Life after a brush with the Independent Commission Against Corruption can be tough. Just ask former Bayside mayor Bill Saravinovski, who it would appear has finally landed a new gig after he was stung by the corruption watchdog last year.
Earlier this week, Saravinovski surfaced lending a hand at the front desk of Infinity gym on West Botany Street, Rockdale. He came undone after four decades as a Labor powerbroker when the ICAC found him guilty of misconduct last year.
Saravinovski, who was later charged for giving misleading evidence to the corruption watchdog in August last year, was seen traipsing around the gym this week, wearing Infinity’s official merchandise and leaning on the front desk.
When reached by CBD, Saravinovski said he was just helping out a friend. We’d expect nothing less!
In February last year, Saravinovski was found guilty of misconduct after he berated council staff over the development of a car park on The Boulevarde in Brighton-le-Sands in Sydney’s south. The proposal was made by developer Al Ibrahim, with whom Saravinovski had a relationship the court found he did not “fully disclose”.
At the time, the Herald reported that the primary ground for the misconduct finding was Saravinovski’s failure to declare his relationship with Ibrahim. As mayor, Saravinovski declared a less-than-significant pecuniary interest after he attended Ibrahim’s engagement party. Left out were five years of calls, texts and meetings.
According to the judgment, Saravinovski “became angry” during a 2018 meeting to discuss the proposal, where he “swore” at the director of planning and expressed anger at “alleged inaction” over the redevelopment.
In a meeting a year later, the Herald reported Saravinovski became angry, yelled towards staff over concerns about how the car park proposal was being handled, and inadvertently knocked a water bottle off a desk in the direction of council staff.
Let’s just hope his mates at Infinity are keeping the water bottles stowed away.
EU’s Ursula von der Leyen notches air miles
European Union Commission president Ursula von der Leyen may have had matters of global trade on her mind this week. But one of the more peculiar asides to come out of her trip to Australia this week was that she probably would’ve descended onto our shores via a commercial flight.
That’s because those close to the EU Commission president seem to have been telling people that she flies commercial more often than not, according to sources briefed on her Australian visit. Apparently the airline of choice for von der Leyen was Qantas, one of them said. But no word on whether she made use of the Chairman’s Lounge.
Representatives of von der Leyen didn’t respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
We didn’t have to look far to find out why the EU Commission president’s air travel was a talking point. In May last year, von der Leyen took what Politico suggested may have been “one of the shortest official flights on record”, when she boarded a charter flight from Brussels to Luxembourg and back. According to that publication, the distance can be driven in approximately two-and-a-half hours.
The EU Commission president’s use of private jets appears to have caused quite the stir in Brussels, because there’s more. In 2023, the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported von der Leyen chartered private jets 57 times for official trips in two years, suggesting there are more environmentally friendly modes of transport. No surprise to hear her entourage is letting it be known those days are behind her.
Atlassian’s global policy boss axed
Earlier this month, billionaire Atlassian chief executive Mike Cannon-Brookes recorded a video message to tell staff the company would swing the axe on 1600 jobs, eliminating about 10 per cent of the Australian software firm’s global workforce.
Well, it looks like the cuts have reached the company’s most senior ranks. Among those whose role was made redundant was Atlassian’s global policy boss David Masters, CBD hears, who left the company after more than five years steering the software maker’s government relations operation.
Atlassian and Masters both declined to comment.
Masters’ departure, which was first signalled in documents filed with the corporate regulator this month, marks the first known senior leadership role to be hit by the job cuts. But he’s the second senior figure to depart the business in the past month, after Cannon-Brookes told the Nasdaq Atlassian’s chief technology officer Rajeev Rajan would leave the company.
Cannon-Brookes announced the cuts in response to the rise of AI, which continues to rattle software companies and has already hit the billionaire’s personal fortune, amid investor fears that AI giants such as OpenAI and Anthropic could end up eating Atlassian’s lunch.
As the company’s stock continues to fall, we wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more bloodletting to come.
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John Buckley is a CBD columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.