Joe Hockey in Washington DC
Joe Hockey (Image: Sky News)

Hocking your talents It’s the type of deal Joe Hockey could have only dreamed of when he set up his lobbying shop Bondi Partners last year. The former treasurer and ex-ambassador to Washington is said to be advising troubled mobile phone juggernaut Digicel Pacific on a potential sale to Telstra — in partnership with the Australian government — worth $2 billion. The story goes that the US and Australia are keen to stop the company, currently controlled by Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien, from being sold to China. 

Enter Hockey, who is back in Sydney and apparently working behind the scenes with Digicel to stop China buying the assets. Working behind the scenes sounds incredibly like lobbying to us, so we asked Bondi Partners if it, or Hockey, should be listed on the Australian government’s lobbyist register. It told us: “Bondi Partners is fully aware of the regulations governing lobbying services and registration in Australia and confirms that in its capacity as an adviser to Digicel it has not initiated or conducted any such lobbying activity.”

Winter of this content You’d be forgiven for looking at last weekend’s protests and not knowing what they were about. Protesters were brought together with a potpourri of gripes — no mandatory vaccines (who’s calling for that? No one, as far as we can tell), ban QR codes, stop lockdowns — under the banner of freedom. These physical protests serve another purpose as well: creating content. The demands of social media necessitates that protesters post photos of themselves, record monologues, even live-stream themselves breaking the law.

There doesn’t need to be a point of the protest other than looking like you’re protesting, because that kind of engaging, eye-catching content helps grow an online audience. George Christensen is an illuminating example. The outgoing LNP MP repeatedly posted to social about the protests in the lead-up to, during and after them. Importantly, he shared a photograph of himself speaking at the rally in Mackay, looking like he’s doing something. For what reason? That’s a bit more vague. There’s no lockdown in Mackay. You might even call it “virtue signalling”.

In your Stead We should have known. The defamation case brought against columnist Joe Aston by venture capitalist Elaine Stead continues to billow out clouds of column ink like a startled octopus. If you’ve not yet acquainted yourself with the surreal magic of the trial, which required Aston, among other things, to concede that he did seem to post a lot of pictures of his feet to Instagram. And, oh yeah, his employers to shell out over a quarter of a million to Stead. If the experience was supposed to be chastening, it hasn’t shifted the pH of Aston’s acid wit much — even regarding Stead.

Stead for her part, took her story of the “PTSD” she now has regarding the very concept of newspapers to The Weekend Australian (exposure therapy, perhaps?) who obliged with a long and sympathetic portrayal. Aston, predictably, did not let that through to the keeper. He took issue with various factual assertions in the piece and accused The Australian of promulgating “medical grade delusion”. We can’t imagine this public sparring is likely to end any time soon.

Home (vanity) Affairs Again we ask what the hell is it with the Department of Home Affairs and dress codes? In 2018, it specifically denied reports implementing office-wide bans on high heels and polka dots. But earlier this year it tried and failed to push through workplace policies without consulting its workforce, including changes to the dress code that deemed sleeveless tops, dresses and blouses “unsuitable” for the workplace (including people working from home).

And it just won’t let it go — late last week, it failed in an attempt to appeal the decision, with the Fair Work Commission finding that it was “not in the public interest” to grant the department permission to appeal.