, stabbed me in the back. I'm devastated. And I may never get an explanation."
The Budget will bundle many existing assistance programmes into a new "youth allowance" which will be means tested on the parents' income.
Payments effected include the Job Search Allowance, the Training Youth Allowance and Austudy.
Got to agree with the last one. Bondy's daughter was one of our more extreme examples of how the system was rorted in the past. The business mogul of the 1980's who sailed his billion dollar company Bond Limited down a dead end in 1987 gave his daughter a Ferrari to drive to university while she was getting Austudy because daddy's income was so low...
You might recall our coverage of well loved television personality Andrew Olle who died last December.
Well television personality, Paul Lyneham, yesterday criticised the Australian Broadcasting Service (ABC) for its insensitive treatment of Olle in the last few months of his life.
Lyneham, who like his late friend, was dropped from the ABC's current affair program, The 7.30 Report, said Olle went through a private hell as he battled unexpected demotion and the onset of illness.
"He was ignored. He was cast aside. He was heartbroken", Lyneham said.
Lyneham said that he and Olle were left in the dark about plans for The 7.30 Report. Management then told them that the program would go national, with Kerry O'Brien as presenter, Olle would be dumped and Lyneham's job would be halved.
Speaking at the Sydney launch of the biography Andrew Olle: A Tribute; Lyneham was joined by Four Corners reporter Chris Masters and ABC radio regular Margaret Throsby.
More than 400 people attended the celebration of a "genuinely decent bloke" who died suddenly at the age of 47.
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