With the pending sell-off to Tatts Group, staff at NSW Lotteries have been informed that of the current 166 jobs only 30 will remain after 12 months. With NSW jobs at Boeing going to Victoria, it’s good to see the NSW government not worrying about another 136 lost positions!

Melbourne has quietly lost another head office, with Suncorp’s personal insurance division moving from St Kilda Road to the group’s Sydney HQ. Almost all senior Melbourne-based insurance execs have left the company to be replaced by Sydney-based people. Most impacted is the company’s AAMI brand, the biggest and most successful brand in the group. The entire Melbourne-based AAMI leadership team has left the business, replaced by Suncorp people in Sydney from other parts of the business. It brings to an end the fairly brutal process of stripping out any vestiges of the former Promina group, which Suncorp bought a few years back. Ex-Promina brand AAMI is the standout success in the Suncorp portfolio, and these changes basically wipe-out the remaining execs who came to Suncorp with the Promina purchase.

People inside the business are scratching their heads as Suncorp’s insurance strategy under the new CEO is to copy AAMI’s success in other brands (GIO, Suncorp, etc) by adopting AAMI practices. The company has already stated it wants to implement the AAMI motor repair model in all brands, and is currently putting plans in place to transform the motor repair industry. Only problem is that AAMI’s highly-regarded management have left the company, including the former head of the business who steered AAMI’s strong growth in recent years.

The reason for AAMI’s long-standing success and extraordinary growth from nowhere to become Australia’s No.2  insurance brand in recent years was its culture and people, something that Suncorp leaders have failed to understand, and that is now being systematically wiped out by Suncorp.  A big worry for Suncorp is that growth in AAMI has started to fall off. Wonder why?

The Bowman federal pre-selection is turning into a farce that is not only dividing rank-and-file members across the three large branches but also as many as 10-15 members may quit or go MIA if Jenny Peters does in fact win preselection. What is an even bigger joke is that Julie Bignell and Jackie Trad (the two people behind this pre-selection farce) will most likely refuse an invite from the Bowman ALP FEC to come to Cleveland and explain their actions.

Roger Price is considering leaving politics, as predicted in tips and rumours on March 17. The reason he held back any announcement was that he wanted to block hack-turned-MP David Bradbury in Lindsay from changing seats. Bradbury is now locked into Lindsay as the unopposed endorsed ALP candidate.

Bradbury is in panic mode as he expects Liberal Senator Marise Payne to cut short her Senate career to contest the seat of Lindsay. Liberal polling shows Labor is already on the nose with the bogans of Penriff and Bradbury is seen by most as a dud, so Lindsay could be taken by a quality female Liberal.

Marise Payne, now a local of Penrith, is the thinking person’s Jackie Kelly: attractive, articulate, friendly and able to carry a genuine conversation with anyone. Bradbury is still stilted, prematurely balding, awkward and still annoyingly coming across as a smarty-pants-young-lawyer in his lecture/speeches to local groups. The Liberals see Lindsay as a potential pick-up, as well as its neighbouring seat of Macquarie.

With NSW rightly crowing about its 7% jump in domestic tourism numbers, it’s a sadder story south of the Murray where the political knives are out for those under-performers responsible for Victoria’s 4% drop.

Government insiders are pointing the finger at the Mornington Peninsula and its lacklustre marketing and local government in-fighting.  The Peninsula has traditionally contributed strongly to Victoria’s tourism market with its eclectic mix of vineyards, coastline and penguins. But the region’s drab marketing campaigns are now likely to draw direct intervention from Spring Street. And, of course, it is a state election year!

There needs to be a comprehensive investigation into the schools economic stimulus capital works program. Our local school is having one classroom built and it is costing nearly $1 million! A whole house can be built for less than $300,000! With this happening all over the nation where is all this money going? Financially the program is worse than the insulation catastrophe. Also it appears, that private schools are benefitting way more than public schools, certainly in our area.

You probably know that Tony Abbott is going to compete in the Urban Hotel Group Ironman Australia on March 28. This will be Abbott’s first time as an ironman competitor — he’s a competition virgin. Ironman consists of a 3.8-kilometre swim, 180.1-kilometre ride and 42.2-kilometre run. It seems unlikely that Our Tone will be able to complete the course within the cut-off time of 17 hours without a bit of intervention.

He may be fit, but he hasn’t been able to follow the rigorous training schedule an event such as this requires. British ironman competitor Jonathan Bramnley estimates he has swum 150,000 metres, cycled more than  4800 kilometres and run more than  640 kilometres over the past eight months. If Abbott has done even half this amount then how much of his political duties has he neglected? And the big question among the ladies is will Tony wax?

Tone was in Port Macquarie late last year to publicise his book, now he’s back again. Two visits from a coalition pollie within a few months is unheard of. Could he be shoring up support for the Nats’ new candidate Doctor David Gillespie?