Labor spinner Alex Cramb will be returning to lobbying outfit Government Relations Australia next week. Cramb joined Nathan Rees’s office when he became Premier last year but on Monday morning will rejoin GRA, where he will work on Commonwealth issues only. Rees has only been told today.

The furore surrounding the now disgraced Ross Daley, who was until yesterday was the Queensland General Manager of the Enhance lobbying group goes much further into Government than is being generally reported.

Ross Daley, as Queensland manager of Enhance, directly employed:

  • Stephen Beckett — current Deputy Chief of Staff to Anna Bligh.
  • Nicole Scurrah — current Deputy Chief of Staff to Anna Bligh.
  • Michael Dart — Chief of Staff to Environment Minister Kate Jones and previously Chief of Staff to Treasurer Andrew Fraser.

Terry Kempenich, joint owner of Enhance and Ross Daley, are both long term friends of Sharon Humphries — current Chief of Staff to Andrew Fraser — in fact all three used to belong to the same local ALP branch and they even all belong to the same Queensland Labor faction.

The National Press Club has announced that their next Golden Gong award for excellence in public affairs will be awarded to Tim Gartrell. This will be the first time that the NPC has bestowed this award on a former political operative with no experience in the public affairs industry (he is now a pollster). Jon Gaul, a long-time Liberal Party strategist received the inaugural Golden Gong, but Gaul also had a long and distinguished career in public affairs. Is this a move by the NPC Board (made up of journalists) to ingratiate themselves with the ALP or by the Club’s CEO who was suspected of having pulled the plug on Channel 9 during the Great Debate at the behest of the Liberal Party?

Do Centrelink regional managers know that their offices are systematically underreporting waiting times? Queues snake out the door, but regional managers see average waiting times of five minutes and think everything’s under control. Dream on. This sort of misleading data just leaves Centrelink offices understaffed but looking efficient on paper.

Apropos Coles not having fully stocked shelves on a Sunday evening. Really Crikey, shame on you for publishing weak whingeing nonsense like that. It’s hardly a tip. Anyone with an ounce of common sense could work out that at the end of the week on a day when there’s unlikely to have been any deliveries, things might be running out. Nor is it a rumour, since it is after all being presented as fact. Perhaps, possessed with this knowledge your correspondents could get themselves better organised —or grab a takeaway. PS Did you know that Woolies in St Ives (NSW) never has three litre home brand light milk first thing on a Friday morning? A curse on those Thursday late night shopping thirsty hordes.