Tales of Tarzia hangs up its quill | Council rejects world’s best logo | Posties are not pet food
This week, the rise and fall of an anonymous political account, crustaceans on the nose at a West Coast council and a bid to stop dogs going the munch on our posties.
Tales of Tarzia hangs up the quill
After Vincent Tarzia took the Liberal Party leadership in August following David Speirs’ angry resignation, an anonymous email account named “Tales of Tarzia” quickly sprang up to titillate Adelaide’s media-political circles with daily dispatches of cruelly humorous Liberal Party insider gossip.
The emails, from an author/authors with a snappy turn of phrase and a big axe to grind, painted an extremely unflattering picture of a hapless Tarzia captaining a “Clusterf**k Express trainwreck” of a bitterly divided party.
Across 24 emails, the account covered everything from nasty internal preselection machinations, supposed staffing issues in the new leader’s office and claims of backbench frustration over shadow cabinet selections. Internal staff contract details and “overheard” conversations have not been out of bounds.
Journalists were entertained as Tales of Tarzia hurled daily grenades at the new leader, but were generally reluctant to report on the anonymous account – besides some commentary noting that it reinforced the already widely held belief that the state Libs are a political binfire.
But The Advertiser last Friday published a light-hearted piece examining the “sensational anonymous gossip email” that has been “intriguing a breathless state political court”. True.
The piece said that Tales of Tarzia had “a cutting style reminiscent of… Lady Whistledown” – the anonymous gossip scribe from Netflix’s popular period drama Bridgerton – serving up “juicy stories about the machinations of Mr Tarzia’s fledgling leadership”.
Roughly 10 hours after story was published, Tales of Tarzia sent a 24th email to readers and declared it would be the last – walking out with some off-colour criticisms of the paper’s Bridgerton comparisons.
“Fame is an aphrodisiac to some,” Tales wrote in their Friday night missive titled Tale 24: The Ending.
“For Tales of Tarzia, today’s splash in the Tiser has had the opposite effect: we can’t get it up anymore.
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“All that guff comparing Tales to Lady Whistledown was about as erotic as a crinoline corset.”
Before packing away their croquet set and going home, Tales attempted to lay a trail about their possible identity and motivation.
“Our mission has always been to expose the Machievellian (sic) dealings of a political party in a clusterf**k of upheaval. Kind of a sociological study,” they wrote.
“Your humble scribes (oooh, did we just let our plural slip?) are not necessarily Liberal insiders. Or even living in SA. That has you thinking, right? Or left?
“We set out to prove how remarkably easy it is to sniff out juicy gossip from sources that are loose-lipped, disaffected and in need of sympathetic ears and shoulders to cry on. Mission accomplished.”
Perhaps, but Tales of Tarzia lost its mojo after The Advertiser’s bombshell story last week purportedly showing David Speirs sniffing powder from a plate inside a kitchen (Speirs called the video a deepfake).
In their penultimate memo, Tales declared: “We’re bored with the Speirs scandal, so moving right along.” Then they pulled the pin.
Tales’ valedictory address ends (for now) another chapter in South Australia’s history of anonymous political shitsheets.
Before Tales, there was “NotHappyJan2021” and “2026SOS”: the latter a secure proton mail address that circulated a venomous letter about Speirs suggesting he should be deposed as leader for flying to Scotland during the June state budget.
Two years earlier, Speirs had to contend with anonymous emails from the so-called “Concerned Liberals”, an account that had a strong track record of leaking sensitive information about the Liberal Party and the former Marshall Government. That chapter ended with Speirs making a public accusation that Labor was behind the account, an allegation the government denied.
Labor’s not been immune from the email bug either. Last year, “Upset Unionist” beguiled journalists with Labor caucus meeting agendas and other internal goings on, particularly during the uproar over the Malinauskas Government’s changes to protest laws. (This also ended with an unproven accusation that the leaks were coming from the other side of politics.)
Both Tales of Tarzia and Upset Unionist built enough of a profile to warrant a mention on the floor of parliament and gain a boring immortality in Hansard.
It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye, as they say.
A ram, prawn and crayfish walk into a council meeting
The District Council of Elliston, 641km west of Adelaide, wants public feedback on its daring new logo design.
What caught InSider’s eye was not the proposed new logo, but rather the old one, upon which we have bestowed the (unofficial) title of ‘World’s Best Council Logo’.
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The current logo combines all the town is known for (we assume) in an inspired – nay, brilliant – design. A prawn and crayfish back-to-back, wheat sprouting from their bodies in what we assume is a traditional local cropping method.
Floating between the crustaceans is a shell, and behind that shell – like a sun setting on the horizon – a serene ram gazes majestically over its exo-skeletoned underlings. Or it’s treading water and awaiting rescue after falling into the Great Australian Bight. Not sure.
The proposed new logo? It’s… ummmm… nice…..
InSider contacted the council to find out more about both designs and was told the current logo had been around “for a long time, and although the themes are still relevant it is considered that an opportunity exists for the logo to be refreshed to reflect who we now are”.
Minutes from a September 17 meeting gave us more insight into the reasoning behind the proposed change. Apparently the old one is “difficult to place succinctly on graphic posters and publications”.
The same minutes told us several draft logos were designed in-house with no budget funds allocated to the rebrand and the risk assessment for the change deemed to be “low”. Thank heavens, don’t upset the locals.
The proposed, low-risk logo “features a harmonious combination of text and imagery”, representing “values of honesty, courage and creativity”. The wheat “symbolises agriculture”, the green curves represent “the rolling hills and fertile lands”, and the “flowing design of the waves represents movement and vitality”.
That’s great… but what about the floating ram? The wheat-sprouting crustaceans? We’ve only just discovered the logo and it’s being snatched from us.
Can InSider have the old logo on a t-shirt? Go on, Elliston Council. Bet they’d go off like prawns in the sun.
Getting your teeth into a good cause
Posties have a tough job to deliver mail and parcels rain, hail or shine while navigating traffic and a huge variety of plain, not so plain and sometimes plain kooky letterboxes. Not to mention residents.
But a major occupational hazard is snappy dogs, with 114 posties being chomped across SA so far this year alone and more than 500 people seeking hospital treatment for dog attack injuries in the past 12 months.
So the state government has teamed up with Australia Post to deliver letters as part of a dog safety education campaign to SA’s 314,000 registered dog owners.
And they’re not joking: Posties won’t deliver to an address unless it’s safe to do so without being monstered by a hound.
Deputy Premier Susan Close said the campaign was “not about demonising or stigmatising any dog, it is about raising awareness on how to keep yourself, other people and our dogs safe”.
Australia Post’s General Manager, Safety and Wellbeing said: “With our posties out and about delivering in the community, they are unfortunately at risk of dog attacks – in fact, one in three dog-related incidents involving posties occurs at a customer’s front door during parcel delivery.”
Who is Australia Post’s General Manager, Safety and Wellbeing trying to stamp out vicious dogs chewing on posties?
Rod Maule. Excellent. He was born to do this.
