By Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell
He might’ve lasted a matter of days after a change in government, but former Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretary Phil Gaetjens enjoyed one last summer of perks before his eventual demise.
The man once described by Labor as “Scott Morrison’s butler” received two tickets worth $1000 to day two of the 4th Ashes Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground in January, where he watched Usman Khawaja stroke an elegant hundred on his return to the side.
Phil Gaetjens’ golden ticketCredit:John Shakespeare
The pricey seats, declared on the department’s gifts register, were from Kerrie Mather and Tony Shepherd, respectively chief executive and chairman of Venues NSW, the body in charge of administering the state’s stadiums.
Shepherd is, of course, a Liberal-aligned business-heavy, particularly close with former prime minister Tony Abbott, while Gaetjens was Morrison’s one-time chief of staff.
Other gift-givers were a little less generous. Japanese ambassador Shingo Yamagami gave Philly G a handcrafted picture frame valued at $221. Meanwhile, senior public servants who assisted former South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s December visit were also rewarded, with most receiving a $154 mother of pearl craft pencil case, except senior assistant secretary Gerard Martin who got a jewellery box valued at $310.
EY’s Sharp raid
New-ish EY associate partner Jeff Sharp, one of the consulting giant’s growing breed of tech heads, has pulled off a major coup with one of the more audacious raids on public sector know-how we’ve heard of in some time.
Sharp swooped on the decision by the CSIRO’s Data61 business group to walk away from transport analytics and persuaded the entire leadership team of an award-winning research program to jump the fence.
The group, led by Chen Cai, had produced groundbreaking work for Transurban, developing a tool to monitor the structural condition of Brisbane’s Gateway Bridge and devised a system for Transport for NSW that can predict traffic conditions on Sydney’s roads 30 minutes into the future.
Now if you can’t make money out of that…
Sharp, who used to work with some of the team members while at Transurban and Downer, had been talking to the data scientists since early this year about making the switch while working to convince his bosses at EY of the commercial potential for transport analytics.
He’s now seen his team expand by 500 per cent. Not bad for a bloke who’s only been there seven months.
Fitzy stays hustling
Former Hunter MP Joel “Coal” Fitzgibbon has been keeping busy in retirement. After joining lobbying shop CMax Advisory, he’s now on the board of the Australian Forest Products Association, a logging industry lobby group, making his debut at a dinner for 180 friends and supporters at the Rydges South Bank in Brisbane this week.
Fitzgibbon told CBD there was “very exciting work to be done” at AFPA, where he’ll be reunited with Natasa Sikman, the association’s climate policy manager who served as his chief of staff for a decade.
But it’s an interesting choice for a lifelong Labor man, given days before the election, AFPA rated the doomed Coalition as best for the forestry industry. And the association’s chief executive Ross Hampton was a media adviser to Howard-era defence minister Peter Reith during the “children overboard” affair.
Then again, we hear Fitz fell hard for the industry while holding forestry portfolios in government and opposition.
Despite finishing up a long 26 years in parliament, the former member for coal doesn’t want to slow down just yet.
“I’ve just turned 60, but I was never going to fully retire,” he told CBD.
“I’ve had lots of interest in other gigs, but I’ve got to be careful I’m not as busy as when I was in parliament. Watch this space.”
AHPRA’s unhealthy wage stoush
Wages and industrial relations are hot right now, and there’s a bargaining stoush coming to a head at the Australian Health Professional Registration Authority (AHPRA) that we just can’t go past.
The federal agency is taking a bit of a line on pay with HR boss Mark Edwards saying annual increases of 2.5 per cent, with a one-off “working from home allowance” of $1000, are in line with what the agency can afford.
Which is interesting, because AHPRA did not do badly at all during the pandemic-scarred past couple of years, finishing 2021 with a 20 per cent surge in money in the bank to nearly $87 million and a much-improved operating surplus of over $17 million.
We know plenty of private sector outfits that wouldn’t sniff at a pre-tax profit margin nudging 8 per cent.
“We don’t operate for profit. We operate on a cost-recovery basis” a spokesperson told CBD.
The union alleges the agency has threatened to cut staff or pass the cost of the CPSU’s 3.25 per cent claim onto the 800,000-odd nurses, midwives and doctors on AHPRA’s book through higher registration fees.
“We are not cutting staff and the proposed increases take account of the need to ensure registration fees do not pose an undue burden on frontline health workers,” the spokesperson said.
The whole thing went out to the workforce on Wednesday with the union urging a no-vote.