Good news last week that the Commonwealth Government’s Organ and Tissue Authority (OTA) is to offer community organisations around the country modest amounts of funding to take part in DonateLife Week this July even if the powers that be weren’t quite able to settle on the amounts involved.
The Minister for Health trumpeted the plan saying it would provide “$430,000 in grants for community-based initiatives to encourage more Australians to become organ and tissue donors”.
At the same time, the Authority itself announced it had “total funding of up to $473,000 including GST.”
Working from the belief that it is highly unlike a Minister to miss the chance to go for the higher number, the ever-paranoid PS-sssst! wonders whether that might mean there is a new GST policy in the wind!
Could the Minister, one surmises, prefer to be accurate rather than commit to a GST which may be changed.
Food for thought?
Slip of the G-string
Staying with the Organ and Tissue Authority, a special thankyou to Catherine M of the National Health Funding Body in Canberra who was first to point out that the usually impeccable (yeah, right!) PS News made a rare spell-o when reporting the aforesaid OTA program.
“There is an error in the first line of the article,” Catherine so helpfully pointed out.
“The article says that OTA is offering rants and I think it should read that OTA is offering grants.”
Of course she’s right. Our ‘g’ had gone missing.
It’s fixed now but not before we offer Catherine a fabulous book of thanks from the PS News library for taking the trouble to embarrass us.
Catherine was also polite in the extreme by choosing not to point out that it is the rest of the website that is infested with ‘rants!’
Thanks Catherine.
Saying it all!
And still with the transplants and donors, if there was a T-shirt of the year award, PS-sssst! reckons the one shown above ought to win.
Short, sharp and to the point.
What else needs to be said to get such an important message across?
Name game
To another example of creative spelling now, it was Circus entrepreneur P T Barnum who was credited with the saying “I don’t care what they say about me as long as they spell my name right’ but this week it was the Federal Minister for Infrastructure who showed that juggling names in a clown suit is not as easy as it looks.
Officially announcing two new members of the Infrastructure Australia Board, the Minister certainly said nice things about the appointees, but dropped the bundle when it came to spelling one of the names.
“The Government has also recently re-appointed Garbielle Trainor AO and Peter Corish AM to the Infrastructure Australia Board,” the Minister extolled solemnly.
A quick check revealed Ms Trainor to be more a Gabrielle than a Garbielle!
Fair go for winners
To Rama Gaind’s popular weekly giveaway now in which two lucky readers will walk away with copies of Melbourne University Press’s book On Fairness, written by the Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), Sally McManus.
To win a place on Rama’s long list of winners all wise readers needed to do was tell her when Ms McManus took on the job of ACTU Secretary.
That was in March of 2017 of course and the sharp readers with the correct answers – and whose entries were the first to emerge from the PS News Barrel of Booty – were Susan M from the University of Sydney and Phil B from Austrade in Melbourne.
Congratulations to Susan and Phil and thanks to everyone who took part. The books will be heading to their new owners very soon.
For another chance to join Rama’s winners list and become famous into the bargain, simply visit this competition link and answer her super simple quiz question for this week. It’s free and easy!
Good luck to all who do.
Ellis on final journey
And finally it is with a heavy heart and sad spirit that we report that one of PS News’s keenest supporters and most valuable contributors has passed to the great public sector in the sky.
Former News Director for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in Papua New Guinea and longtime travel writer for PS News, David (the Coach) Ellis died peacefully at his home in country NSW last Saturday at 79.
Semi-retired but still passionate about his writing, Ellis contributed the popular ‘Struth” section for PS News in recent years after launching its extremely popular travel section back in 2006.
PS News sends it deepest condolences to David’s wife Gwenda and family.
David’s final Struth is published this week. Link here.
Until next week…..
