It’s been a busy week for everywhere man Karl Stefanovic. Earlier this week, regular readers may recall, the erstwhile Today show co-host-turned-YouTuber was among those who turned out to toast Anthony Bell’s Sydney to Hobart bid at Deckhouse Woolwich.
But it looks like that wasn’t all he was up to that day. Later on came the Australian Hotel Association’s annual awards get-together, hosted by Stefanovic at Royal Randwick racecourse, where we’re told about 1400 people showed up for what looked to us like the Good Food Guide Awards for bogans.
Well, at least if the merchandise was anything to go by. Guests were able to get red MAGA-style hats with the words “Make Drinking Great Again” emblazoned across the front. The hats were Stefanovic’s idea. Quelle surprise.
“The country needs to get back to its roots. I worry about young kids today on these silly health kicks,” he told CBD.
Here’s hoping the fine folks at the AHA didn’t pay him in schooners. Our guess is he could do with the money.
Stefanovic not only has his home renovations to think about, there’s also the undisclosed cost of getting his former business partner, Keshnee Ibrahim, to relinquish her stake in his podcast.
It was only a few weeks ago that Stefanovic reached a confidential settlement with Ibrahim, who until this month had an extraordinary 45 per cent stake in his podcast business.
Documents filed with the corporate regulator last week show Ibrahim only stepped down as director and secretary on October 16. Stefanovic now holds 90 per cent of the company, while Bell, the celebrity accountant, has a 10 per cent stake.
Musk dispatches SpaceX lieutenant to Canberra
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, sparked criticism in the United States this week, including from a Republican politician, after he admitted Starlink had restricted its services to Ukraine for using the satellite service to launch drone strikes and “kill people”.
So we were intrigued to hear on Thursday that one of the Twitter-brained billionaire’s most senior executives at Starlink’s parent company, SpaceX, has been doing the rounds in Canberra this week, according to sources briefed on the visit.
David Goldman, vice president of satellite policy at SpaceX, met Communications Minister Anika Wells on Wednesday, said one of the sources, and was scheduled to drop in to the offices of other regulators the following day. No doubt to try to grease the wheels for public contracts.
It was only last year that Starlink lost out on a multimillion-dollar contract with the National Broadband Network to offer satellite internet to rural and regional Australians, which went to billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Amazon instead.
NAB’s slip slop slapped
It’s not often a corporate banking story breaches containment lines and bleeds into the mainstream.
Such was the case after NAB chief executive Andrew Irvine announced a major restructure at the big four bank last week that included making about 1500 jobs redundant this year, and another 1000 next year. Customers and others keen to pile on to the bank took out their frustration in the comments section of an ad that NAB posted to Instagram, their aggravation heightened by the fact the ad looked a lot like it’d been generated using artificial intelligence.
People swarmed the post, calling for customers to abandon the bank if they haven’t already. “Everyone leave NAB,” read at least two of the comments on the ad, which by Thursday was already weeks old while the criticism continued to roll in. Then: “AI SLOPPPPP”; “More than money, then 2500 jobs cut 😂🤖🤡 ”; “I’m moving my accounts to a more ethical bank tomorrow. AI slop and mass layoffs? Shame on you”; and simply, “Slop”.
We asked NAB if they had received any direct complaints about the ad, which they didn’t answer. But they did reassure us the ad was not computer generated.
“AI was not used to create this ad,” a NAB spokeswoman told CBD. “The same actor has appeared in five other NAB ads this year.”
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.
John Buckley is a CBD columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.From our partners
Discover more from PressNewsAgency
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.