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Victorian Premier Dan Andrews isn’t Essendon’s No.1 ticket-holder, though he is influential — memorably condemning the views of former Dons chief executive Andrew Thorburn’s church. Thorburn resigned only a day after the club’s appointment went public.
Now, could it be Andrews is meddling in club affairs once again? A group of Dons fans have been leading a public campaign under the badge NoPE urging the club to sell its poker machines due to the harm they do to the community. They met new Dons CEO Craig Vozzo in July, but CBD hears they were told the club needed the poker machines to remain financially independent.
Essendon coach Brad Scott was not impressed with Essendon’s huge loss on the weekend.Credit: AFL Photos
All that financial independence is obviously working well for the club, given they haven’t won a final since 2004. Collingwood, Melbourne, Geelong and the Western Bulldogs all managed to ditch pokies, and have won seven premierships between them since 2004.
Enter Andrews. Last month he announced tough new poker machine regulations, including cutting the speed they spin. “The potential for revenue to drop from them is quite high, as a result of these regulatory changes,” NoPE head Mike Read told CBD. And that, he hopes, may change Vozzo’s mind. “These are all pointing towards a situation where soon the business case of operating poker machines won’t be so strong as to be able to ignore the moral case.”
In a statement, Essendon said the “reality is that given the transition out of COVID, the club is still reliant on the revenue generated from our gaming machines and any decision on the long-term future of our venues will need to be carefully considered by the board. The financial stability and independence of the club is paramount, and we won’t compromise that by making a rushed short-term decision.”
AUSSIE JOURNO GETS BIG UFO SCOOP
CBD brought you the news earlier this week of parliament’s resident UFO-spotter Peter Whish-Wilson sensing a change in the wind on little green men from Mars, following explosive whistleblower testimony before US Congress.
Ross Coulthart has been part of the Ben Roberts-Smith PR team.
It seems we missed the real Australian angle. One of the key journos helping blow the lid off this government conspiracy is none other than former 60 Minutes corro Ross Coulthart. Coulthart has been fronting UFO coverage for US cable channel NewsNation. His bombshell scoop was the first TV interview with David Grusch, a retired military officer on a Pentagon UFO taskforce who claims the US government has a secret UFO reverse engineering program.
CBD readers may also recall Coulthart being commissioned by Seven commercial director Bruce McWilliam to look into war crime allegations against Ben Roberts-Smith.
But Coulthart has been on the UFO beat for years, publishing a best-selling investigative book in 2021. Online, UFO spotters hang off his every revelation. And now, finally, the truth is coming out.
“I have spoken to people who have told me they have seen alien bodies. Roswell was true,“ he told local audiences last month. “I don’t care if people say this is crazy. I know, from the sources I have spoken to, this story will eventually come out”.
Australian author and journalist Ross Coulthart is a big thing among UFO aficionados in the United States.Credit: John Shakespeare
Reached via phone, Coulthart accused CBD of running “just another puerile Age hit job”. “Perhaps, if you are genuinely interested in an objective report, you could comment on the implications of the legislation, proposed by senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, which demands the DOD and Intelligence Community disclose what it knows about non-human intelligence and NHI technology over 20 times.”
As always, watch the skies!
DON’T MENTION THE REACTOR
CBD had thought the Bureau of Meteorology’s failed $220,000 campaign to get people to please stop calling them the BOM would act as a cautionary tale for public agencies thinking of attempting ridiculous rebrands. Obviously not.
Australia’s only nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights in southern Sydney.Credit: ANSTO
CBD must now wonder what Utopia-esque Canberra workshop produced the ‘Brand Playbook’ for ANSTO, who definitely do not want to be referred to as the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. Just ANSTO please, the book says, “like that other iconic Australian brand, Qantas”.
“We have moved away from referring to ourselves as ‘Lucas Heights’, or ‘the place of the reactor’ (CBD is not sure who was actually using this?) and we need to be disciplined about this to achieve coherence,” the playbook notes.
And in a rather extraordinary effort at distracting from what they actually do, bureaucrats are advised neither organisation’s brand, vision, or short or long description should include the word ‘nuclear’.
And instead of Lucas Heights, they are to say that “ANSTO is home to Australia’s most significant landmark”.
It all feels very ‘don’t mention the war’ to CBD.
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