Pope snubbed at Christmas

Dr David Pope isn’t making many friends in government right now.

The doctors’ union president sparked a political uproar last month when he claimed health bureaucrats have been pressuring clinicians to prioritise ambulance arrivals over waiting room patients in a bid to make ramping figures look better.

The allegation sparked a flurry of negative media coverage, an independent review and, eventually, calls from the Opposition for Health Minister Chris Picton to resign.

But the review handed down yesterday found “no evidence” of Dr Pope’s claims, instead finding that waiting room patients are, on average, seen earlier than ambulance arrivals.

Pope is standing by his allegations and has criticised the terms of reference and data collected in the review. But he also welcomed the report’s recommendations and says it’s “not worth” arguing about the findings.

Asked by InSider what his relationship is like now with the government, he quipped: “I didn’t get a Christmas card.

“We try and engage with the government as much as we can and it’s hopefully ongoing,” he said.

“It is quite a productive relationship between ourselves and the government.”

It’s not the first time Labor has been troubled by allegations from Dr Pope.

Former health minister John Hill rebuked the SASMOA president for once claiming on radio that an overstretched Lyell McEwin Hospital emergency department had been forced to treat patients on the floor.

Hill said he commissioned a review into the allegations which found “no evidence whatsoever to the claims”.

“Dr Pope made his claim – which was then repeated starkly throughout the media,” Hill wrote in his 2016 autobiography On Being A Minister.

“The correction, when it came, received some coverage but nowhere near the amount received by the original claim.”

So does the current government hold any ill will towards Dr Pope?

That’s the question InSider put to Premier Peter Malinauskas on Thursday. After a seven-second pause, he offered this diplomatic response:

“When you’re in political leadership, you have to have the discipline to focus on the task at hand,” Malinauskas said.

“And we want to make sure that the policy decisions that we make are focused on evidence and working collaboratively with people in the system.”

Malinauskas said there were more than 40,000 people working in SA Health and “people have disagreements within the health system”.

“They’re really committed individuals, highly educated, often full of confidence, and that is all driven through a degree of passion for the outcome,” he said.

“I will let that run its course. But the short answer to your question is no, because we remain disciplined and focused on the task at hand.

The Premier later added: “If I spent all my time worrying about the sorts of things that you ask about… reasonably, then we probably wouldn’t be focused on the main game.”

I can’t see you: Tower left out in Festival Centre’s plans

While Dr Pope waits for his Christmas card, he can perhaps take heart that he’s not the only one on the wrong end of a new year’s snub.

At a quiet news conference on the second day of the year, the state government released some sketches of a $34 million upgrade for the Adelaide Festival Centre.

The images show a new staircase and elevator that will be installed on the northern end of the plaza. That and a new fire safety system is apparently all you can get for $34 million these days.

But the architectural drawings had one glaring omission that caught InSider’s eye.

Walker Corporation’s 29-storey tower next to Parliament House – the controversial structure that dominates the skyline looking south from the Festival Plaza – didn’t rate a mention in the Festival Centre’s plans.

A view of the One Festival Tower office block behind the Adelaide Festival Centre area scheduled for an upgrade. Photo: Thomas Kelsall/InDaily

Something missing? The architectural drawings of the Adelaide Festival Centre upgrade preferred to leave out One Festival Tower. Image: SA Govt/supplied

Eagle-eyed InDaily reader Steve Harrison highlighted the discrepancy on X, posting: “methinks the artist has ghosted the ugly Office Tower in the background.”

Architectural drawings tend to present an optimistic vision for the future, so we can only speculate that that’s what the Festival Centre was going for here.

As for the prospect of Walker Corporation building a second high-rise tower in the Festival Plaza precinct, it’s all quiet on that front as well.

Adelaide Festival Centre chief operating officer Steven Woolhouse, asked last week whether he had any update on the second tower proposal, said: “Sorry, no, I’m not involved with that.”

Pangallo and the big wokes

Upper House MP Frank Pangallo has a new leash of life as an independent, seemingly released from the constraints of party politics.

Happier times? Former SA-Best MLCs Frank Pangallo and Connie Bonaros alongside Greens MLC Robert Simms protesting the government’s anti-protest bill in May 2023. Photo: Brett Hartwig/InDaily

The former journalist – who quit the notionally centrist SA-Best party in late 2023 after a fallout with colleague Connie Bonaros – took to LinkedIn last week to show where his priorities lie in 2024.

“My 2024 resolution? Fighting back against woke, leftist cancel-culture agendas and virtue signallers undermining the basic principles, rights and respectful beliefs of middle Australia,” he wrote.

And unlike those of us who are yet to get that 2024 gym membership, Pangallo has taken no time getting to work on his New Year’s resolution – joining federal Opposition leader Peter Dutton this week in calling for a boycott of Woolworths over their Australia Day snub.

“Big W must stand for Big Wokes. Or Big Wankers,” Pangallo opined, again on LinkedIn.

“Woolworths political stand in banning the sale of Australia Day merchandise (most likely imported from China) and letting staff decide whether to work on that day or not reeks of virtue-signalling cancel culture.”

InSider watches with interest how Pangallo’s brave new stance will go down with his Upper House crossbench colleagues, particularly the Greens.

