Various press reports yesterday have it that the ACT Greens were advertising overseas for a fulltime worker for Simon Sheikh’s Senate campaign and planning to pay them less than Gina Rinehart’s infamous “$2 an hour” – in fact, they were going to be paid a bit of board and lodging, and the airfare. Visa, 457 [...]

Michael Brand of the Art Gallery of New South Wales says he is going to go to the feds cap in hand and ask for a contribution to the gallery’s plans to double in size by 2021 at a cost of many millions of private philanthropy dollars/taxpayer dollars.
It will be interesting to see how the [...]

So, the term “several thousand” would have to mean “at least 3,000 families, in common parlance. Katy Gallagher has announced that $10 million will be spent on funding “several thousand” families with “$5,000 a year” under the first stage of the NDIS, “from July” with “full rollout by 2014″.
It turns out that the full rollout [...]

I had lunch at Me & Mother Jones with two friends and it was talked up in advance. What a disappointment.
The service was so abysmally slow (we arrived on time at 1 pm; ordered 1.10; main course arrived at 2.00 pm).
Now, at MMJ you are talking restaurant prices – including $7.00 a glass corkage for [...]

Katy attempting to smear the new Liberal leader as a “bully” was the clumsiest tactic I have ever observed in Canberra local politics.
So clearly based on Julia Gillard’s UK campaign adviser’s work.
This attempt to drag ACT politics into the hideous federal bare knuckle-and-abuse parliamentary exchanges will not take her and her team anywhere. [...]

The Government isn’t making it too clear how it is going about putting together the Royal Commission into Child Abuse. For the benefit of Canberrans who would like to, or feel they should,  make a submission to inform the secretariat BEFORE they set up and freeze the framework, the deadline is 26 November – just [...]

“THE states and territories are preparing to offer the federal government a deal under which they will slash inefficient stamp duties in exchange for a $13 billion slice of the nation’s income tax.” The Australian, this week.
Can Katy Gallagher’s ACT Labor Government seriously argue that they weren’t already discussing and planning this arrangement [...]

I voted at Pilgrim House and found the arrangements a bit slack. The polling box was soft green canvas, and when I went to “drop” mine in, it was so full, and the zip closer so soft and wide, that I could easily have reach in and fished out a handful of votes, with the [...]

ABC radio news this morning broadcast an interview with Katie Gallagher where she – interestingly – reported Liberal “harrassment” to the police but on the basis that “nothing was to be done” (create smoke without having to evidence fire). Her account painted a picture of a group of Liberal men “following her car closely” as [...]

I have a handmade leather bag that needs different (longer) straps – the current ones are set in, in brass fittings, so I’m probably needing to look for an expert leather worker.
Any recommendations?

Does anyone know the facts about “rates tripling” as per the Liberal Party ads?
I can’t afford to pay $130 a WEEK for rates on the average wage!
What is Katie Gallagher thinking? And this will affect tenants surely?

UPDATE 21/09/12 12:30: Andrew Barr’s office have sent in this reply:
The Liberals are using an Abbott-style scare [...]

I can’t find Andrew Leigh in the ABC’s list.
He wouldn’t have absented himself from the chamber, surely?

Simon Corbell on 666 this morning responded to a comment by the announcer highlighting that the “no waste by 2010″ never happened. Corbell was saying that targets are just something you work towards, and that what counts is the effort and “making some progress”. This was all in the context of Labor’s green energy “plans [...]

Wraparound in yesterday’s Crimes announces that Germs is to deliver a keynote speech at Manning Clark House as part of the centenary celebrations.
Now, with Greer pretty much having had NOTHING to say about Canberra, ever, any thoughts about Robyn “doesn’t know the word diaspora” Archer’s strategy on this one?
Is she counting on Greer [...]

Fifteen years ago a friend of mine with a profoundly disabled son requiring 24-hour care moved to Canberra all the way from WA specifically because of the standard of care the ACT offered. He lived on in high care for more than ten years.
Does anyone know how these NDIS “launch sites” will work, and whether [...]

I don’t want to embark on a whine fest, but if anyone has dealt with, or observed, a subtle bully in the APS I’d appreciate some advice on what to do. I’m experiencing the classic subtle bully – everyone else on the team kept happy as lark, and I’m on a ‘slow track’ and my [...]