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PS News is an independent online newspaper packed with current and topical information about the Australian Public Service. It is compiled on a daily basis by journalists in Canberra and other cities and is totally free of political or institutional bias. Many of the same people who wrote for and published the former PS newspaper Australian Public Eye and its predecessor, Public Eye are engaged on bringing the news and information to PS News online. “Responsibility for election comment in this issue is taken by Frank Cassidy, GPO Box 1850, Canberra, ACT 2601”. He takes no responsibility for the sub-editorial headlines and puns!  EDITOR: Frank Cassidy Frank Cassidy left the best job in the Federal Public Service - Director of Special Events in the Department of Sport and Recreation – to take on publishing as a career and hasn’t looked back since. Starting with the fondly remembered Public Eye newspaper for the APS in the 1980s and 1990s, Cassidy moved to the Canberra Times when they bought it, and filled the roles of journalist, columnist and Chief of Staff until 2005 when he left to resurrect his Public Service news idea. Along the way he picked up a Centenary of Federation medal from the Queen, shared a Walkley Award for coverage of the 2003 Canberra bushfires and took a seat at the 1998 Constitutional Convention as ACT convener of the Australian Republican Movement. He is actually qualified in Public Administration as well as Advertising from RMIT, Professional Writing and Accounting from the University of Canberra and was a founding member of the Canberra St Kilda Supporters’ Club. He’s been a Fellow of the Advertising Institute of Australia since the 1980s and can’t wait to retire! He can be contacted at editor@psnews.com.au  Cartoonist Ted Quinlan (TQ) Cartoonist TQ (or Ted Quinlan) has branded himself the PS News “X Man” - he’s ‘ex’ a lot of things. Ted is a former Deputy Chief Minister and Treasurer in the ACT Government; ex-Deputy Chief Executive of Canberra’s power & water utility, Actew; an ex-Australian Public Sector Accountant of the Year; ex-President of a number of community clubs; organiser of the Olympic Torch Relay in Canberra in 2008 and an ex-champion Aussie Rules footballer (he wrote that bit himself!). Ted claims he held down a job in the Public Service for a short time in IT in the 1970’s, but spent most of his time drawing caricatures and making up cards for farewells, birthdays, weddings, etc. But as a Minister of the Crown he has ‘interacted’ with bureaucracy at the highest level until retiring in 2006. He can be contacted at lunchtime at any of a number of clubs in Canberra.  Cookbook Editor Christine Salins Christine Salins is a full-time food, wine and travel writer based in Canberra. Growing up in a Public Service family in north Queensland, Christine was writing and dreaming about food and faraway places even as a child. With a degree in journalism from the University of Southern Queensland, she worked in newspapers for more than 20 years, including eight years as editor of The Canberra Times Food & Wine section but since 2003 has freelanced for a wide range of publications, travelling extensively to all corners of the globe in search of new adventures. Christine can be contacted at christine@foodwinetravel.com.au  Motoring Editor Peter Brewer Peter Brewer is a mild-mannered Public Servant in the media section of a great metropolitan Public Service Agency but attended his first press launch as a specialist motoring writer in 1979, for the XD Falcon’s Project Blackwood. At 19, he was only just allowed to drive! While most of the models he reviewed at the time are now off the road, Brewer most definitely is not. He has been motoring writer/editor, plus a specialist motorsport and automotive business/feature writer for no less than six major Australian newspapers - The Mercury (Hobart), The Sun (Sydney), The Daily Mirror (Sydney), The Canberra Times, The Australian, and The Sydney Morning Herald. For a couple of years, he was even a PR man for Daihatsu (and look what happened to them!). He has attended more motor show press days than he cares to remember, been chauffeured by the world's best race drivers, and been crashed (several times) as a rally navigator. And if he can undo the diff bolts, one day he will finish his Toyota Sprinter rally car project... He can be contacted at newsdesk@psnews.com.au  Movie Reviewer Vic Rebikoff Victor Rebikoff OAM has served the Public Service for many years in the fields of Foreign Affairs, Defence, Environment, Planning and Multicultural Affairs. Vic has been a prominent player among Australia’s ethnic communities at the local and national levels and since his first unsuccessful attempt at retiring in 1998 has returned to the workforce as advisor, consultant and committee-member of untold numbers of major policy-making organisations and councils. Vic has had a passion for film and visual storytelling over a number of years and has put that energy to great use producing authoritative and enjoyable film and DVD reviews for PS News and Canberra radio. He is a member of the Film Critics’ Association and was awarded a Medal in the Order of Australia in 1989 for his community work and contribution. He managed to retire from the PS workforce successfully in 2007. He can be contacted at newsdesk@psnews.com.au  Travel and Wine Editor David Ellis David Ellis spent 20 years as a journalist with ABC Radio and Television News, including 10 at Rabaul in the New Guinea Islands, brief stints in Jakarta and Singapore, and the remainder in Sydney where he rose to position of Chief of Staff, Radio News before leaving in 1979 to set up his own public relations business and to write Travel and Wine. That means Ellis has been writing Travel and Wine for 30 years, venturing as far afield as the Arctic Circle to interview Santa Claus, South America for Great Train Robber, Ronnie Biggs' real story, to France to fly aboard the-then experimental Concorde, across Antarctica by air, and with James A. Michener to retrace where the author conceived his immortal Tales of the South Pacific... Along the way he’s sipped the local reds, whites and bubblies… for purely scholarly reasons of course. He can be contacted at ellispr@bigpond.net.au Other Vital Contributors Journalists Alycia Brown Graham Cooke Jehane Sharah Julia Nicholls All can be contacted at newsdesk@psnews.com.au Subscriptions Paul Hetherington Contactable at subs@psnews.com.au Advertising Graham Edwards Contactable at graham.edwards@psnews.com.au Webmaster Cameron Dron Contactable at webguru@psnews.com.au PS NEWS PTY LIMITED ABN: 39 124 411 874 |
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