Wednesday, March 25, 2009



It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.
-Gandhi

ASIC has nabbed its first rumourmonger but its penalty is well short of a deterrent to the market. It raises more questions than it answers. Over the past 12 months, the corporate cop has waged a war of words over so-called rumourtrage -- spreading false rumours with the intention of manipulating the market. The campaign has included a major sweep of the big brokers, subpoenaed emails and lectures on the dangers of spreading false information. ASIC has asked for the laws to be changed to make it easier to bring such charges, by dropping penalties from criminal to civil and attaching conditions to licences that take into account the duty of care in spreading information. All very good, but its first outing as a corporate cop in the field was frankly a joke: Project, After Dinner, Mint. The perpetrator, Richard John Macphillamy of Bondi Iceberg from ANZ's LINWAR (life is nothing without a risk), last September sent 32 emails to clients suggesting there was a run on Macquarie Cash Management Trust. If this became known it would kill the stock price. Now he would not have been the only broker to tell people money was being pulled from Macquarie's cash management trust last September, which was -- so far at least -- the darkest hour in the financial meltdown…Google on Short stoppers

Life is nothing without a risk The power of surprise
New leaders have a special opportunity to engage their team during their first months in a new role. This article looks at four steps leaders can apply to increase their impact within their organisation.

Leaders can practice humility by:
· Allowing others to be in the limelight.
· Learning that trying to be perfect will often fail.
· Avoiding over preaching without permission.
· Seeking others' input on how you are doing.
· Encouraging the practice of humility in your company through your own example: every time you share credit for successes with others, you reinforce the culture of humility for your team


How New Leaders Can Connect Their Team With the Need For Change; [ It seems taxes have always been a sexy issue, at least for the last millennium since Lady Godiva, that notoriously anti-tax Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who - according to legend - rode naked through the streets of Coventry in England in order to gain a remission of the oppressive taxation imposed by her husband on his tenants. I am rich, are you? Why am I loving this question so much …; ABS; 8679.0 - Television, Film and Video Production and Post-Production Services, Australia Cold River 08-09]
• · The basic problem, says US professor and author George Panichas, lies in “an absence of a culture of shame” of which corporate greed is cruelly symptomatic. How many homes and cars are needed by one individual?” he asks. “When I hear political leaders talk about working hard on people’s business, I don’t think they understand what ‘working hard’ means. To me, working hard is a housekeeper cleaning hotel rooms all day for a minimum wage, a coal miner working in the coal mines all day, and parents working two jobs to support their family An absence of a culture of shame ; Think of the Taj Mahal or the Golden Gate Bridge. Think of Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower. If such a building catches the world's eye and finds a place there it becomes an icon, or what Wallace Stevens, speaking of poetry, called a "necessary angel": a presence that speaks powerfully to the senses but whose real message is for the spirit David MaloufAn Angel At Bennelong Point ; The sun had just slipped above the horizon to kiss the Opera House sails
• · COURAGEOUS is a word much devalued in bureaucratic circles - by a television comedy about bureaucrats. Sir Humphrey, the devious department head in Yes, Minister and its sequels would use it to terrify his political boss. He would throw the word in the air with a particular spin, so that praise became mockery; it no longer meant brave, but foolhardy or just stupid. Senator Faulkner lets in the light; Australia’s Right To Know Freedom of Speech Conference Freedom to know; Google Control: if you love it, set it free
• · · Matthew Moore Freedom of Information Editor Changes to FoI bring a new era of disclosure; Rolodex of PARLIAMENTARY knowledge Father of the House: The memoirs of Kim E. Beazley
• · · · What blogging is to email, twitter is to instant messaging (IM) Loving and Hating Twitter in Five Easy Pieces; Photographs of the hour-long liaison - Nigel Griffiths Palace of Westminster in Many Pieces
• · · · · THE unravelling of the affairs of elusive Hills art dealer Ronald Coles, whose Bentley number plate BUY ART has not been seen at his usual haunts for some weeks, has advanced to a new stage. Legal action taken over missing art; The media, particularly tabloid papers, broadsheets, TV and radio, paint the current crisis in Armageddon proportions. Nobody can seriously deny the extreme economic dangers we face. However Britain seems to have led the way in recapitalising the economy and our Government is injecting billions in to the economy and running up high and unprecedented levels of expenditure which the Conservative party claim will hamper generations to come. Media
• · · · · · The whole concept of risk appetite is an understanding of an organisation's desire to take on risk when weighed with potential reward What's your risk appetite?; Learn to turn difficult conversations in the right direction, and break free of emotion's grip Biting words

Saturday, March 14, 2009



Seeing double: thirty years ago I used to celebrate my confirmation as well as my name day as Patrick and Jozef tended to bring special spiritual cheers to the European Spring … So it was appropriate to invade Hunters Hill and share a beer with Kevin before Pauline Gardner and Lynden Jones reminded us of the German accents in the Deathtrap

Use online portals to explore your interests and share comments with like-minded users. Ten years ago circa 1999, if you liked a political story you read in the paper you might mention it to a friend over coffee . These days, if you read that story online you could link it to bookmarking and sharing sites that are read by millions of people, allowing them to comment on the story and vote on how important they think it is. Double Media Dragon

Champions of reform? ASIO at its peak, says departing chief
ASIO is riding high and in the best shape in its 60-year history, according to its outgoing chief Paul O'Sullivan.

