The return of WiseTech co-founder Richard White to what’s known as the “Consensus Awards” was sold to media and prospective guests on Tuesday afternoon as a “great full-circle” moment.
But we doubt we were the only ones caught off-guard by the scheduled appearance at the November awards get-together, where White is not only billed as the star keynote speaker but will also take home a “Platinum Founders Award”.
Tickets to the get-together are going for $295 a head, which will get start-up and innovation types a “premium two-course” dinner and “networking” opportunities with founders, investors and, of course, “innovators”.
Interesting timing, of course, given it was only in June this masthead revealed the Australian Federal Police had launched a probe into White over allegations he coerced a former WiseTech cleaner into a sexual relationship and provided false information to secure her a visa.
The AFP did not respond to a request for comment on the status of its investigation in time for publication.
A representative of White told CBD he strenuously denies the allegations. White, through his spokeswoman, said the purpose of the Consensus Awards was to inspire local tech entrepreneurs to achieve their goals.
By August, WiseTech had told investors the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission had executed a search warrant on the company as part of an investigation into alleged breaches of competition law. The company would be required to produce documents and data relating to the supply of global logistics services and software.
The company said it intended to fully co-operate, but that didn’t stop its share price from wobbling.
Still, White remains a stalwart of the innovation community, which will no doubt be gagging for the opportunity to rub shoulders with the billionaire when he makes the trip from Bexley to the Fullerton Hotel.
One Nation goes upmarket
Regular readers will no doubt recall CBD brought word last week of One Nation’s blue-blooded ambitions in the lead-up to the NSW and Victorian state elections.
Well, it turns out One Nation’s thick-skinned volunteers haven’t let a little heckling outside Edgecliff train station get them down. Because it looks like they’ve expanded their ambitions to target the wealthy residents of Melbourne too. At least that’s what one CBD spy was left thinking when they suffered a jump-scare outside South Melbourne markets on Saturday, where a trio of One Nation volunteers were stationed, handing out leaflets.
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation isn’t the only party out leafleting. Labor MP Jo Haylen has been seen out and about in recent weeks at Sydenham metro station. The party has also had boots on the ground in Ashfield.
Sorry, not that sorry
In a blog post on Tuesday, the artificial intelligence behemoth OpenAI confirmed what our colleagues reported in this masthead a day earlier: the company’s chief strategy officer Jason Kwon would front the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence in Sydney next week.
That wasn’t the explicit purpose of the post, however, which instead appeared to convey some sort of apology for the fact the company’s rogue agents had attempted to infiltrate four Australian government websites about a month earlier. Well, at least four that the company is aware of.
“Australia’s governments, industries and citizens are and have been invaluable partners to OpenAI,” the company said in the post. “We do not take this for granted and we intend to make this right.”
So invaluable are the Australian officials and corporates tripping over themselves to get a piece of the AI gold rush that the company’s chief executive, Sam Altman, realised he probably didn’t need to travel all the way to Australia himself to pass on the apologies.
We tried asking OpenAI why Altman won’t make the trip to Australia to front the Joint Select Committee on AI in Sydney next Tuesday, only for them to point to the scheduled appearance of Kwon. No word either on why the company can’t make one of its executives available to appear at the Senate inquiry into AI and data centres.
All told, we don’t really blame Altman. Why would he bother? The man in charge of the company behind ChatGPT has already been dutifully thanked by Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles for the company’s co-operation after news of the breaches broke last week. “We are grateful for that,” Marles said of OpenAI’s disclosure of the Medicare breach.
This is the same Marles who went to kiss the ring in San Francisco this month, presumably to try to convince Altman to commit to tipping more cash into Australian data centres, only days before Services Australia was notified of the Medicare breach.
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John Buckley is a CBD columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.From our partners
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