Good work if you have a mate who gets it for you

THERE are still some pockets of probity in Australia's fine institutions of higher learning, and it is to be hoped that one of these yet survives at Macquarie University, new employer of Margo Kingston. If so, here are a few questions that need to be placed before the university administration:

1/ By what process did Margo come to be granted access to Macquarie's funds?
2/ Was the position advertised, with desired qualifications listed and other candidates interviewed. If so, who and how many?
3/ Has anyone else ever been engaged via the same process, whatever it may have been, that added Margo to the payroll?
4/ How much will Margo be paid?
5/ Who will vet her timesheets, expenses etc?
6/ Was the relationship between Margo and Catharine Lumby known when the former's appointment was confirmed?.
7/ Who approved the appointment other than, presumably, Lumby?

and finally,

8/ Are Macquarie University's ethical standards as high as those of the woman it has just engaged?

In September, 2005, Margo Kingston's Web Diary published an article under the byline of Catharine Lumby. At the foot of the article, this disclosure appeared (emphasis added):

Catharine Lumby has worked as a print journalist for two decades in Australia and the US. She is the Chair of the Media and Communications Department at the University of Sydney. Her most recent book, coedited with Elspeth Probyn, is Remote Control: New Media, New Ethics published by Cambridge University Press.

Disclosure: Catharine is a friend of Margo’s and former Fairfax colleague.

Was a similar disclosure made when Lumby, presumably, engaged Margo? If not, why not?

UPDATE: Macquarie University helpfully provides a code of ethics to guide its staff in the conduct of their duties. The section reproduced below comes to mind (underlines added for emphasis):

Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of interest are inevitable in modern universities and do not, of themselves, imply impropriety. A conflict of interest will arise, however, where a staff member engages in activities or advances personal interests at the expense of the University's interests or the interests of other staff members or students. In these circumstances, the staff member must declare the conflict to their supervisor and take immediate steps to resolve the conflict of interest.

Staff are to avoid any financial or other interest or undertaking that could directly or indirectly compromise, or appear to compromise, the performance of their duties. Staff faced with a potential conflict of interest must seek advice from their supervisor or other senior members of the University.
The following situations are provided as examples of where a potential for conflict of interest exists:

A. Financial Interests
B. Personal and family relationships between staff members
C. Personal and family relationships between staff members and students
D. Research.......

B. Personal and family relationships between staff members

• Where staff are working with family members or with persons with whom they develop close personal relationships or such relationships exist with prospective staff they must be aware that this has the potential to create a conflict of interest if one staff member is:
  • involved in a decision relating to the selection, appointment or promotion of another;
  • in a supervisory relationship to another and is responsible for employment related decisions. Such decisions could include the provision of opportunities and resource allocation for research, conferences and staff training and development; and referee reports, or annual performance development reviews.

 UPDATE II: Catharine and Margo, these gals are tight!

...and, boy, are these gals tight...

Nurse Grattan With the Happy Pills

From a Michelle Grattan column of a few days ago, the latest example of Blair's Law:

MANY readers will recall Margo Kingston, a deft hand at investigative reporting and a pioneer of interactive journalism through her Webdiary. Margo left the trade a while ago and is studying nursing, interested in specialising in palliative care.

But last week, watching from afar the AWU affair unfolding, she leapt back into the fray with an online article. She remembered what many of us, in the heat of this slush fund battle, had forgotten. Tony Abbott has had his own slush fund experience, not all of it happy.

Is it too late for Grattan to take up a career in hospice nursing? All the bent words she peddles on behalf of our PM suggest she has a genuine gift for bringing comfort to those on their way out.

It Was the Crap, Stupid. It Still Is

ON RADIO NATIONAL this morning there was an extended report on what went wrong at Fairfax, the gist being that the company stuck its head in the sand while Internet ads ate its lunch. No doubt that observation is valid, but it is only a partial explanation, as the broadcast comments of a former head of the publisher’s online unit establish beyond doubt. Apologies for not taking down the speaker’s name (Higgins?) or the direct quotation, but the Billabong’s toaster had just set off the smoke alarm and it was very difficult to catch the finer details. What he said is still worth paraphrasing because it points to the bigger problem that has driven Fairfax to the very brink of death.

All Mr Unintelligible’s approaches to management, all his urging that the Web was the future, fell on deaf ears, he lamented. There he was, blazing a trail into the e-future and eager to do wonderful things, and the bosses simply would not listen.

And those wonderful things that were achieved, what were they? He did not mention it, but one notable innovation was the promotion of Margo Kingston and the original Wed Diary as the faces of Fairfax’s presence on the Internet, and we all know what that produced: The Jews run the media, the Bali bombing was not terrorism but an exploding gas bottle, Australia was helping to liberate Iraq because it wanted access to the Yank’s anti-gravity machine, unflushed toilets are saving the planet. They were just some elements of Fairfax’s addled bid to make its bones on the Web.

When you get past the bitter griping about an ex-employer’s lack of vision, the fact remains that Fairfax laid itself low by packaging crap in industrial quantities, both in pixels and on paper, and promoting those who could not tell the difference. It is that simple.