Mr O'Sullivan, who relinquished the top job at the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation last weekend to take up a senior diplomatic post, said the big investment in the organisation since 2001 had put ASIO on the "front foot" for the first time in a long while. The most compelling argument for this investment continues to be the prevention of a terrorist attack in Australia.


Antipodean Farm ; [The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) ; AUSTRALIA'S domestic spy agency, ASIO, was dysfunctional throughout much of the Cold War and was probably infiltrated by hostile foreign agents, according to previously top-secret documents from the 1970s. ASIO: the enemy was within ]
• · Most of the real politicians parodied in the Twitter parliament, which has more than 15 fakes - including three bogus Kevin Rudds - have no plans to erase them, crediting satire as being a healthy part of democracy O'Farrell; Burrying the mistakes … One in three of Media Dragon lovers ends up dead
• · Disgraced former judge Marcus Einfeld is being investigated over another traffic offence, this time for not wearing a seatbelt while travelling to court. ; Australian judge Marcus Einfeld was sentenced to two years in prison for lying about a 77 Australian dollar ($54) speeding ticket, while in Indonesia, a lawmaker was sentenced to just six years in jail for accepting a Rp 3.4 billion ($296,000) bribe during a tender process. Two sentences in two countries for different crimes. But crimes nonetheless! 77: When the Penalty Doesn’t Fit the Crime; Google: It was the electronic trail left by Marcus Einfeld the day he was caught speeding that helped detectives unravel his web of deceit and ultimately stained his reputation Prominent Australian jurist Marcus Einfeld Twice married with four children, he is also said to be an accomplished pianist who enjoys theatre and the arts. Google on Marcus Einfeld
• · · Fairness is not an abstract concept. It is essentially practical. Whether one talks in terms of procedural fairness or natural justice, the concern of the law is to avoid practical injustice. Parker v Comptroller-General of Customs; Gary Banks, Productivity Commission Evidence-based policy-making: what is it? how do we get it?; Joan Goodchild: Companies need to run a general social engineering awareness campaign. They need to tell employees what to look for and how to look for it; and teach employees that it's not that the company doesn't trust the people within the organisation, it's that there are people out there trying to hack into systems every day. Social engineering: anatomy of a hack ; Many executives will find themselves trapped in a labyrinth from which there appears no hope of escape. Whether they emerge as heroes or scapegoats is up to them. The road to success is built on ideas
• · · · I hope this movie will finally show people the ferocious face of WORLD, which is the face that really runs things Italy and the world; With the financial world on its head, few would have predicted a year ago that Australia's big four banks would be ranked in the world's top 20 by market Wall St villains now saviours
• · · · · 2009: Big Brother may have been axed from TV, but government bureaucrats are doing their best to keep George Orwell s dystopian nightmare alive. In only the first year government could pry into telecommunication companies customer details under phone bugging laws, 183,099 authorisations were given to 27 federal and state government agencies as part of criminal and civil investigations. 2008: Bug or track people for up to four days without a warrant ; Competitive advantage in today's market is more or less a dream if it is not closely tied to knowledge management. Includes discussion of social network analysis. Knowledge management: it's all about people,
• · · · · · The idea of lengthy, considered and purely rational decision making is not only unattainable but unworkable. You've got to keep the emotion in Better faster decisions ; Career advice: how to prepare if you score an interview ; The world of business has changed and management hasn't kept up. Management 1.0 must move to management 2.0. Inventing management's future: identifying the challenges ; In this report, we explore the successes of analytics in governmental agencies and attempt to develop an assessment framework for those that are yet to embark on the analytics journey or are still in the early stages of it. We focus in particular on four governmental areas: health care, logistics, revenue management, and briefly (because of the paucity of public sources) intelligence... The four sections identify governmental organizations that are exploiting analytics to meet their strategic goals. After the description of these activities and, in some cases, their impact, we discuss key factors that the agencies have faced in implementing analytics. We discuss each agency in terms of the key components necessary for leveraging analytics in our assessment framework The strategic use of analytics in government