Education service on ASIO watch list

The historic ASIO file, created in the early 1950s, includes details of students who were monitored for their participation in Russian language classes at the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) in Adelaide.

“At a meeting of the [redacted] which was held at [redacted] he referred to the Russian Class now being conducted by the WEA as an ‘indoctrination class for the [communist] Party’,” the file states.

The file lists the name and address of every student who took the weekly elementary Russian class.

ASIO file page on WEA

“It is significant, however, that [redacted] persons recorded above have been conspicuous by their regularity in attendance,” the file said.

Entering its 111th year in 2024, the WEA helped to reinstate language education following restrictions in The Education Act 1915 on teaching German during WWI.

“When these restrictions were lifted in 1930, the WEA played a pivotal role in reintroducing German and other languages into the education landscape,” said WEA history project volunteer Dr Dianne De Bellis.

“Later, as World War II unfolded, the WEA again adapted its language offerings to align with wartime priorities,” said De Bellis.

The WEA is currently offering a course on “The Wonder of Klingon”, introducing students to the world of entertainment industry languages – which begs InSider to ask if it’s a response to Culture Wars.

The five-week course teaches students the words and sounds, as well as the history, grammar, and pronunciation of fictional languages such as Klingon Quenya, High Valarian, and Dothraki.

But Japanese is one of the most studied Earth-based languages at WEA at the moment, with the language course supplemented with sushi and dumpling making instruction as well.

The WEA hasn’t limited its courses to language though, it had a lecture on ‘The growing problem of leisure’ in 1929 and offered a course on ‘Contraception and the pill’ in the 1970s. Today they’d be hyperlinked.

Winkie creek to be renamed

Exciting news for the regional town of Winkie, as their creek may just be getting renamed, so long as the Minister for Planning’s plan comes through.

The Department for Environment and Water has applied to formally name the body of water “Jarrett Creek”, derived from the name of “an old shanty town” that was located near Berri in its early days.

Two of the families living on the allotment back in the day both had the name Jarrett, thus in a creative turn of events, the land became known as Jarrettvillle.

After a series of floods from 1931 to 1967, Jarrettville residents were given a measly 10 years to pack up their belongings and move to Berri, a town that InSider has heard is immune to floods.

After the last few families were moved in 1976 (they surely enjoyed those nine years of no neighbours), their houses were demolished and all that remained of Jarrettville was a rodeo ground and some sheds – which sounds like a fully-functioning town to InSider.

Note, if for some reason the prospect of Jarrett Creek deeply offends you, public consultation will be open until February 5, 2024, after which there will be no going back, and the Jarrett’s will reign once more.

Why didn’t we think of that?

AI tech newsletter Superhuman has reported on the imminent death of smartphones with the launch of the AI powered device r1 by Rabbit.

“Bye bye apps, hello AI-powered devices,” writes Zain Kahn, the newsletter owner.

“That’s the big idea being pushed by a new generation of AI-powered hardware companies that want to bypass apps and give users a more intuitive and conversational experience.”

Rabbit’s CEO Jesse Lyu outlines all the functionality in a slick 25 minute video launch, but Kahn does InSider a favour and reduces it to 20 seconds:

“The r1 runs on a “Large Action Model” powered by AI, has a touch screen, a push-to-talk button, an analog scroll wheel, microphones, speakers, and a rotating camera. It also comes packed with Bluetooth, Wifi and a sim card slot.

“Lyu goes on to show us how the device works. First, he pushes the button to ask the device questions about philosophy, stock prices and movies. The device responds with voice, along with text and images on the screen.

“The device also integrates with apps like Spotify and Uber, which in turn lets you instruct the device to do things like play a song or order a cab. The device is also shown to accomplish tasks that would otherwise require multiple apps, like planning and booking a trip.

“The camera on the r1 is computer vision enabled (fancy word for AI), which lets you do things like generate a recipe based on what it sees in your fridge. It can also do things like edit documents when you point the device’s camera at your laptop.

“Perhaps most fascinatingly, Rabbit is working on “teach rabbit“ a functionality that will let users train the device to do tasks on their behalf. The video shows Lyu teaching the device how to generate images in Midjourney, a popular AI image generation app.”

It’s priced at US$199 and requires no subscription, but the first batch is sold out and there is now a preorder waiting list on Rabbit’s website.

Stuff you should know…

… still on artificial intelligence (something InSider has been accused of), Microsoft has added a physical AI key to their keyboards, according to the good guys at Splice.

“The Copilot button is the first change to their PC keyboard since 1994 (which is when they added the Windows key),” reports Rishad Patel.

“This thing is going to sit to the right of the space bar, which makes me think of how often gen-AI is going to fire up simply because someone like me just fat-fingered their email.”

According to the Microsoft website, the behemoth company believes the key will “empower people to participate in the AI transformation more easily”.

“The Copilot key joins the Windows key as a core part of the PC keyboard and when pressed, the new key will invoke the Copilot in Windows experience to make it seamless to engage Copilot in your day to day*.”

But InSider did notice the tiny * at the end of that statement and reprints to fineprint here:

* Timing of Copilot feature delivery and availability varies by market and device. Requires Microsoft account to log in. When Copilot for Windows is not available or enabled on the device, pressing the Copilot key will launch Windows Search.

So, knowing that the “south of the equator market” is traditionally the last on the roll out list, the key will basically be analogue in Oz.