Embarrassment of riches: The jig is up, guys. Donald Trump, master deal-maker that he is, has seen right through us when it comes to the AUKUS deal. After all, Australia would have been laughing all the way to the bank, what with the 20,000 local jobs AUKUS will create over the next 30 years at a cost to the taxpayer of just $18 million per job (tops!).
If Australia — as has been pointed out by Bernard Keane today — responds to Trump’s announcement by begging for this transparently awful deal to stay in place, it would be a fitting continuation of the cavalcade of indignities the program has visited upon this nation’s leaders.
It kicked off with then US president Joe Biden forgetting then prime minister Scott Morrison’s name (and, lest we forget, it was Morrison’s reneging on the previous agreement to build submarines with the French that established ScoMo’s reputation as a habitual liar, which Crikey led).
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That it may have ended with Trump having to be reminded what the program was in the first place is perfect in retrospect. But our favourite embarrassment is a deeper cut: the time the Department of Defence launched a “nuclear-powered submarine propulsion challenge” for high schools, a combination of propaganda and child labour that would have been hilarious even if it hadn’t been launched on the worst possible week to try to make submarines fun.
Cats Nights: In April we speculated that American TikTok creator Grace Harris, who went viral for taking an au pair job in Mount Isa, had been employed by none other than Robbie Katter, son of Bob. Crikey can now end the rumours: Katter household, confirmed!
Katter Sr has made his first appearance on Harris’ TikTok account as her “au pair grandfather”, reciting the iconic and sometimes forgotten refrain: “But I ain’t spending anymore time on it”.
@howsweethesound ♬ original sound – howsweethesound
Spilling the Tehan: At last, the great strategic minds within the Liberal Party are revealing themselves! In his first post-election interview with The Australian (where else?), Dan Tehan delivered the sharp insight that… progressive voters don’t want Coalition MPs to be elected.
“What we’re facing is a joined-up progressive front, and the teals work hand in glove with the Greens and with the Labor Party … They’re also using it to maximise the preferential system of voting that we have in this nation, and we’ve got to be very much awake to this threat.”
That it only took two historic Coalition losses for Tehan to connect the dots on the shared politics of Greens, Labor and Climate 200-backed independent voters is proof there are still some savvy operators on board to right the ship.
Forgetful Fin: Tourism Australia managing director Phillipa Harrison recently announced she will leave her top job at the agency. But you wouldn’t know it from a profile on Harrison published yesterday by The Australian Financial Review.
The newspaper awarded the former boss its Women in Leadership Award in the category of “government, education and not-for-profit”. It’s a story about a boss, apparently written with other bosses in mind as the intended audience.
How else do you explain Harrison being quoted as saying that an “open dialogue and a focus on the exciting new international goals helped navigate the initial disappointment [among some team members with a strategic pivot back to the international tourism market] and ensure team alignment with the renewed strategic direction”.
The one crucial detail the story neglects to mention is that Harrison announced just a week earlier she would retire from Tourism Australia, “to take up a new opportunity overseas”. It comes just a year after Harrison was appointed to a second, five-year term at the helm of the agency, a reappointment Crikey was first to report.
The Tips and Murmurs team wishes her all the best.
Lord to tsar: “On behalf of the people of Melbourne, and Premier League fans around the world, I call on [Tottenham Hotspur] to reconsider its decision to sack coach Ange Postecoglou,” has come the cry from Melbourne Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece.
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Yes, Reece is putting his bloody foot down, following Tottenham’s fairly ruthless decision to sack the Paul Keating-quoting Australian manager who delivered the club its first silverware since the early Rudd years.
We are sure the Spurs board has been shaken to its core by the attention (which is made all the more oppressively “Australian media class” by the fact this presumably had to be run past the lord mayor’s chief of staff Nick Leys, former head of comms at the ABC and Louise Milligan’s husband).
Still, in the history of Australia’s contribution to “warning the Tsar”, it has nothing on our favourite: mining magnate Andrew Forrest “reading the riot act” to the Taliban.
ScOOPS!: Journalists love an exclusive — and tend to claim them even when they weren’t first to the worm. Indeed, we’ve kept you abreast of a number of non-exclusive exclusives, including Sydney’s Daily Telegraph getting the scoop on the death of the Pope, or The Nightly’s mistaken reporting on the gifts Australia gave his papal replacement.
So imagine our surprise, while listening to Jim Maxwell’s dulcet tones on the national broadcaster’s coverage of the World Test Championship final between Australia and South Africa this week, to learn SEN CEO Craig Hutchison had claimed on X that his team had “exclusive ball-by-ball coverage” of the match.
ABC Sport producer Akash Fotedar was quick to point out in response that the game is very much available on the ABC — and without ads, he added.
