The ALP conference finished 26 days ago but the new ALP platform still hasn’t been published on the party’s website. Could it be that the party doesn’t want pesky reporters going through all the pledges and finding new stories or angles on embarrassing issues? Transparent and accountable? Pigs arse!

Dick Smith for Bradfield for one short term.

Check out potential Bradfield candidate Julian Leeser’s views on preselection written in the SMH 12 months ago. If he does declare as a candidate will he agree to a primary style race for preselection.

In The Punch SA Premier Rann pays tribute to Sir Donald Bradman, who was born 101 years ago today. Mr Rann has recycled some of his own words from a 2006 media release, which the late Matt Price transcribed.

Compare this extract:

The Punch, 28 August 2009

His errors were so few that a simple headline “HE’S OUT!” would tell an anguished England their torment had been temporarily relieved.

His achievements also showed a young nation, whose spirit had been so recently tested on the battlefield at ANZAC Cove and at Flanders Field, that it could stand on its feet in any arena.

With this one:

Price transcript, 26 December 2006

Bradman’s errors were so few that a simple headline, “HE’S STILL IN”, would tell an anguished England all that it did not wish to know.

His achievements also showed a young nation whose spirits had been so recently tested at Anzac Cove and at Flanders Field that it could stand on its feet in any arena.

I’ve returned from overseas having flown Qantas to and from Singapore from Perth. The flight there was suddenly cancelled with no explanation after numerous people had already checked in, the next available flight was five hours later, which was so packed that they had business class passengers in the front of economy getting champagne and the better meals but still sitting with masses! The return journey actually left roughly on time, but the Q video system was broken. I might as well have been on Jetstar at a fraction of the price, I’m sure I would have got a better meal for just a few dollars. Needless to say I will try another airline next time I go overseas. No wonder their profits are down, people are voting with their feet.

As Australians living in Germany temporarily we have noticed that Lufthansa has a pricing formula that is discriminatory. If we logon on to their web site and book a flight from (say) Frankfurt to Prague we are charged almost twice the fare if we put our place of residence as in Australia rather than Germany. Is this legal?

After the interesting article in The Age on Monday about the feasibility of print street directories in comparison to digital mapping, with a quote from a Sensis spokesperson, Sensis have now decided (after making almost half the company redundant in the last six months, including cuts made this week and earlier in the year) to sell Universal Publishers, home to the UBD and Gregory’s Street Directories, to Hardie Grant, a Melbourne based publisher.

My sincere best wishes to those who try to resurrect such a well known Australian brand in the traditional publishing environment, I trust they will succeed. However — there is a great disappointment in watching what used to be such a great company to work for pulled apart, almost like a well looked after 1960 Valiant stripped for parts, and then sold again without an engine, wheels or seatbelts.

Another case of corporate greed and no consideration of anything else but a bottom line.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has been in a panic after a failure in its on-line listing system for complementary medicines. The system includes a list of Proprietary Ingredients, that is, ingredients where only the TGA knows the full composition. One of the Proprietary Ingredients contains peanut oil, but when sponsors used this ingredient, the warning statement that it contained peanut oil, and need to declare the presence of peanut oil on the product label did not appear. The TGA is now contacting the sponsors of products containing this ingredient, advising them of the need to add the warning statement to the product.

The TGA responds: At the end of July, the TGA became aware the electronic listing facility was not generating a prompt to the sponsor to add the PEANUT warning (which alerts sponsor to add a warning to their label that the product contains peanut) when either the product contained a proprietary ingredient which included peanut, arachis (peanut) oil or Arachis hypogaea as an excipient ingredient , or when the product contained one of these as an active. The issues have all been resolved. In all circumstances these are correctly generating the appropriate warning upon validation. A total of 16 products were found to be missing the required warning label in the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods entry. However of these only 1 of the products was currently being supplied and was found to have the correct warning label on the product already.