(Image: Private Media)

Goin’ Locco Apart from anything else, it’s genuinely refreshing to be able to start an item with “something cooked happened on Sam Newman’s podcast” and then be able to describe it without mentioning Newman again. Former Brighton mayor and “Melbourne identity” John Locco has made a series of claims regarding Tennis Australia’s treatment of Novak Djokovic; including that TA filled out all visa documents for players, officials and teams, that Djokovic “did not know” what they wrote on his documents, and that TA paid for Djokovic’s flight from Dubai to Melbourne as well as a house in Melbourne, which he “did not use”.

And while Locco defends Craig Tiley, it seems hard to believe that the Tennis Australia head, who hasn’t been seen since Thursday, or someone from the board won’t either quit or be taken behind the shed and, in Joe Aston’s immortal phrasing, treated to a “hearty breakfast of shotgun muzzle”. TA has declined to comment on Locco’s claims.

Internationalist As ever, it seems the Morrison government occupies a different reality to the rest of us. It wants to throw the doors open, trying to coax 150,000 students and 23,500 backpackers into the country to temporarily do the jobs in industries facing major worker shortages by offering a visa fee refund. It’ll cost roughly $55 million, and, like using kids to drive forklifts, is apparently preferable to conceding the utter balls-up over rapid antigen tests.

Of course, this may be stymied slightly by advice from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this week, placing Australia (among 21 other nations) on “level four”, its highest level of risk for travellers.

In defence of Andrew Bogut As it was when Friendlyjordies’ producer got arrested, whether the guy in question is kind of a berk or even correct doesn’t really come into it: the letter sent to former basketballer and current loose unit Andrew Bogut from the Victorian Electoral Commission for his “Vote them out” video seems like a bizarre overreach. Bogut shared a video targeting the Victorian crossbenchers who facilitated the passage of the Andrews government’s contentious pandemic management bill.

The letter is based on the contention that Bogut’s — who is not a member of any political party nor running for office — video “likely constituted electoral advertising”. Which, unless they know something more than is let on in the letter, seems miles off the mark; Bogut is expressing a political opinion and has as much right as anyone to do so. Are we to see the Australian Electoral Commission intervening similarly to prevent drips from spreading the #CallTheElectionDickhead hashtag? Which, incidentally, really suffers from the inability to put a comma in a hashtag

Keeping Mumbrella Yesterday the media world was rocked by a bombshell from media news website Mumbrella‘s new owners regarding its Christmas party: “During this time, illicit drugs were purchased, distributed and consumed by a number of the staff there. The staff ranged from junior to more senior staff.” It decided to release this information itself in the spirit of the transparency it demands from the media companies it covers.

It appears something at the core of society has fractured and people in marketing have started doing cocaine at parties — we in the bunker may never recover. But what’s got our hearts racing and and our eyes darting about are the lingering questions: why this explosion of conscience now, a month after the fact? Who snitched? And, of course, how long will anyone whose CV says they left Mumbrella mid-January have to deal with a bunch of expectant and hopeful looks at their first after-work drinks?