Matt Birney from the WA Liberals has recently quit politics for a “business” career. What people don’t know is he was stacked out by the northern alliance. They closed the preselection votes a couple of weeks ago, and Matt has found he has been stacked out, so he has jumped rather than been pushed.

The website of the Victorian Division of the Liberal Party, when listing the Victorian Liberal House of Reps Members, list, Peter Costello first, then followed by Kevin Andrews, Fran Bailey, Bruce Billson, etc, in what is otherwise an alphabetical list. When Peter Costello was Treasurer and Deputy Leader of the Federal Liberal Party his number one posting made sense. Now that he is but a mere backbencher it makes no sense – unless it is some kind of homage paid by an obsequious 104 Exhibition Street (Party HQ).

I just attended a teleconference for a consultancy I am (was?) about to do in the medical field in India. I was advised that for political and security reasons, the contract was looking complex. An Australian might not be able, they said, to work cooperatively with some Indian people at this time. They’re dead serious, too. I wonder how other businesses and expatriates are coping?

Woes with Telstra. I queried an unusually large mobile phone account recently. After a conversation with a machine and the obligatory 10 minute wait, a nice Indian gentleman answered my call. I was starting to explain that I appeared to have been charged for a 21 min call to their message bank at the same time as I was being charged for 19 min National Direct call originating from the message bank. I was about to say this was an impossibility when the kind Indian gentleman immediately offered to deduct $13 from my account. He seemed to be very familiar with the situation. So I started to query other cases where it appeared that I had been charged for dialling into Message Bank at the same time as I was making a call out through Message Bank; without any prompting I was offered another $5 discount. It might be worthwhile for other Crikey readers to check impossible timings in their Mobile/Net MessageBank and the National Direct calls. I wonder how widespread this Telstra “glitch” is?