Gladys Berejiklian gets $200,000-a-year pension as Optus woes deepen

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Monday brought fresh horror for Optus, which suffered a Triple Zero outage just weeks after a similar catastrophe was linked to three deaths.

It was a happier time for the telco’s former boss Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, who was unveiled as new chief executive at Australian Unity on Monday morning. Bayer Rosmarin quit the Optus top job in 2023 after presiding during a devastating cyberattack and major outage in successive years, and her ultimate soft landing should give the telco’s current boss Stephen Rue, who has floundered through the past week, reason to rest a little easier.

But no landing has been softer than that of Optus’ chief customer officer, enterprise and business Gladys Berejiklian, the former NSW premier who remains a very well remunerated (and rarely seen) executive at the telco – despite failing to appeal against a finding of serious corrupt conduct made against her by the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Berejiklian celebrated her 55th birthday last week. This is significant because it means she’s now eligible for a generous pension scheme afforded to former state parliamentarians. Based on CBD’s back-of-envelope calculations, which take into account Berejiklian’s 18 years as an MP and various ministerial roles, she’ll be taking home about $200,000 a year for life courtesy of the NSW taxpayer. She can also pocket the cash as a lump sum payment if she so desires. Happy birthday, Gladys!

Add on the circa $1 million she’s getting from Optus and it’s little wonder the former premier seemed so unbothered by the tabloid paps that circled her Northbridge home as the first Triple Zero scandal unfolded last week. No other politician has been felled by a corruption scandal only to land on their feet wealthier than ever.

Caaaaaalm down!

From time to time, there’s an argument about whether our old mates in the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church are running a cult. Anthony Albanese used the c-word to describe the group formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren after its members flocked to Peter Dutton’s election campaign. But after a recent spate of reporting, the Brethren rushed out a statement denying the description, saying: “Our church meets no definition of cult.”

Cults, says the International Cultic Studies Association, make “concerted efforts at influence and control”. But the Brethren insists: “While every religion has norms and traditions, this can’t be fairly characterised as control.”

Well … a missive that crossed CBD’s desk recently suggests otherwise.

In the lead-up to what they call “fellowship meetings” in December – three-day get-togethers of preaching, socialising and booze – the Brethren’s leader, Bruce D. Hales, has sought to impose a level of control members have never seen before. His flock has been issued a document entitled “Participation Agreement” to sign, and without doing so, members won’t be able to attend the meetings.

The PBCC’s (tax-free) “activities and outcomes” are listed on the charities register as the “promotion of Christian principles and beliefs”. But this “participation agreement” makes it sound more like fight club – the first rule being that parishioners “shall keep all Confidential Information confidential”.

What’s covered? “The fact of the event, the identity of participants in the event, the date or title or subject matter of the event, all information of whatever nature and form presented or communicated during or in relation to the event,” etc etc. Under this “contract”, you can’t talk about anything, really, up to and including “information ... kept in the recipient’s memory”. Now that’s mind control.

The contract purports to protect young people and “confidential commercial information” but its real intent is to protect the church’s leaders from embarrassment. Church members won’t be able to take or circulate photographs or make “derogatory or disparaging comments”. Even any “oral contribution” they themselves make will be secret – Brethren members won’t even own their own words.

Breaches of the contract, it says, will cause the church “irreparable harm” for which legal remedies will be “inadequate”. So the church will be “entitled to injunctive relief … [and] any other available rights and remedies”. For a church that routinely kicks people out, separating them from their families, businesses, livelihoods, friends and community, this is a truly ominous threat.

In return for their silence and compliance, the contract says, it might pay – wait for it – $1. But only if the churchgoer asks for it. Their obligation to secrecy then lasts “in perpetuity and has worldwide effect”. It’s designed to prevent leaks, so it must be galling for the higher-ups that the contract itself was immediately leaked to us.

Contacted for comment, the church spokesman urged CBD to “calm down” and accused Nine, publisher of this masthead, of running a campaign against it.

The participation agreement was a “Zoom contract, not an ecclesial one”, which would apply to parishioners joining special meetings online rather than in person, the spokesman insisted.

“We can either ask remote participants not to breach the trust that exists within the four walls of a church meeting – or we can take no safeguards and hope for the best. Given the ongoing campaign against us, led by the not-so-independent Channel 9 newspapers, we decided that safeguarding our parishioners comes first.”

Just don’t, whatever you do, call them a cult.

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