Michelle’s trip

Tasmanian Times
SO MICHELLE, you managed to raise the grand total of $13,200 for the poor old devil. As you say in your grandiloquent announcement … “efforts to save the endangered Tasmanian devil received a huge boost … with US$13,200 raised…”.
Peter Henning rightly asks: Huge boost?. And as Jane Rankin-Reid rightly observes on Henning’s superb article: To have only raised $13,000 at a Waldorf Astoria benefit sounds ludicrous to me. O’Byrne has clearly beaten the lowest of all known fundraising totals ever attempted at this venerable institution, creating very bad PR for the venue in her devil’s bargain. What a blindingly silly waste of the Tasmanian taxpayers money her cross promotional exercise turned out to be.
It’s even more absurd and indefensible than this. Google the cost of a Qantas business class seat to New York City. Tasmanian Times own quick search revealed the cheapest business class return seat on Qantas to be $15,381 ( Here ). Add up the cost of sending pompous minister and vital minder — were there any other hangers-on to the public purse one wonders — and you’ve got a cost to the taxpayer to keep their bottoms on luxury seats and champagne glasses filled to the brim of at least double the amount raised for the poor devil. And we haven’t even begun to consider the cost of accomodating the poor things in luxury hotels.
Next year cancel the bloody trip and give the money to the devil. Or at least dress the devil in a Hawthorn jumper …
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