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1 week ago | 
themandarin.com.au | Dan Holmes |Daniel Holmes
Caroline McElnay will be Victoria’s next chief health officer. Dr McElnay is a public health expert with a strong background in communicable diseases, environmental health, and epidemiology. She was New Zealand’s director of public health from 2017 to 2022, guiding the country through the COVID-19 pandemic. She currently serves as NZ Health’s clinical lead and as a member of the public health advisory committee.
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1 week ago | 
themandarin.com.au | Dan Holmes |Daniel Holmes
The national auditor has published a scathing report into the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’s management of a “strategic business transformation” of Meals on Wheels Australia (MoWA). Health approached consultancy Miles Morgan Australia (MMA) to deliver the $5 million modernisation after a meeting attended by then-minister Richard Colbeck, MoWA, and lobbying firm Australian Public Affairs in 2021.
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1 week ago | 
themandarin.com.au | Dan Holmes |Daniel Holmes
Former NT ICAC commissioner gave Michael Riches “inappropriate attention” to female staff, according to a workplace investigation released this week. A heavily redacted report recently published substantiated five of eight claims against Riches, finding four were breaches of the code of conduct. Only three of the 18 employees interviewed had positive things to say about Riches’ leadership, but even they broadly substantiated the claims against him.
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1 week ago | 
themandarin.com.au | Dan Holmes |Daniel Holmes
Chair of the Creative Australia board Robert Morgan has announced his retirement. Morgan began as chair of the Australia Council for the Arts in July 2021, guiding the organisation through its transition to Creative Australia in 2023. He is an experienced board member, having held positions with Opera Australia, the Sydney Swans, and Clemenger Group. Arts Minister Tony Burke said Morgan previously flagged his intent to retire once Creative Australia and its sub-agencies were fully established.
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1 week ago | 
themandarin.com.au | Dan Holmes |Daniel Holmes
Greg McCann has been appointed chair of the TasPorts board, along with three new non-executive directors. McCann spent 24 years as a financial consultant with Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and has extensive experience with boards and senior executives at the CEO level, including as chair of NBN Tasmania and as a director on the Tasmanian Development board. The appointments complete a turnover of the TasPorts board that started last year.
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1 week ago | 
themandarin.com.au | Dan Holmes |Daniel Holmes
A group of four Victorian peak bodies representing the environment and fishers is demanding the state government reverse its proposed abolition of fisheries compliance officers. An initial Victorian Fisheries Authority (VFA) restructuring proposal saw all 73 fisheries compliance officers replaced with 36 engagement officers. This would change VFA’s frontline focus from enforcement of the rules to educating people about the role of the authority.
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1 week ago | 
themandarin.com.au | Dan Holmes |Daniel Holmes
New Zealand’s public service union has slammed last week’s budget, calling it a “pay equity betrayal”. The 2025 New Zealand budget forecasts $12.8 billion in savings from new laws limiting who can make a pay equity claim. Public sector workers will be heavily affected, with than 100,000 staff on the government payroll making successful claims since 2021. The yearly cost of settlements is almost $1.8 billion a year and rising.
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1 week ago | 
themandarin.com.au | Dan Holmes |Daniel Holmes
Demand on government services is rapidly growing, and the nexus of social, geopolitical, and environmental change is making it more difficult to meet those expectations. But futurist Ross Dawson thinks public servants are up to the job, despite challenges. Speaking at this year’s Business Improvement and Innovation in Government (BiiG) conference in Brisbane, he said the key challenge will be maintaining stability and public trust while managing these epochal changes.
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1 week ago | 
themandarin.com.au | Dan Holmes |Daniel Holmes
The word ‘polycrisis’ is being used by policymakers to describe the way society’s big problems interact with and influence each other. This could be the way attempts to alleviate poverty increase fossil fuel emissions, or the compound effects of climate change, the war in Ukraine, and COVID-19 have shattered agricultural supply chains across the world. The term polycrisis has particular resonance in natural disaster-prone Queensland, where floods and cyclones have .
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2 weeks ago | 
themandarin.com.au | Dan Holmes |Daniel Holmes
New Zealand’s government has declined to support a multilateral treaty on future pandemic cooperation recommended by its former prime minister, Helen Clark. Clark and former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf co-chaired the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) COVID-19 pandemic response. Their key recommendation in 2021 was a global agreement to ensure resources like vaccines and masks are distributed in a needs-based and equitable way.
